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Pollution, obligation, and care: perspectives from artisanal and small-scale gold mining and farming in rural Colombia
In the municipality of Andes, agriculture rules the steep surface of la tierra , while informal miners pick and blast subterranean tunnels to make a living from gold. While a few residents perceived a dichotomy between farming and mining, our ethnographic research revealed that livelihood blending was far more common as people adapted to environmental changes brought by climate change. People inhabit and make a living out of the relations between coffee farms and mines, blurring common sense divisions between the two livelihoods. We argue that the verticality of this tropical region facilitates the co-existence of mining and farming, even as climate change drives transformations in the sociotechnical labor practices, environmental perceptions, and livelihood decision making that animate coexistence. Our research emphasizes that mining, too, can be generative of life worlds that encompass agriculture—a perspective that is missed in the blunt application of extractivism as an analytic tool.
This research addresses the challenge of comprehensively analyzing textual data, emphasizing the prevalence of harmful language, sentiment expression, and thematic content. The research problem centers around interpreting large datasets, prompting a multifaceted methodology. Drawing upon the Cross-Industry Standard Process for Data Mining (CRISP-DM), the study follows a systematic approach involving six key phases: Business Understanding, Data Understanding, Data Preparation, Modeling, Evaluation, and Deployment. Toxicity analysis reveals an average toxicity level ranging from 0.00404 to 0.03878 and maximum values up to 0.66151, highlighting varying degrees of harmful language prevalence. Sentiment analysis identifies that 60% of sentiments expressed are positive, 30% are neutral, and 10% are negative, elucidating prevailing attitudes. Topic modeling extracts twelve distinct themes, enriching the interpretive depth of the dataset. Performance evaluation metrics for SVM using SMOTE indicate an accuracy of 91.41% +/-1.66%, with 832 true negatives and 689 true positives, affirming the model's reliability. Based on these findings, it is recommended that stakeholders implement robust content moderation strategies to mitigate the dissemination of harmful language, foster a safer online environment, and leverage sentiment and topic analysis insights for informed decision-making. This interdisciplinary approach enhances data analysis capabilities, providing actionable insights crucial for addressing societal challenges and advancing scholarly discourse.
Front-end stakeholder needs analysis is increasingly recognized as an essential component of sustainable engineering projects, yet most engineering curricula only cover this topic superficially. Fields like humanitarian engineering have long recognized the importance of stakeholder needs analysis for the success of development interventions, and researchers have developed best practice frameworks for engaging stakeholders that can be applied to systems engineering. These frameworks rely on established social science techniques, such as ethnography and inductive reasoning, and humanitarian engineering principles, such as contextual listening and sociotechnical thinking, to facilitate comprehensive needs assessments. While conventional ethnographies are often incompatible with engineering projects' timelines and expertise, anthropologists have developed methodologies to overcome these limitations, such as Rapid Assessment Procedure. While widely applied in the public health sector, Rapid Assessment Procedure has been seldom integrated with engineering projects. Rapid Assessment Procedure, combined with humanitarian engineering principles, can help researchers quickly gain a nuanced understanding of relevant aspects of complex sociotechnical systems. This paper seeks to introduce systems engineers to Humanitarian Engineering - Rapid Assessment Procedure as a concrete technique for conducting comprehensive front-end stakeholder needs analysis. A case study is presented on the teaching and implementation of Humanitarian Engineering - Rapid Assessment Procedure in a workshop with a group of undergraduate engineering students. We sought to analyze students' perceptions of and learning outcomes from the workshop. Student engagement and learning exceeded expectations, positioning Humanitarian Engineering - Rapid Assessment Procedure as a potentially valuable tool for systems engineers to analyze stakeholder needs to inform system design.
Despite being a critical environmental problem, soil pollution is not usually considered as a relevant issue by the general public. This disinterest derives from traditional procedures to assess soil pollution that are quite complex and costly, not considering any form of citizen involvement. Seeking to challenge this situation, the project “Nuestros Suelos” (Our Soil) aimed at designing and testing a low-cost participative soil pollution assessment toolkit. The final prototype included several participative modules, going from an assessment of the history of local soils to measuring heavy metals such as Arsenic and Copper. Tested with low-income communities in northern Chile, the toolkit was able not only to produce multiple kinds of data but also a public that started to understand and care about the issue.
This article raises the limitations and risks of the use of quantification to attribute responsibilities for mass crimes in transitional justice. I question the inconsistencies in the official registry of forced displacement in Colombia with respect to the distribution of responsibilities of the armed actors, taking into account the historical trajectory of the armed conflict and the differences with social records, for which I propose to investigate the conditions under which the registration technology operates and how these affect the production of figures that circulate in the public sphere with claims of truth. I propose that the production of testimonial evidence on which the official registry is based changes according to state policies and the dynamics of the armed conflict, highlighting the importance of historically and contextually situating the official registry and how the armed conflict not only leaves victims but also produces its own representations and opacities through the story told by the official registry.
