INNOVATION January-February 2017

fea t ure s

Mercury Rising By Improving the Economics of Artisanal Mining in Developing Countries, BC Engineers and Geoscientists Work Towards Reducing a Global Pollution Problem

Kylie Williams

Many Canadian engineers and geoscientists who visit projects in developing countries see evidence of artisanal mining—people panning barefoot in a muddy stream, a hillside pockmarked with holes and tunnels, or rudimentary processing plants belching toxic fumes into the air. These isolated sightings underrepresent the global scale of the problem. More than 30 million people worldwide are artisanal miners. Half are artisanal gold miners, responsible for extracting up to 15 percent of the world’s gold supply, while others mine tin, tantalum, tungsten, coal, diamonds, coloured gemstones, and more than 20 other minerals.

“Virtually all the developing countries have artisanal miners,” says Dr. Marcello Veiga, P.Eng., a metallurgical engineer and environmental geochemist at the University of British Columbia’s Norman B. Keevil Institute of Mining Engineering. Veiga is recognised globally for his work with artisanal miners through the World Bank and UN. According to his data, artisanal miners work in more than 70 countries, mainly resource-rich developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The miners themselves are as varied as the ore deposits they exploit, but poverty is the common goad that drives them to artisanal mining.

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J AN UA R Y/ F E B R UA R Y 2 017

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