Accumulation by dispossession: The timber ‘salvage’ project on Ghana's Volta Lake

•Consent processes for the underwater timber ‘salvage’ project on Ghana's Volta Lake were elitist in nature.•The extraction of timber from the lake has restricted fishers’ access to the lake for the pursuit of their livelihoods.•Landowners are challenging ownership of the timber that is being extracted from the lake.•The state and extractive companies accumulate profit at the expense of fishers and landowners.•The timber ‘salvage’ project on the Volta Lake is yet another vehicle of ‘accumulation by dispossession’. In this paper, we analyse how processes of accumulation by dispossession take place and are exacerbated on Ghana's Volta Lake, the largest artificial lake in the world. Drawing on the case of an underwater timber ‘salvage’ project on the lake, we argue that contrary to dominant discourses in policy circles that the project would boost the local economy, enhance safer lake transport, and help to mitigate climate change, the project led to the commodification of the lake thereby negatively affecting fishers’ livelihoods. Following David Harvey, we argue that the underwater timber ‘salvage’ project on the Volta Lake is just another vehicle of ‘accumulation by dispossession’. The study shows that the state and extractive company accumulate profit at the expense of fishers whose livelihoods have been curtailed following restrictions in access to the lake and landowners who are challenging ownership of the timber being extracted from the lake. Global connections are made, and the inequalities and injustice enacted through the execution of the project are amplified.