Artisanal small-scale gold mining (ASGM) poses threats to biodiversity and to the health and well-being of human communities. However, ASGM also economically supports several populations from lower social-economic backgrounds, especially in the Global South. In Madre de Dios (MDD), Peru, ASGM is the most significant economic activity, involving several stakeholders form different levels of governance. To protect this area’s forests and aquatic systems from further degradation, it is necessary to understand the socio-economic background and the impediments to mining formalization, as well as the local perceptions and willingness to engage in conservation. In this study, we aimed to establish the drivers of and barriers to participation in environmental conservation among communities in MDD, which economically rely on ASGM. Using a mixed method approach, we surveyed 85 households in six communities in the MDD gold corridor. Half of participants were cognizant of the effects of ASGM and concerned about deforestation and local decreases in fish and wildlife abundance, declaring willingness to take part in environmental conservation. Native participants in particular expressed concern about land degradation and the action of immigrants. However, several participants reported feeling alienated by government institutions and raised doubts about the intentions of non-governmental conservation organizations, and the purpose of protected areas. Participants in general felt that ASGM-related policies were not realistic and bureaucratic barriers were raised to prevent formalization. Our findings suggest that current policies and communication strategies may hinder efforts to transform relatively prevalent pro-environmental attitudes into matching behaviors, including participation in conservation initiatives. To achieve this goal, more efficient communication and more active involvement of local stakeholders in mining governance and conservation planning are necessary.
Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) utilizes mercury (Hg) for the extraction of gold (Au) and is responsible for the largest anthropogenic source of emissions and releases of Hg to the environment. Previous estimates of Hg use in ASGM have varied widely. In this effort, Hg losses in ASGM were derived from the difference between estimates of total Au production and the production reported by conventional gold mining. On the basis of this result, the average ratio of Hg lost to Au produced in ASGM was estimated to be 1.96 in Africa, 4.63 in Latin America, and 1.23 in Asia. The difference among regions can be attributed to the amalgamation procedure used by the miners, in which whole-ore amalgamation is predominant in Latin America and Asia. The obtained estimated ratio of Hg lost :Au produced suggested the possibility to detect either Au or Hg smuggling from one country to another. On the other hand, the importance of considering cyanidation in ASGM was also suggested.
Graphical Abstract
Some of the poorest people in the world's poorest countries eke out a living in artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM). Equipped with primitive tools like picks, shovels, buckets, and gold pans, they work mining valuable resources, like gold, diamonds, tin, lithium, rare earth elements, tantalum, and cobalt, and any other usable commodity, for example, sand, coal, or mica. The mining and refining processes are labor intensive and associated with a variety of health problems due to accidents, overheating, overexertion, dust inhalation, exposure to toxic chemicals and gases, violence, and illicit and prescription drug and alcohol addiction. Evident disadvantages with ASM are counterbalanced by the immense economic benefits. For many, the true scope and scale of ASM activities are unappreciated, along with the unknown health and societal impacts. Here, we set out to elucidate the scope of ASM beyond the recovery of familiar commodities, such as gold and diamonds. We adopt a holistic perspective toward health impacts of ASM, which includes unique occupational, environmental, and human/social drivers. A particular focus is poverty as a health risk with artisanal miners. They are commonly poverty-stricken people in poor countries, ensnared by a variety of poverty traps, which take a toll on the health and well-being of individuals and communities. ASM sometimes provides an opportunity to diversify income in the face of a decline in subsistence agriculture. However, ASM often trades one kind of generational poverty for another, coming along with serious health risks and turmoil associated with work in an informal "cash-rich" business.
With the aim of protecting human life and the environment, the Minamata Convention seeks to reduce and monitor mercury (Hg) concentrations in the environment. Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining (ASGM) has been identified as the most important anthropogenic source of Hg at a global scale and an important route of human exposure to Hg. In this context, this study assessed total Hg (THg) in blood, urine and hair, and methylmercury (MeHg) in human hair samples from 238 participants with occupational exposure to Hg in the most relevant ASGM communities of Colombia. Mercury concentrations in different biological matrices were related to several variables of interest such as age, gender, body mass index, fish consumption, exposure time, and specific occupational activities, such as amalgamation and amalgam burning. The median values of THg in blood (3.70 µg/L), urine (4.00 µg/L) and hair (1.37 mg/kg), and hair MeHg (1.47 mg/kg) for all participants were below permissible concentrations set by WHO. However, about 40% of the miners showed Hg concentrations in blood, urine and/or hair above the WHO thresholds. In all the biological matrices studied, miners burning amalgams showed significantly higher concentrations than miners who did not burn amalgams, with values 7-, 7-, and 8-fold higher in blood, urine and hair, respectively. A multiple linear regression model revealed that burning amalgam and fish consumption were significant predictors of Hg exposure in miners. Miners from Guainía had the highest concentrations in urine and hair, most likely due to the high manipulation and burning of amalgam, and a high fish consumption. In contrast, miners from Caldas showed the lowest Hg concentrations in all the biomarkers because they do not manipulate or burn amalgam, as well as reporting the lowest fish consumption. Our study also highlighted that gold miners exposure to Hg depends on their work practices. Therefore, the implementation of a health education programme on gold mining strategies is required, especially in Guaina, Vaupés, Córdoba, and Antioquia departments.
Several artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) sites in Colombia were located and sampled. At each ASGM site, tailings samples were collected and analyzed. Establishing rapport with mining stakeholders and analyzing the samples allowed our team to draw conclusions about the inefficiency of mercury-use in gold extraction and the superior efficiency of centrifugal and gravimetric methods for reprocessing the mining residues produced by artisanal gold miners.
