In over 80 countries worldwide, Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) is the livelihood of millions of people, mainly in rural areas with limited alternative economic prospects. ASGM directly employs approximately 15 million miners which consist of 4-5 million women and children and produces up to 20 per cent of the world’s gold. ASGM is recognized as an opportunity to alleviate poverty and contribute to local, national, and regional development.
But artisanal mining operation often results in land degradation and deforestation, and the gold miners use hazardous mercury to extract the gold from its ores.
Globally, ASGM is the largest source of anthropogenic mercury pollution. In other words, ASGM contributes almost 40 per cent of all mercury that enters our atmosphere as a result of human activity.
Under Minamata Convention on Mercury, reducing mercury use in ASGM is one of the priorities. According to the Convention, countries with more than insignificant ASGM using mercury must develop a National Action Plan (NAP) to outline how and by when they will reduce, and where feasible, eliminate the use of mercury, thereby minimizing human and environmental exposure to the toxic metal.
Monika Stankiewicz, Executive Secretary of the Minamata Convention says: “Implementation of this treaty (the Minamata Convention on Mercury) by parties allows us to envision a transformed global gold market that continues to generate billions of dollars but has no place for unsustainably sourced gold such as with mercury use. Instead, millions of artisanal gold miners have proper working conditions and secure livelihoods in the sector or alternative sectors.”
It is said that 46 countries have started NAP projects with funding from the Global Environment Facility, and 18 have finalized and submitted their NAP documents to the Secretariat of the Minamata Convention.
The strategies outlined by NAP are meant to transform the lives of the artisanal gold miners and their communities by providing them with clean solutions to practice their lives while protecting the health of their families and safeguarding the surrounding ecosystems. If mercury reduction targets are met by 2025 the mercury use in ASGM can be reduced by 37 per cent and 70 per cent by 2030 for these 18 countries.
It is estimated that mercury use in the top ten mercury-intensive ASGM countries accounts for 77 per cent of the global total. Ecuador, among these ten countries, has submitted its NAP to the Secretariat of the Minamata Convention. NAPs for Indonesia, Peru, Bolivia and Brazil are underway.
The Minamata Convention on Mercury is an international treaty designed to protect human health and the environment from anthropogenic emissions and releases of mercury and mercury compounds. The convention was a result of three years of meeting and negotiating, after which the text of the convention was approved by delegates representing close to 140 countries on 19 January 2013 in Geneva and adopted and signed later that year on 10 October 2013 at a diplomatic conference held in Kumamoto, Japan. The convention is named after the Japanese city Minamata.
Aruna Gaitonde, Editor in Chief of the Asian Bureau, Rough & Polished
