Resources

The Amazon is under assault from organised crime. Exploiting weak governance, illegal groups are pushing deep into protected jungle areas as they seek out new routes for drug trafficking and sites to extract gold and critical minerals. The Portuguese and Spanish versions can be found here.

This paper highlights the role that OECD-led initiatives to support ASM formalisation in conflict zones can play to support disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration programmes.

Formalization—the process of integrating ASGM into the formal economy, society, and regulatory system—is a critical step toward helping address environmental and social challenges in the artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) sector and and toward achieving the sector’s development potential. This report assesses the formalization-related interventions of the planetGOLD Kenya project. 

This report was developed in response to decision MC-4/4 by the Conference of the Parties to the Minamata Convention on Mercury, at its fourth meeting, where it requested the Secretariat “to compile views on the needs and priorities of indigenous peoples and local communities with regard to the use of mercury in artisanal and small-scale gold mining”.

The authors of this report looked at the politics of FPIC in Latin America, analyzing how the power and interests of the key players–across governments, companies and indigenous peoples–can determine the fate of FPIC and consultation processes in practice. This research focused on Brazil, Colombia, and Peru, and provides practical options to address key political challenges in hopes of improving outcomes for indigenous and tribal peoples. 

This document is also available in Spanish and Portuguese.

El estudio analiza la situación de los hombres y las mujeres que trabajan en la Minería Artesanal y de Pequeña Escala (MAPE) de oro en el Perú, bajo tres perfiles: hombres y mujeres en la MAPE -socios/as, cargos directivos, consultores/as, trabajadores/as dentro de la operación minera- y mujeres seleccionadoras de mineral -más conocidas como “pallaqueras”.

Highlighted in this case study are results of a pilot initiative by the Colombia Mining Dialogue Group (GDIAM) initiated in January 2022 to provide banking services to miners. The project aimed to improve interactions between the mining and financial sectors. This case study is part of a larger body of work documenting financial access interventions for the ASGM sector. 

While there is data around concentrations of metals in surface waters near ASGM activities,  little is known about concentrations of metals in the water-ore-mercury slurry with which workers have extensive dermal contact. The authors of this publication seek to characterize those concentrations.