Trace element pollution in rivers by anthropogenic activities is an increasing problem worldwide. In this study, the contamination and ecological risk by several trace elements were evaluated along a 100-km stretch of the San Jorge River in Colombia, impacted by different mining activities. The increase of average concentration levels and range of trace elements in sediments (in μg/g) was as follows: Cu 6656 (454–69,702) > Cd 1159 (0.061–16,227) > Zn 1064 (102–13,483) > Ni 105 (31–686) > Pb 7.2 (5.1–11.7) > As 1.8 (1.0–3.2) > Hg 0.31 (0.12–1.37). Results showed that surface sediments could be classified as very high ecological risk index (RI > 600), associated with high contamination of Hg, Cd, and Cu, in stations close mining activities. Values for pollution load index indicate an environmental deterioration (PLI > 1), and sediment quality guidelines (SQGs) suggested that Cu, Ni, Zn, and Hg caused adverse biological effects. We further used pollution indices such as contamination factor (CF), enrichment factor (EF), and geoaccumulation index (Igeo) to assess the extent of contamination. According to these indices, discharges of hazardous chemicals over many years have resulted in a high degree of pollution for Cu, Pb, and Cd, with critical values in stations receiving wastes from mining activities. Multivariate statistical analysis suggested that Hg, Cd, Cu, and Zn derived from gold and coal mining, Ni and As were related from the mining of ferronickel and coal, respectively, whereas the high Pb load was attributed to diffuse source of pollution. In sum, our study provided the first detailed database on metal concentration and ecological risks to organisms in sediments of the San Jorge River Basin, and the current results also suggested future research for public health action.
The Colombian government and large-scale mining companies accuse small-scale gold miners of lacking a sense of the future, thereby harming the future of Colombia. In this article, I argue that marginalized people who extract gold with small-scale techniques create an alternative sense of future by engaging with the leftovers of their gold mining practices. This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork with people who struggle to make a living in the wake of large-scale mining interventions in the town of Marmato. Small-scale mining constantly creates simple by-products—gases, rubble, and mud—that look like waste. Small-scale miners engage with such substances as a way to make sense of their lives and the future. Making the relationships between humans and geological substances, waste and technology visible elucidates alternative forms of life that “get in the way” of a multinational mining company, the national government, local mafias, and financial markets hungry for gold in times of crisis. By analyzing people’s engagement with leftovers, I offer an understanding of resilience and survival in the margins of capitalist cycles of violence. Resumen El gobierno de Colombia y las compañías mineras a gran escala ven la minería a pequeña escala como una práctica sin futuro y dañina para el país. En este artículo argumento que las personas marginalizadas que extraen oro a pequeña escala crean sentidos de futuro alternativos al entrar en relación con las sobras de sus propias prácticas mineras. El artículo está basado en trabajo de campo etnográfico en el pueblo de Marmato, con personas que luchan por sobrevivir ante la inminencia de la ejecución de un proyecto de minería a gran escala en la montaña donde se localiza el pueblo. La minería a pequeña escala crea subproductos de manera permanente—colas, sobrantes y restos—que parecen basura. No obstante, los mineros a pequeña escala se involucran con estas sustancias como una forma de hacer sentido sobre sus propias vidas y futuros. Hacer visible la relación entre humanos y sustancias geológicas, desechos y tecnología hace posible apreciar formas alternativas de vida que “se ponen en el camino” de una multinacional minera, el gobierno nacional, mafias locales y los mercados financieros que buscan oro en tiempos de crisis. Al analizar la relación de las personas con gases, escombros, rocas, y barro, aporto una posibilidad de entender la resiliencia y subsistencia en los márgenes del capitalismo y sus ciclos de violencia.
Abstract Over a million people in Peru may be exposed to lead (Pb) due to past or present mining‐related activities; however, neither soil Pb nor blood Pb are routinely monitored throughout the country. Because little is known about Pb contamination in smaller mining‐impacted towns, soil Pb was mapped in four such towns with a portable X‐ray fluorescence analyzer in 2015. The roadside mapping delineated hotspots of highly contaminated soil (1,000–6,000 mg/kg Pb) in two of the towns. The local health department, provided with a LeadCare II analyzer, then measured blood‐Pb levels >5 in 65% and >10 μg/dL in 15% of children (n = 200) up to 6 years of age in these same four communities. There were no clear relations between child blood‐Pb levels and Pb levels in soil samples collected inside (n = 50) or outside the home (n = 50). Increased child blood Pb was associated with decreased level of cleanliness of parent clothing (n = 136) and shoes (n = 138), linking a possible behavioral factor for transferring contaminated soil and dust to children. In order to explore individual exposure and variations in soil Pb, 10 parents of children with blood Pb >10 μg/dL and 10 parents of children with blood Pb
Throughout Bolivia, collectives of small-scale miners known as 'mining cooperatives' have developed a reputation for cutthroat extractive practices that were shaped by neoliberal restructuring starting in the 1980s. Charting a history that starts at the turn of the twentieth century, this paper argues that cooperative mining in the tin belt of Northern Potosí has emerged as a vertical instantiation of smallholder farming practices that migrated, along with miners themselves, from surrounding indigenous ayllus. In the subterranean, however, these practices interacted with the legacies of tin mining, which was characterized by labor hierarchies that corresponded with vertical variation in ore quality. New social striations crystallized as smallholder farming customs settled into the subterranean structure, creating sharp social differentiation across these subsoil 'family farms.' The class composition of mining cooperatives at the national level has been shaped by these entangled underground histories, with implications for the country's economic and environmental futures.
