The Terrible World of ‘Artisanal’ Mining

Poverty and high demand for minerals are combining to create a boom in the dangerous informal mining economy. Millions of people are involved in what is known as the “artisanal” mining industry worldwide, including perhaps more than a million children.

Geoffrey York, Africa correspondent for The Toronto Globe and Mail speaks to Marco Werman about his visit to artisanal mining operations in Democratic Republic of the Congo, where children work in horrendous conditions.

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Marco Werman: The word “artisanal” gets thrown around a lot these days. It suggests an older, more traditional and higher quality way of making things. Artisanal cheese is all the rage right now, for example, so what about artisanal mining? Well, it has a nice, old world ring to it perhaps, until you read a recent piece in the Toronto Globe and Mail by the paper’s Africa Bureau Chief, Geoffrey York. It turns out that artisanal mining can actually be hell on earth, especially considering that hundreds of thousands of artisanal miners are children. Geoffrey York joins us now from Johannesburg, South Africa. Now, you’ve been visiting some of these artisanal mining operations in Congo. Tell us some of what you saw.

Geoffrey York: Well, the southern Congo is one of the richest copper producing regions of the world and the State Mining Company is in total disarray as you can imagine, after decades of war and corruption, so there’s many, many abandoned mining pits all over southern Congo and what happens is, poor villagers and their families and children just invade these abandoned mines and try to scratch out a living, and so what they’re doing is just trying to extract little tiny bits of copper or cobalt, gold or whatever they can find. Often it’s just gravel that they’re crushing from rocks, and it’s often a tiny increment, maybe a dollar a day for a whole family, but it’s enough to keep them from starvation and the conditions can be just terrible. I mean we’re talking about muddy pits full of water and even worse, full of toxic heavy metals, very dangerous conditions, and the children and the parents often fall sick from this.

Werman: As to that term “artisanal mining,” which just sounds so benign, how did it come to be used for something that’s really so malevolent?

York: Well, I guess they’re trying to describe an industry that is not an organized official mining sector with big corporations, so it’s become kind of a bureaucratic term and it sort of shows that there’s many international institutions that have tackled this issue and come up with these kind of terms, but really it’s just hiding the reality which is children and adults just kind of claw a living out of these abandoned mining pits.

Werman: We’ve reported on this program on the horrendous situation in Nigeria where there’s been widespread lead poisoning from what has been called “wildcat mining” for gold there. That seems to be prompting record prices for gold. Is that what’s driving all of this?

York: Yeah, that’s one of the main reasons. You also have to keep in mind that with the prices soaring, there’s been a real increase in kind of the network of trading, so you get a lot of middle men coming in. You get Chinese and Indian and other foreign investors coming in, setting up little processing plants, and that means that there’s a demand. I mean experts have been aware of the scandal for many years and they’ve been trying to do things, but what’s actually happened is, as commodity prices increase, and as the mining sector gets more developed, the middle men come in and traders come in, it’s actually facilitated a big increase in the mining sector, so it’s actually one of the world’s fastest growing industries and it’s been estimated that as much as 15 or 20 million people worldwide are involved in this kind of informal artisanal mining sector and that includes more than a million children.

Werman: Now, Geoffrey, you were looking at one mine that was producing zinc and copper. I think you looked at some gold as well. Where do these minerals go? Do they eventually find their way onto global markets?

York: Well, you’re right. A lot of them do end up in global markets and that means that we as consumers are sort of complicit in this whole trade. It’s been estimated by the Artisanal Gold Council that as much as 15 percent of all the world’s gold is actually provided by these small scale artisanal miners, so that means that the jewelry that everyone buys everyday could actually be some of it coming from these horrendous situations.

Werman: Is there no situation or protocol to sort out the good minerals from the ones that are mined by these kids?

York: Well, that’s a good point and so far, there is no system like that, but it has to be said that the regulators are having enough trouble trying to even do the basic regulation for minerals and diamonds that come from conflict zones, so you can imagine the much bigger challenge there is to ensure that all minerals don’t come from situations where children are abused.

Werman: So what can be done?

York: Well, there’s existing efforts by groups like the U.N. to try to encourage children and their parents to leave the artisanal mining sector, and there’s even programs to provide small grants to the parents to subsidize a new business so they can do something safer, but it has to be said, these are quite small scale programs, so the real solution ultimately has to be to improve the economy of some of these countries and create economic opportunities so that children aren’t forced to do this.

Werman: Geoffrey York, Africa Bureau Chief for the Toronto Globe and Mail, speaking with us from Johannesburg. Thank you for your time.

York: Thank you.

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