Risky jobs, against the use of mercury for small-scale gold mining: Associations fight to make the mining sector safer

ROME – Up to twenty million miners in over eighty countries around the world are engaged in small-scale gold mining. Among these workers, up to five million are women and children. These activities, often unregulated and therefore unsafe, are responsible for 37 percent of global mercury pollution.

The planetGOLD program. led byUnited Nations Environment Agency (UNEP), the program aims to end the toxic trails from the use of mercury in small-scale gold mining. Representatives of Planet Gold they work with governments, the private sector and mining companies around the world, from Guyana to Kenya, to promote safer working environments. Funded by Global Environment Facilitythe project is part of the Minamata Convention, an agreement that aims to abolish the use of mercury forever.

Gold mining. Gold accounts for 20 percent of the global supply and generates about $30 billion a year. Yet it is an informal operation since it is not regulated by rules either locally or internationally. And this is because governments, lacking access to reliable information on the sector, cannot provide technical, financial and administrative support and thus tend to favor large-scale mining activities. Some administrations, for example, are taking steps to make labor standards safer under the Minamata Mercury Convention, but enforcement of the rules is not always consistent, especially in rural areas and developing countries.

The example of Kenya. In Kenya planetGOLD counted more than 250,000 very young miners employed in artisanal gold mining along the Lake Victoria basin in the southwest of the country. Everyone works without the mining equipment needed for safety because they can’t access finance to buy it. “I’ve been here for a year, even if it’s not my ideal job,” Emmanuel Nyaga, a 21-year-old miner, told UNEP. Nyaga, like many of his colleagues, receives wages every two weeks and is forced to find alternative work on most days of the rainy season, which typically lasts six months.

Share knowledge. To counter the toxic trail of small-scale gold mining, planetGOLD is facilitating the sharing of technical knowledge between artisanal gold mines and governments. It is also supporting new initiatives to reduce dependence on mercury. In an initial phase, it launched projects to improve access to finance in nine countries, including Kenya, the Philippines and Indonesia. The goal is to reduce mercury use by about 369 tonnes in small-scale mines and train thousands of miners on safer working practices.

The future. The project is set to expand to 15 additional countries and leverage more than $342 million in funding during its second phase in 2023. The additional goal is to reduce mercury use by another 143 tons, remediate 1.2 million hectares of land, mitigate around 400,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, and put small-scale gold work into a regulatory framework so miners can make more money. If all this is done, the environment and living conditions will become safer for over 370,000 people over the next six years. In August 2022 planetGOLD officially opened a mercury-free gold processing facility in Burkina Faso.