GOOD GOVERNANCE, ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT AND THE FIGHT AGAINST GALAMSEY IN GHANA: A HUMAN SECURITY PERSPECTIVE

The end of the Cold War marked the beginning of the new dawn of democratic development that swept across Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia (Huntington, 1991; Diamond, 2015). Democratic values appeared triumphant with appropriately 153 new countries accepting democracy and its principles and these numbers have held steady to these principles over the past three decades (Diamond, 2015:1). This dynamic began to waver as the number of countries hitherto recognized as electoral democracies reduced from 120 to 116 in 2009, with no net improvement in the number of countries that practise democracy (Diamond, 2015: p.142). This observation triggers the alarm bell and the near consensus that there was a creeping period of democratic recession in the world. At this same time, Kurlantzick (2011) also suggested that, global freedom had plummeted and that, we might in fact be seeing the beginning of the end of democracy. These arguments were leading the debate of democratic roll back in the world. There is a little bit of caution in reaching such a conclusion, the decline in the number of countries practising democracy as well as the instability and stagnation within democratic states undoubtedly remained evident in the last three decades. However, Diamond (2011) admits to a darkening moment since 2005. According to him, three fifths of the thirty democratic reversals that have occurred during the 35 years of the third wave have occurred in the last decade or so, and eight democracies broke down just in the recent three-year period spanning 2007 through 2009. Further, the Freedom House Index reports on levels of freedom around the world supported the suspicion of a global democratic roll back. It shows that in the last decade the number of countries declining in freedoms (press freedom, freedom of speech inter alia) exceeded the number of countries gaining. This trend of democratic recession signalled poor performance of new democracies and decline in good governance and rule of law. There are broad dimensions to the debate on global democratic recession.