Anomalously cold conditions in the tropical Pacific, related to a strong La Niña event, affected numerous countries in 2010. Several areas in Colombia were severely impacted, including agricultural fields in La Mojana floodplain that were completely flooded for almost two years. This study assesses the effects of flooding on the levels, spatial distribution and sources of trace metals in 222 agricultural topsoils of this floodplain. Our results show that mean concentrations of Cu 48.4 mg/kg (11–103 mg/kg), Zn 79.2 mg/kg (6–207 mg/kg), Ni 58.1 mg/kg (17–101 mg/kg), Pb 3.2 mg/kg (0.13–14 mg/kg), Cd 0.56 mg/kg (0.05–1.4 mg/kg), Mn 411 mg/kg (55–1277 mg/kg), and Hg 0.10 mg/kg (0.05–0.22 mg/kg) were higher than the world's normal averages. Topsoils revealed different degrees of pollution depending on the metal, of which Pb was the most problematic element, with 82% of the soil samples classified as heavily contaminated. Principal component analysis suggests that soil contamination was primarily derived from poor agricultural practices and river overflows loaded with metals from upstream mining. Our results show that this extreme flood event increased the bioavailability of metals (especially Pb) that could be taken up by crops in most (66%) of the agricultural soils, posing a potential threat to human health.
In November 2016, the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) signed a peace agreement to end a 52-year war. In the context of the peace deal implementation, I ethnographically traced entanglements of biomedicine, public health and the armed conflict across shifting temporalities and realities of war and peace. Through an exploration of past, present and future (dis)entanglements of war and leishmaniasis – a vector-borne disease known by many in Colombia as “the subversive disease” or the “guerrilla disease” – this article traces a discourse that frames health problems, like leishmaniasis, only as scientific or technological challenges. Drawing on STS critiques of future-oriented timelines in technoscience and the concept of pharmaceuticalization, I argue that the expectations embedded in technoscientific innovation problematically limit the possibilities of disentangling leishmaniasis and war in post-conflict Colombia. In contrast, ethnographically exploring how health policies and biomedicine have nurtured violence and exclusion helps us destabilize the warfare-loaded meaning and experience of leishmaniasis. This approach enables us to move beyond imaginaries of technoscientific peacemaking, which I define as the excessive trust endowed to technoscience to (re)build a peaceful future, especially when we are faced with failures in understanding the involvement of technoscience in the production and perpetuation of violence.
Through the artisanal and small-scale gold mining sector, Colombia has become the world’s leading mercury polluter per capita. At the same time, the country’s Pacific coast is one of the most biodiverse area on earth. This article aims to examine the institutions involved in the attempts to eliminate the use of mercury in artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) in the district of Chocó, Colombia, using a novel policy assessment method, that examines the behaviour of actors across the social system. To this end, and taking Law 1658 (the mercury law) as our basis, we used legal instruments to consult with, and question, the centralized and semi-centralized state organizations. We also included the relevant decentralized organizations and the main actor of the alluvial ASM of gold and platinum in our research, through interviews and observation. Conceptualizing institutions as social systems of explicit and tacit rules, our findings provide evidence of stagnation in the state organizations, and of the tendency to underestimate the importance of science, technology, and innovation in mercury elimination. Indeed, the current situation, in which tacit rules are perpetuated and reproduced, is a consequence of the state’s inefficiency, allowing the continuation of illegal and underground economic activities by informal organizations and civil society. The article also makes some suggestions for a more positive future direction for Colombia in the context of the ratification of the Minamata Convention on Mercury and progress towards the formalization of the ASM sector.
La Junta de Acción Comunal es un organismo de participación comunitaria que persiste en Colombia desde la segunda mitad del siglo xx en los pequeños territorios urbanos y rurales como son los barrios y las veredas. Su importancia radica en que es reconocido como el primer interlocutor del Estado con la ciudadanía en los territorios donde habita. Algunos estudios han identificado que estas organizaciones han funcionado sobre todo para resolver necesidades básicas de la población como los servicios públicos domiciliarios y equipamiento social en zonas que carecen de ellos, pero no se conoce su funcionamiento en barrios urbanos que ya cuentan con la infraestructura básica y cuyos residentes tienen un nivel medio o alto de capacidad adquisitiva y están conectados con circuitos económicos de cultura globalizada. Este artículo tiene como objetivo comprender los factores poblacionales y territoriales, organizativos e institucionales que restringen la participación comunitaria de los habitantes de La Macarena, barrio bohemio de Bogotá, en la Junta de Acción Comunal. A través de una triangulación entre información recopilada con técnicas de investigación cuantitativa y cualitativa en un ejercicio de investigación social aplicada, se encontró que la relación entre el consumo cultural privatizado, el estilo de vida cada vez más individualizado de los habitantes del barrio, y las dinámicas urbanas de la ciudad latinoamericana, junto con la creciente deslegitimación de las organizaciones de acción comunal en el país y, en general, del ejercicio de la política tradicional, explican la reducida participación en organizaciones de acción colectiva local de ciudadanos de clase media.
Mercury-dependent artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) is the largest source of mercury pollution on Earth. In this practice, elemental mercury is used to extract gold from ore as an amalgam. The amalgam is typically isolated by hand and then heated—often with a torch or over a stove—to distill the mercury and isolate the gold. Mercury emissions from tailings and vaporised mercury exceed 1000 tonnes each year from ASGM. The health effects on the miners are dire, with inhaled mercury leading to neurological damage and other health issues. The communities near these mines are also affected due to mercury contamination of water and soil and subsequent accumulation in food staples such as fish. The risks to children are also substantial, with mercury emissions from ASGM resulting in both physical and mental disabilities and compromised development. Between 10 and 19 million people use mercury to mine for gold in more than 70 countries, making mercury pollution from ASGM a global issue. With the Minamata Convention on Mercury entering force this year, there is political motivation to help overcome the problem of mercury in ASGM. In this effort, chemists can play a central role. Here, the problem of mercury in ASGM is reviewed with a discussion on how the chemistry community can contribute solutions. Introducing portable and low-cost mercury sensors, inexpensive and scalable remediation technologies, novel methods to prevent mercury uptake in fish and food crops, and efficient and easy-to-use mercury-free mining techniques are all ways in which the chemistry community can help. To meet these challenges, it is critical that new technologies or techniques are low-cost and adaptable to the remote and under-resourced areas in which ASGM is most common. The problem of mercury pollution in ASGM is inherently a chemistry problem. We therefore encourage the chemistry community to consider and address this issue that affects the health of millions of people.
