Gold bars and coins. Image: Infrarate.com via Squarespace.
The saying all that glitters is not gold refers to the fact that just because something sounds or looks valuable, it might not be. Many things that at first glance look enticing may turn out to have serious downsides. Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) is one such thing. Millions of people who otherwise would struggle to make ends meet for themselves and their families are attracted to the promise of ASGM to earn a sometimes life-saving income. Yet, much ASGM also involves great risks to human security and well-being, and contributes to environmental contamination and destruction. Mercury use is one of the major reasons for these harms.
In Chapter 7 of Mercury Stories, we look the use of mercury in ASGM. We start the chapter with a story about Madre de Dios, Peru, a place where much ASGM activity occurs today. The global extent of ASGM is uncertain, but two different 2017 reports by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals, metals and Sustainable Development (IGF) estimate that between 10 and 20 million people work as ASGM miners in roughly 70 countries across Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Many more people gain direct and indirect economic benefits from ASGM, as at least 100 million people are believed to rely at least partly on this sector for their livelihoods. This makes ASGM a central economic activity in many of the world’s developing countries. In the mid-2010s, ASGM was believed to produce 600 to 650 tonnes of gold per year, which translates into approximately a quarter of all new gold produced.
While ASGM has increased over the past few decades, the use of mercury to extract silver and gold from ore is hardly new. The development of the patio process of silver amalgamation by the Spanish merchant Bartolomé de Medina in the mid-1500s in New Spain (now Mexico) helped Spanish colonialists extract large amounts of silver from mines in Latin America, as we discuss in Chapter 3. This contributed to the destruction of indigenous communities, while European merchants, the Catholic Church, and Spanish nobility made fortunes. Today, large-scale mining operations, often carried out by multinational firms headquartered in industrialized countries the global North, have moved away from using mercury in the extraction process. However, mercury use continues – and has been growing – in the ASGM sector since the 1980s.
ASGM provides economic benefits to miners, their families, other ASGM community members who supply services, and national economies, but ASGM also occurs in the context of much related human suffering and environmental degradation. Most ASGM miners operate without mining permits in the informal sector. This makes ASGM miners and other community members vulnerable to exploitation, as ASGM sites can be highly dangerous places rife with criminal activities, human trafficking, and (sometimes deadly) violence. Many national governments have responded to the recent increase in ASGM with violence, using force to arrest miners and shut down mining sites. Large mining firms have also often clashed with ASGM miners over mining rights, and governments in developing countries have often sided with these firms.
Mercury is key to both the positive and negative aspects of ASGM. The use of mercury allows ASGM miners to relatively cheaply and easily extract gold from ore. This is particularly lucrative as the price of gold has soared over the past two decades. Growing profitability of ASGM has also resulted in increased levels of competition and violence over gold. Many national governments have banned mercury use in ASGM, but this typically does not stop traders from illegally smuggling mercury into ASGM communities. This pushes ASGM miners further into the informal sector, making them more susceptible to exploitation from unscrupulous mercury and gold traders. The Minamata Convention is calling on parties to take steps towards greater formalization of ASGM, but many governments have been slow to move in that direction. In addition, voluntary partnerships and non-state actors are promoting mercury-free gold mining.
Mercury use in ASGM causes much damage to human health and the environment. When the gold amalgamation is heated up to burn off the mercury, especially if this process takes place in indoor areas with poor ventilation, people can be exposed to dangerously high levels of mercury vapor. If not captured, this mercury will be emitted into the atmosphere, and together with elemental mercury spilled into land and water, will start to cycle through the environment. Some of this mercury will end up in lakes, rivers, and oceans near and far from mining sites. There, it can be transformed into methylmercury, building up in fish that can be consumed by people all over the world. Mercury-fueled ASGM can lead to other sorts of environmental damages as well – for example, ASGM often leads to deforestation that also contributes to biodiversity loss.
ASGM is one of few areas where intentional mercury use is increasing. Thus, mercury use in ASGM going forward is a major determinant of both mercury pollution locally and globally and the effectiveness of the Minamata Convention. All Minamata Convention parties with “more than insignificant” ASGM within their territory must develop National Action Plans to address mercury-related and other problems. In the short term, many such efforts will focus on reducing mercury use and human exposure through behavioral changes and the use of mercury-capture technology. In the longer term, ASGM, even if mercury-free, raises important questions about the role of the extraction of non-renewable natural resources in the context of local, national, and global transitions toward sustainability. We return to issues of sustainability transitions and governance in Chapter 9.