An artisanal or small-scale miner is, in effect, a subsistence miner, who often undertakes the activity of mining gold seasonally – for example crops are planted in the rainy season, and mining is pursued in the dry season. They are not officially employed by a mining company, but rather work independently, mining or panning for gold using their own resources.

Small scale miners are often, but not always, legal operators usually working in collectives of about two to 20 or more people. They have greater structure and organization to their workings than perhaps artisanal miners and often make use of rudimentary processing plants.

Large scale mining is typically very capital intense with substantial investments in plant and infrastructure taking place. Large scale mines typically take several years to build and commission and depending on their size can cost hundreds of millions of dollars. They are often managed by listed companies, and have structured management systems and procedures regarding employee, safety, health environment and community issues.

Artisanal and small-scale mining – a global phenomena

While estimates of numbers engaged in artisanal and small-scale mining vary widely, they range between 13 and 20 million men, women and children from over 50 developing countries.  A further 100 million people depend on the sector for their livelihood, according to CASM (the World Bank housed Communities and Small-scale Mining initiative).

It is important to remember that some indigenous communities have mined or panned for gold on their land for centuries and see this as a cultural right. There are, however, other factors which can push people into artisanal mining, such as poverty in their community; conflict in their region; retrenchment; commodity prices (when the gold price has risen, so too has the incentive to be come involved in the sector) and environmental shocks (for example, people have been drawn into the ASM sector following natural disasters such as drought or floods).

ASM structures and networks

A number of projects are underway to address these and related issues at both an international and local level. What is clear is there are big challenges and these can only be addressed by adopting a multi-stakeholder approach with governments taking a lead role in addressing the issue along with artisanal miners, large scale miners, NGOs and development agencies and the various structures which have been established to address the issue.  These include:

The Communities and Small-scale (CASM) Mining initiative housed by the World Bank Group: www.artisanalmining.org

Efforts to eliminate child labour in the sector which are being co-ordinated via the International Labour Organisation – ILO: http://www.ilo.org/ipec/lang--en/index.htm

Mercury is also a priority issue and in 2002 the United Nations Industrial Organisation, UNIDO, founded the Global Mercury Project (http://www.unido.org/doc/44254 ) with the aim of finding ways to address the mercury issue.