Introduction
Artisanal gold mining is an activity ensuring the survival of about 700,000 families in Burkina Faso with a considerable contribution to the national economy. Techniques and chemicals used in the operation, have adverse impacts on health and the environment. Our study aims to evaluate the perceptions and knowledge of these different impacts among artisanal gold miners.
Methods
A cross-sectional survey was conducted in artisanal gold mines Bouda and Nagsene in the region of the North of Burkina Faso. Two hundred miners over 18 years of age were interviewed.
Results
All the participants have recognized that gold mining has health impacts and 88.5% felt these impacts as important with a significantly higher proportion among those with more than 3 years' seniority (p = 0.001). The environmental impacts were perceived as important by 64.5% of miners, with a significant difference according to the position (p = 0.004). Sixty percent (60%) of respondents could identify at least 3 of the 5 health impacts of gold mining listed and 49.5% acknowledged at least 3 impacts on the environment. The diggers had significantly more knowledge about the symptoms (p < 0.001).
Conclusion
Study highlights the lack of knowledge of the Stampeders on the health and environmental impacts of artisanal gold mining. Findings might be used to develop more effective awareness campaigns in the future. Communication with diggers must focus on the risk perception because it appears that raising risk perceptions from low to high would have a major effect on behavior.
Gestionar efectivamente las organizaciones, no importa su naturaleza, es una exigencia. Solo a través de una buena gestión se logra su supervivencia y seguir satisfaciendo las demandas de sus grupos de interés. Este artículo da cuenta del estado de la gestión en las juntas de acción comunal y su relación con el entorno, en especial con la comunidad que representan. La metodología se aborda desde un estudio descriptivo con diseño de campo no experimental; la muestra objeto de estudio es de 15 juntas de acción comunal, ubicadas en la localidad suroriente de la ciudad de Barranquilla; se diseñó cuestionario y entrevista dirigida a directivos y miembros de las organizaciones. Las evidencias muestran que las juntas de acción comunal tienen deficiencias en la gestión de lo interno y de lo externo, lo cual limita la participación ciudadana y el desarrollo de las comunidades. Se resalta la necesidad de reflexionar sobre la gestión y las competencias de los directivos y miembros de estas organizaciones para impactar de manera real en el desarrollo local.
An illustrative example of street theatre used in international development as an awareness-building tool is Nakai, a drama produced by the United Nation's Industrial Development Organization's Global Mercury Project (GMP) in Zimbabwe to increase knowledge of the hazards of mercury use amongst artisanal gold miners in the Kadoma-Chakari region, Zimbabwe. Nakai performed to almost 9000 people, but its influence on behavioral change in the GMP project area could not be studied due to the extremely unstable political situation at the time in Zimbabwe. Nakai evolved as a non-participatory didactic drama with the belief that a transportable equipment-demonstration school would serve as a more effective platform for participation and empowerment. About 700 miners were trained in these demonstration units and learned how to process gold more efficiently and reduce mercury losses when the whole ore is amalgamated and when the amalgams are burned in open air. Indicators of success were not very evident since the repression of the police on miners and theatre players limited sound assessment of the awareness initiatives. The system of mineral processing centers in the region inhibits behavioral change because the centers' owners reap benefits from recovering gold from tailings using sophisticated techniques such as cyanidation, while rudimentary mercury amalgamation techniques are reserved for the artisanal miners. In practice, national and local elites can easily consolidate power and direct project benefits to themselves, reducing the possibilities empowering the miners.
In Colombia, emerald traders often buy and sell their stones using ambiguities and contradictions, rather than certainties and agreements. In this way, they rescue the impossibility of the connection between emeralds and money so that the connection is both possible and impossible. Through an ethnographic analysis of these exchanges, in this article, I suggest that ambiguities and contradictions are, rather than failures in the emeralds‐money connection, sources for imagining and constructing novel connections. Framed in the context of Colombia's recent mining formalization, these emerald practices provide a glimpse of politics that seize the failures of standards, rather than seeking to correct them.
El crecimiento de la ciudad en el siglo xx en América Latina, supone una serie de retos para los pobladores urbanos y el cuestionamiento sobre sus formas de acción política y reivindicativa frente a problemas relacionados con necesidades primarias como la vivienda y el acceso a los servicios públicos. En Medellín, se crearon los Centros Cívicos en 1938, figura política barrial que tuvo una amplia cobertura e influjo en los pobladores y en las relaciones con las autoridades municipales; sin embargo, la aparición de las Juntas de Acción Comunal (JAC) en 1959, bajo preceptos internacionales y del Frente Nacional, instaura la confrontación de liderazgo en algunas zonas de la ciudad y reestructura la forma de comunicación entre la sociedad civil y el Estado. Bajo los enfoques de la historia social se describe el difícil trance de Centros Cívicos a Juntas de Acción Comunal, las posiciones de las autoridades, el discurso procomunitario, su impacto en los barrios y su importancia en la configuración de la ciudad.
