Small-Scale Challenges, Large-Scale Opportunities

If you were to choose a single development activity that cuts across all the major challenges presented by the Millennium Development Goals, what would that activity be?

All of the above is perhaps a brave and tempting guess. But if you want to cut more precise, then your answer will probably be d). Simply put it, the social and economic characteristics of small-scale mining fully reflect the challenges of the MDGs, including: health, environment, gender, education, child labor, and poverty eradication.

Take, for instance, gender and child labor. As many as 650,000 women in 12 of the world’s poorest countries are engaged in artisanal mining. And between 1 and 1.5 million children, evenly split between boys and girls, are also involved in this activity.

Or take health issues. Small-scale mining communities are highly vulnerable to communicable diseases including malaria, tuberculosis, influenza, cholera, yellow fever, sexually transmitted diseases, and HIV/AIDS.

Or just poverty related to lack of job opportunities. Artisanal and small-scale mining is practiced in about 50 countries by people who live in the poorest and most remote rural areas, with few employment alternatives.

You could also take misuse of mercury in gold extraction, for instance, which has very damaging consequences not only to the environment and biodiversity but also to the health of artisanal miners and their families.

Or take the potential conflict over lack of basic rights. Large scale mining, for instance, often comes to areas of traditional artisanal and small-scale mining, which creates potential conflicts around issues of ownership rights and alternative livelihoods.

And we could go on and on, but the bottom line is that worldwide at least 20 million people engage in artisanal and small-scale mining, also known as ASM, and a further 100 million people depend on it for their livelihood. And these numbers are simply growing in line with higher prices and demand for minerals both in OECD countries and emerging economies such as China and India.

“If appropriately managed the ASM sector can make a positive and considerable contribution to growth and poverty reduction within the communities and countries where small-scale mining is a significant activity,” explains Gotthard Walser, a lead mining specialist at the World Bank/IFC Oil, Gas, Mining and Chemicals department. “CASM’s goal is to ensure this happens.”

Walser is the manager of the World Bank-led and multi-donor global initiative called Communities and Small-Scale Mining, also known as CASM. Through a holistic approach to small-scale mining CASM aims to transform this activity from a source of conflict and poverty into a catalyst for economic growth and sustainable development.

To achieve this goal, CASM’s strategy is based on four pillars: better governance and formalization of the sector; initiatives to enhance environmental and technical performance and socio-economic development; network building for more effective partnerships; and knowledge development and best practice sharing.

Annual Conference

The challenges facing artisanal miners are indeed huge, and each year CASM takes stock of progress achieved and plans the way forward. This year, the 7th Annual CASM Conference took place in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, from 7th to 12th September. The Conference’s main focus theme was on “Effective Partnership for Sustainable ASM”. Mongolia is preparing a law to deal with artisanal and small-scale mining, so the conference was well-timed and relevant for the on-going discussions on artisanal mining in the country.

At the conference, which was co-organized by the Mongolian government, the World Bank’s CASM, DFID and other partners, more than 300 hundred practitioners participated in various sessions ranging from formalization of artisanal miners to gender issues in small-scale mining, and from the role of fair trade in artisanal mining to the relationship between small-scale and large-scale mining companies. Participating at the conference, there were also several dozens of artisanal and small-scale miners, both local and from other parts of the world.

Miners’ voices

One of those small-scale miners who has benefited from the support of CASM is Manuel Reinoso who, amongst thousands of other Peruvian artisanal and small-scale miners, has experienced first-hand the benefits of the formalization of the artisanal and small-scale mining sector in Peru.

“Since the law that legally recognizes the artisanal mining sector was approved in 2002, we have had several advantages including access to exploitation contracts, property and mining concessions,” says Reinoso during a conversation in Ulaanbaatar.

Reinoso explains that only in the southern region of Peru where he is based, 36 associations or companies have been established to benefit around 4,000 artisanal miners. Today, more than 50 per cent of artisanal miners in Peru have already joined the formal economy.

Felix Hruschka, a mining engineer from Austria who was also participating at the CASM conference, was instrumental in developing the legal framework for artisanal and small-scale miners in Peru.

Hruschka explains that both legalizing artisanal miners and promoting the right conditions for their development, so that they can contribute to the formal economy, is today best practice that more countries in Latin America and other regions of the world should embrace.

“The law should promote, not forbid, it should give incentives,” says Hruschka. “When artisanal miners get formalized, it’s a win-win for the government, miners, large or small, and society as a whole.”

This Austrian also likes to remind us all that keeping an open approach to development issues, together with doses of creativity and flexibility is key to have some success. He recalls the time when the international cooperation tried to introduce the use of individual mercury retorts amongst artisanal miners, but failed because these retorts were ferociously resisted. Then, after some thinking, a different approach was used which was more widely accepted: community retorts to recover mercury, run and operated by artisanal miners themselves.

“We stopped to try to change the mindset of miners to fit the technology, but instead we adapted the technology to fit the miners’ mindset,” explained Hruschka.

“It is important to try to improve what they (miners) do, but don’t try to bring something completely new,” he advises. “If something works, it spreads by itself; if it doesn’t spread, then the approach is wrong.”

Likewise, CASM is hoping to spread the message that tackling the issues faced by artisanal and small-scale miners will be a concrete and positive step to achieve the MDGs.