When Paradise Becomes a Public Toilet: A Cry for Ghana’s Dying Beaches

Nii Ayi Solomon, Ph.D.

Today, I stood on the shores of Atuobo in Ghana’s Western Region, watching the waves roll gently onto the sand beneath a sky so beautiful it could inspire poetry. The coconut trees swayed gracefully with the wind, fishermen prepared their nets nearby, and the ocean stretched endlessly into the horizon. For a brief moment, nature reminded me why Ghana remains one of the most blessed countries on earth.

Yet beneath this breathtaking beauty was a painful and disturbing reality. Children were openly defecating along the shore. Human waste lay dangerously close to the same waters tourists would someday hope to swim in. Plastic waste was scattered across parts of the beach, and the smell of neglect hung heavily in the air. The beach, once known for its serenity and cleanliness, now carried visible signs of abandonment. I left troubled, not simply as a professional tourists guide or tourism consultant, but as someone deeply concerned about the future of Ghana’s tourism industry and the environmental future of our coastal communities.

For many years, Ghana’s Western Region has been celebrated as home to some of the cleanest and most beautiful beaches in the country. From Busua to Axim, from Beyin to Atuobo, these coastal destinations have served as symbols of peace, relaxation, culture, and natural beauty. They attracted tourists, researchers, backpackers, surfers, and families from around the world. These beaches were more than tourist attractions; they represented identity, livelihood, memory, and pride for many local communities.

Today, however, many of these same beaches are slowly becoming victims of indifference.

What I witnessed in Atuobo is not merely a sanitation issue. It is a national embarrassment. It reflects a deeper failure in environmental governance, tourism planning, community education, waste management, and public infrastructure development. It raises serious questions about how committed we truly are to preserving the natural resources we proudly market to the world.

How do we expect to promote Ghana as a premier tourism destination while some of our beaches are turning into open toilets?

Tourism is not built solely on hotels, festivals, museums, and expensive advertising campaigns. Tourism is built on experience. Cleanliness, safety, environmental sustainability, and dignity are all part of that experience. A tourist who encounters human waste and filth on a beach will not remember the beauty of the sunset or the friendliness of the people. They will remember the stench, the discomfort, and the disappointment. They will return home with stories that damage the image of our country far more than any expensive tourism campaign can repair.

This issue should disturb all of us.

It should disturb tourism authorities who proudly speak about “Destination Ghana” while some of our tourism assets deteriorate in plain sight. It should disturb local assemblies responsible for sanitation enforcement and public health. It should disturb environmental agencies that continue to release reports and statements while beaches suffer from neglect. Most importantly, it should disturb political leaders who appear comfortable watching this decline happen in silence.

The tragedy is that these problems are preventable.

Communities along our coastal areas deserve access to proper sanitation facilities. Children should never have to use beaches as toilets because there are no alternatives available. Public education on sanitation and environmental cleanliness must move beyond occasional campaigns and become part of continuous community engagement. Local authorities must begin enforcing sanitation by-laws seriously and consistently, not selectively or only during public events. Beach tourism zones should receive regular monitoring, maintenance, and investment if we truly value tourism as an economic pillar for national development.

The Western Region possesses enormous tourism potential. It is rich in history, culture, cuisine, festivals, forts, rivers, forests, and coastlines. The region has all the ingredients necessary to compete with some of the best coastal tourism destinations in Africa. Yet natural beauty alone cannot sustain tourism. Neglect destroys destinations faster than poverty does.

One of the most painful realities about this situation is that the very communities blamed for these sanitation problems are often the same communities abandoned by development. Many coastal communities struggle daily with poor infrastructure, limited access to clean water, inadequate waste management systems, and a lack of public toilets. In some areas, residents are forced to improvise because the basic necessities of life remain unavailable. Under such conditions, environmental degradation becomes not only a social issue but also a developmental failure.

The real shame, therefore, does not lie solely with the people living along these beaches. The greater shame lies with leadership that watches these conditions persist while continuously speaking about tourism development, foreign investment, and economic growth.

A country cannot build a sustainable tourism industry while ignoring sanitation and environmental management.

The economic implications of this neglect are enormous. Tourism contributes significantly to employment and local economic activity in many coastal areas. Hotels, restaurants, transport operators, tour guides, artisans, and fishermen all depend directly or indirectly on the health of these tourism destinations. When beaches become polluted, tourist arrivals decline, businesses suffer, and livelihoods are threatened.

Environmental degradation also creates serious health risks. Open defecation near beaches contaminates water sources and increases the spread of diseases such as cholera, typhoid, and diarrhea. Children become especially vulnerable to these health dangers. In addition, marine life suffers when waste enters the ocean, affecting fishing communities whose survival depends heavily on healthy coastal ecosystems.

This is why protecting our beaches must not be treated as a cosmetic tourism issue alone. It is a matter of public health, environmental sustainability, economic survival, and national dignity.

Ghana cannot continue speaking about sustainable tourism while allowing environmental decay to flourish along our coastlines. Sustainable tourism requires action, investment, accountability, and long-term planning. It requires collaboration between government institutions, local assemblies, environmental agencies, traditional authorities, tourism stakeholders, and local communities themselves.

There must also be stronger educational efforts targeted at young people. Environmental consciousness should not begin only when people become adults. Schools in coastal communities should actively teach sanitation, waste disposal, and environmental responsibility as part of community life. Children who grow up understanding the importance of protecting their environment are more likely to preserve it for future generations.

Traditional leaders and opinion leaders also have an important role to play. In many Ghanaian communities, chiefs and elders continue to command respect and influence. Community sanitation initiatives become far more effective when traditional leadership becomes actively involved in promoting environmental responsibility and enforcing local standards.

At the national level, Ghana needs a more aggressive coastal sanitation policy supported by proper funding and implementation. Beaches that generate tourism revenue should receive structured maintenance plans, adequate waste bins, functioning public toilets, regular cleaning exercises, and environmental monitoring systems. Tourism development should never be separated from environmental management because the two are deeply connected.

The media also has a responsibility. Stories about sanitation and environmental degradation should not only appear during outbreaks of disease or national clean-up exercises. Continuous public discussion keeps pressure on authorities and encourages civic responsibility among citizens. Silence only allows the problem to grow worse.

As someone who believes deeply in Ghana’s tourism future, I write this not to shame communities but to awaken national attention. Ghana possesses extraordinary tourism potential, but potential alone is meaningless without preservation. We cannot continue losing some of our most valuable natural assets through neglect and indifference.

If we continue to ignore sanitation along our coastlines, we risk losing the very places that make Ghana unique.

A beach should be a place of healing, beauty, reflection, recreation, and pride—not a symbol of abandonment and failure.

The ocean keeps washing our shores every single day, but who will cleanse our national conscience?

Ghana deserves better.

The Western Region deserves better.

Our beaches deserve better.