Pollution remediation decisions in developing communities are often made with limited technical data and stakeholder engagement. Local knowledge of contamination is oftentimes neglected, resulting in efforts that fail to align with community objectives. In this work, we propose a new approach for incorporating local knowledge on contamination into remediation efforts, resulting in a community-informed conceptual site model framework for pollution remediation. This framework uses qualitative and quantitative social science methods to develop a holistic view of contamination as defined by the community, pairing social knowledge with existing technical information about a site. An example of the application of this framework is provided from a field study conducted in a mercury-contaminated artisanal and small-scale gold mining community in Andes, Colombia. We conducted qualitative unstructured and semi-structured interviews and surveys to elicit local knowledge on mercury contamination. We combined this stakeholder input with limited scientific published literature on mercury contamination in artisanal mining communities to develop different conceptual site models that vary based on the level and type of stakeholder input. Our findings demonstrate how local knowledge on contamination varies due to contextual factors within the community, revealed through the engagement. This work also demonstrates how the new framework can be utilized by environmental practitioners to define the needs, wants, and priorities of stakeholder groups throughout a remediation project, ensuring maximum participation in solution development.
Environmental remediation of polluted sites in developing communities often faces difficulties due to the misalignment of project objectives with the needs and interests of local communities, establishment of unrealistic expectations for the outcome of the project, and failure to account for the available resources in the community itself. Remediation decisions favor technical data and technical solutions as the main means of determining remediation options, requiring significant investment and local capacity that are often not found in developing communities. Often these systems fail to account for the social aspects in environmental management and remediation. In contrast, new approaches in local knowledge-based solutions focus on pre-existing environmental management initiatives to establish objectives that are meaningful to the community itself. “Positive deviance” – or the idea that there are solutions already in communities that are successful at addressing challenges despite the barriers that a community faces – are often overlooked during project design and implementation. Identifying examples of positive deviance and working with community members who are well versed in local challenges, available resources, and local capacity presents opportunities for community members to establish project objectives and provides the foundation for future environmental management projects in the area. We present a case study of artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) in the Andes municipality, Antioquia, Colombia and local initiatives to overcome community-identified environmental pollutants. Through a series of semi-structured interviews, surveys, and site visits, we identified community perception of environmental pollutants, management techniques for mining waste, and grassroots initiatives that were locally developed to address them. Through key communication and interaction between innovators with identified positive deviance projects, technical experts, and other miners facing similar challenges, innovative projects that account for the social, political, and economic realities of a developing community can become widespread, leading to improved environmental and social conditions.
The Minamata Convention on Mercury, which entered into full force in August 2017, was signed by more than 100 countries, including several where artisanal and small-scale gold mining is practised, such as Brazil, China, Ecuador, Ghana, Peru and Colombia. Focused on Colombia, the country that likely faces the most difficult challenges to implement this convention, this paper discusses the extent of mercury pollution in the water sources of the country and the barriers Colombia must overcome to comply with the Minamata Convention. Many of these same barriers are also present in other countries impacted by artisanal and small-scale gold mining.
During the second half of the twentieth century, northwestern New Mexico served as the primary production site for one of the world's largest nuclear arsenals. From 1948 to 1970 the “Grants uranium district” provided almost half of the total uranium ore accumulated by the United States federal government for the production of nuclear weapons, in addition to becoming a national source for commercial nuclear energy from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. By the twenty-first century, after a prolonged period of economic decline that began in the late 1970s, all uranium mining and milling in New Mexico had ceased, leaving a legacy of environmental health impacts. What was once referred to as “The Uranium Capital of the World” now encompasses over a thousand abandoned uranium mines and seven massive uranium mill tailings piles, which are associated with airborne and soil contamination as well as groundwater plumes of uranium and other contaminants of concern, in a landscape that has been fractured by underground mine workings and punctured by thousands of exploratory boreholes. This article presents an ethnographic study of the diverse forms of expertise involved in monitoring and managing the mine waste and mill tailings. Drawing from over two years of ethnographic research, I describe the relationship between different stakeholders from local communities, government agencies, and transnational mining corporations as they deliberate about the possibility of cleaning up the former mining district. My thesis is that the possibility of cleaning up the Grants district hinges on the “politics of baselining”—a term I introduce to describe the relationship between stakeholders and their competing environmental models and hydrogeological theories; each accounts for a different geological past prior to mining that can be deemed “natural,” as the background against which to measure the anthropogenic impacts from mining.
The multiple environmental crises our planet is experiencing forces us to change the ways we engage with it, especially the ones developed by scientific disciplines such as toxicology. In particular, widespread degradation should lead us to develop scientific practices that take environmental ruination as a framework condition, not only as an object of analysis. In doing so, we should take into account the practice of science at laboratories located in the peripheries of global science, institutions that have coexisted with extensive environmental and material decay from their very onset. Contributing to this task, this paper analyzes the case of Centro Nacional del Medio Ambiente (CENMA), an environmental chemistry laboratory located in Santiago, Chile. Established in mid-1990s, decades of continual budget cuts left it in a state of almost terminal ruin. In its struggle to remain relevant, CENMA developed an alternative kind of scientific practice, ruination science. Although always precarious, ruination science also tends to be well adapted to engage with impurity, resilient but fragile, and ethically entangled, prioritizing attachment and compromises over the application of certain standard recipes or procedures. Beyond its particularities, CENMA’s ruination science provides us with several valuable keys to better deal with worlds facing multiple kinds of anthropogenic degradation.
