INNOVATION January-February 2017

Continental Gold’s Buriticá gold project has attracted

thousands of informal miners to Colombia’s

Antioquia region ( L eft ; P hoto , Continental Gold). Initiatives to educate miners include workshops to train the miners in safer processes ( R ight ; P hoto , CIRDI) and a network of UN- and US- funded training centres for artisanal miners in Central and South America.

visited projects across the Americas, but he confesses that, before accepting his current post as director of Partnerships and Learning at the Canadian International Resources and Development Institute (CIRDI) in July 2016, he didn’t think about artisanal miners. “We all see areas that are a disaster, and we hear stories. But those are just the headlines.” Underneath those images and stories, he says “there are hundreds of millions of people surviving off this livelihood, and we can’t just close it down and brush it off. What are those people going to do?” Conflict occurs where conventional mining projects overlap with artisanal mining areas. This has increased in recent years. The problem is too big for companies to ignore, and interventions are required at every scale—from local and individual engagement to global action. In 2003, Global Affairs Canada invested $24.6 million to create CIRDI. The organisation partners with developing-country governments to support sustainable resource development and, ultimately, reduce poverty. CIRDI has prioritised the transformation of artisanal and small-scale mining through education and training, and has multiple projects underway. A three-stage approach promises the most success for reducing mercury use and pollution, as well as for improving the lot of individual miners and their communities. Education involves meeting the miners and their families in the community, assessing their needs, and providing immediate, shorter-term solutions. Organisation involves longer-term action, including centralising artisanal miners and infrastructure, developing training centres to increase skills and knowledge, educating governments, and building trust between the miners, the private sector and governments. Once everyone is on the same page, the partnerships, information, processes “Education is the entry point both for communities and governments to support organisation, improve social and environmental performance, and increase gold recovery through mercury-free technologies,” says CIRDI Associate Director of International Programs Kirsten Dales. and artisanal industry can be formalised. Education: Critical First Steps

Improving gold recovery through new processes would address miners’ economic needs, but changing behaviour and getting them to adopt new technologies takes time. The miners are used to and comfortable with their time-honoured processes. Burning the amalgam in an open dish is the easiest way they can get gold into their hands quickly, but exposes them, their families, and communities to mercury vapours. Most miners are unaware of the dangers.

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