Background: The use of mercury in artisanal and small-scale gold mining has negative effects on human health and the environment. In Suriname, the current gold rush resulted in estimated mercury emissions up to 63t per year. To reduce the use of mercury and the subsequent health impact to gold miners and local inhabitants, knowledge and awareness in the community should be increased. Methods: This study evaluated the effects of a health education programme (HEP) on the levels of knowledge and awareness among local inhabitants and small-scale gold miners in active gold mining areas in the interior of Suriname, South-America. Baseline knowledge levels were assessed with a survey prior to the implementation of the HEP. Thereafter, the exact same questions were asked to evaluate the effects. A total of 959 local inhabitants and 140 gold miners completed the survey including five topics: general knowledge on mercury, potential routes of exposure, health risks for children versus adults, mercury related health effects, and reproductive risks. Additionally, participants were asked in a separate survey (n = 107) about potential exposure reduction techniques and their willingness to be involved in a future human biomonitoring programme. Results: The HEP influenced knowledge on exposure routes of mercury (increase from 64% to 78% of respondents who could name the relevant exposure routes) and on health effects attributed to mercury (increase from 48% to 70% of respondents who were able to list the correct health effects). After the HEP, 70% of the respondents affirmed the higher sensitivity of children, while knowledge on reproductive health effects increased from 39% to 63%. Self-estimated levels of knowledge also increased, indicating lower anxiety regarding potential risks of mercury. Gold miners reported to be willing to improve their work procedures (e.g. burning amalgam with a retort), although suitable tools were not always available. Consistent results were found for individuals included in both surveys, before and after the health education programme. Almost all respondents in the separate survey reported to be willing to give consent for participation in a future human biomonitoring programme, for themselves and their children. Conclusion: The implementation of a health education programme within an existing local healthcare structure proved effective and levels of knowledge and awareness improved. Most improved was the knowledge on health effects attributable to mercury, more specifically reproductive health effects.
The Ministry of Mines and Energy (MME) in Colombia has the potential to be the most pro-active government ministry in the world to deal with the problem of formalization of an estimated 300,000 Colombian artisanal miners, extracting gold, diamonds, emeralds, coal, construction minerals, etc. However, currently, the MME has reached the basic stage of formalization of only about 7% of the total registered mining units in the country. In conjunction with the Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development, local authorities and even the Army (for the use of explosives), the inherent regulations required for formalization are very difficult to manage for the artisanal miners. As a result, gold production in the country reached 61.8 tonnes in 2016, in which the formal sector only represented 13% of this total, while the informal miners produced 87% of the gold. Furthermore, apart from the Colombian Government missing out on taxes that could be garnered from the informally produced gold, it is clear that there are significant quantities of gold being smuggled out of the country illegally. In 2017, although gold production fell by 35% to a total of 40.1 tonnes, gold exports increased 17% from 48 tonnes in 2016 to 58 tonnes in 2017, which is likely due to illegal mining, mainly from illicit criminal organizations laundering money via gold exports. In order to increase the successful formalization of legitimate artisanal gold miners, major reforms of the legislation are urgently needed, including facilitation of the hurdles required to undergo the process, as well as increased presence on the ground to offer education, training and capital investment for cleaner processing techniques.
This article discusses the results of a pilot research strategy for monitoring environmental hazards derived from the use of mercury in artisanal gold mining in the Alto Cauca region, Colombia. During 2016 and 2017, a transdisciplinary approach was established to inquire on the health, environment, and territorial problems originated from artisanal mining. In this article, we specifically focus on how this particular issue affects women in the area. We establish a closed-loop approach for integrating social action research with analytical sciences/engineering to understand risks associated with Hg²⁺ levels in artisanal and small-scale gold mining in the Cauca department. We develop a platform known as closed-loop integration of social action and analytical chemistry research.
Technological advancements in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling have spurred a controversial boom in oil and gas production. In Colorado, these debates take place directly in the suburban metro corridor, where local governments are turning to memorandums of understanding (MOU), negotiated directly with industry operators, to shape industry activity. We show that in Erie, the town that first pioneered this policy tool, these MOUs ostensibly welcome public participation in the planning and deliberation process but can unintentionally reinforce scientism-based governance. Citizen science challenged the local government’s deficit model of the public, but it also shored up scientific authority and triggered a government imaginary of anti-fracking activists as an unruly public. Residents countered this imaginary by electing officials committed to public engagement and transparency, which opened up debates to encompass quality of life issues that had been sidelined by the original focus on competing scientific evidence about pollution. While fracking-related citizen science does not appear to be directly responsible for the government turnover and its attendant shift in governance, we suggest it did enhance civic engagement related to general issues of fiscal responsibility, ethics and transparency that did play a role in the election.
Since the turn of the twenty-first century, the rapid growth of Peru's extractive industries has unleashed diverse forms of political resistance to an economic system dependent on ecological destruction and human harm. In the central highlands of Peru, a Catholic scientific project based out of the Archdiocese of Huancayo undertook six years of research on heavy-metal contamination in the Mantaro Valley. This included lead-exposure studies in the notoriously polluted city of La Oroya, home to the country's largest polymetallic smelter. How did the Catholic Church become an apt institution for the production of science in this region? Drawing on fieldwork with the Revive the Mantaro Project, this article conceptualizes the integration of religious and scientific practitioners and practices and the political landscape that necessitated, shaped, and limited them. Technocratic governance and anti-leftist sentiments made science a suitable political idiom for the Catholic Church to enact its ethos of abundance and demand the legitimacy of life beyond bare life. A state of endemic corruption and epistemic mistrust also obliged Catholic accompaniment to scientific practices to generate trust for the researchers and to provide ethical credibility as their knowledge entered the fray of national mining politics. Ultimately contending with entrenched systems of power, the Revive the Mantaro Project's significance extended beyond political efficacy; its practices enacted a world of democracy, rights, and legal protections not yet of this world.
The presence of metals in agricultural soils from anthropogenic activities such as mining and agricultural use of metals and metal-containing compounds is a potential threat for human health through the food chain. In this study, the concentration of heavy metals in 83 agricultural soils irrigated by the Sinú River, in northern Colombia, affected by mining areas upstream and inundated during seasonal floods events were determined to evaluate their sources and levels of pollution. The average concentrations of Cu, Ni, Pb, Cd, Hg and Zn were 1149, 661, 0.071, 0.040, 0.159 and 1365mg/kg respectively and exceeded the world normal averages, with the exception of Pb and Cd. Moreover, all values surpassed the background levels of soils in the same region. Soil pollution assessment was carried out using contamination factor (CF), enrichment factor (EF), geoaccumulation index (Igeo) and a risk assessment code (RAC). According to these indexes, the soils show a high degree of pollution of Ni and a moderate to high contamination of Zn and Cu; whereas, Pb, Cd and Hg present moderate pollution. However, based on the RAC index, a low environmental risk is found for all the analysed heavy metals. Multivariate statistical analyses, principal component and cluster analyses, suggest that soil contamination was mainly derived from agricultural practices, except for Hg, which was caused probably by atmospheric and river flow transport from upstream gold mining. Finally, high concentrations of Ni indicate a mixed pollution source from agricultural and ferronickel mining activities.
Over the past decade, the Bristol Bay region of southwest Alaska has been embroiled in a controversy over prospective mineral development in the headwaters of one of the world’s most vibrant salmon fisheries. Following the release of a state land-use plan whose maps appeared to promote large-scale mining in the region, a coalition of actors pursued a counter-mapping project, which drew on existing state data to restore priority to subsistence hunting, fishing, and gathering activities. In the contest over mining, maps and the data used to comprise them were created and contested by an array of actors, including indigenous groups, environmental organizations, and state and federal governments. Ethnographic research demonstrates how competing narratives took shape through vying efforts to empty out and fill up maps with representations of resources in the form of numbers based on scientific measurement. As quantification becomes the means through which environmental claims are staked, it reinforces the authority of scientific expertise at the same time it foregrounds other ways of knowing and establishing authority. The pursuit of numbers motivated various projects of adding together in Bristol Bay, including coalition building, which made space for alternative visions of and for the territory. The power of counter-mapping may lie less in the relationships it represents, then, and more in terms of those it helps create, insofar as it contributes to assembling new publics in opposition to resource-extractive designs.
Five municipalities in Antioquia, Colombia, with population of 162,000 inhabitants, were the world's largest mercury polluter from artisanal gold mining in 2010, releasing and emitting an average of 92 (73–110) tonnes/a of mercury. UNIDO – United Nations Industrial Development Organization joined forces with the Government of Antioquia, National University of Colombia and University of British Columbia to start The Colombia Mercury Project to reduce mercury use and losses.1 The actions consisted of assessment of mercury losses, health monitoring and awareness campaign. This was supported by technical demonstrations of methods to reduce the amount of mercury used in the processing centres (“entables”). Enhanced enforcement of existing local and federal regulations accompanied these activities. Demonstrations of cleaner methods to miners and owners of “entables” generated 39 new mercury-free processing plants. The presence of the company Gran Colombia Gold buying ore from the miners at a fair price also contributed considerably to observed reductions in mercury use. Mercury entering in the whole ore amalgamation in the 323 “entables” was reduced on average 43% from 2010 levels. In 2013, mercury losses were reduced by 63%, resulting in 46 to 70 tonnes/a, less mercury entering the environment than in 2010.
Rapid appraisal is an approach for developing a preliminary, qualitative understanding of a situation. This paper identifies three basic concepts - 1) a system perspective, 2) triangulation of data collection, and 3) iterative data collection and analysis - and suggests that they provide a conceptual foundation for rapid appraisal and a rationale for the selection of specific research techniques. The paper reviews the history of rapid appraisal, provides a definition, discusses the three basic concepts and the illustrative research techniques associated with them, argues for flexibility, and suggests the use of a "Data Collection Checklist' to remind the team of important concepts and as a means by which the reader of a report can estimate the degree of confidence that can be placed in the results. -from Author
UK and Scottish planning policies include commitments to reflect the views of the public. However, this case study of one planning application for a wind farm in rural Scotland highlights the limited role played by lay knowledge within planning processes. The planning application process had two separate stages which structured the roles of lay and expert knowledge differently. Local objectors were able to influence the early planning application stage. However, this resulted in an appeals process (public inquiry) which was beyond the influence of lay people, and within which lay knowledge played only a marginal role. The early planning application stage enabled a wider range of knowledges to be relevant, perhaps even allowing lay knowledge to sideline expert knowledge. Within the inquiry such roles were reversed. Witnesses who could not back up their evidence with 'reliable' data or scientific reasoning were discredited as illegitimate and as having little to contribute to the inquiry process. Thus the inquiry constructed boundaries between expert and lay knowledge, in ways which diminished the role that lay knowledge might play. Whilst the construction of expert knowledge at the public inquiry played a central role in marginalising lay knowledge, it was central to all sides of the argument; the role of expert knowledge was reinforced by both the opposition group and the developers. Therefore, it is not only policy-makers and planning officials, but also lay people who act as though expert and lay knowledge can be clearly distinguished from one another.