By Laura Maillard and Carole Baudin, User-Centered Product Design Group, HAUTE ECOLE ARC ENGINEERING – HES-SO
Illegal gold mining in the Amazon region of Peru potentially causes a variety of damages to the
By Laura Maillard and Carole Baudin, User-Centered Product Design Group, HAUTE ECOLE ARC ENGINEERING – HES-SO
Illegal gold mining in the Amazon region of Peru potentially causes a variety of damages to the environment, human health, and societal wellbeing. The people most directly affected – usually through gold production – are communities living in the region.
In this context, we have been working with three regional mining communities to develop the Wanamei project, which aims to contribute to improve local working and living conditions.
In the cosmology of native people of this region – the Amarakaeri – Wanamei means “the tree of life.” This title is representative of the philosophical approach of anthropotechnology, which insists on using local knowledge and practices to design socio-technical solutions.
This photo gallery aims to share a global overview of the Madre de Dios context, issues faced by local miners and our efforts to find – for and with local communities – sustainable socio-technical solutions in extractive industries.
By Matthieu Bolay, Université de Neuchâtel
When I was carrying out fieldwork in Guinea and Mali between 2010 and 2014, some ministry officials, with whom I discussed the topics of mining and migration, used the nineteenth century US gold rush as an analogy to explain why thousands of people choose to live in temporary settlements across West Africa. Indeed, these artisanal gold miners mainly rely on non- or semi-mechanical excavation methods to extract ore and predominantly use gravitational techniques to purify it, thereby supposedly placing their future in the hands of chance and the hope that their lives will be transformed once they strike gold.
Yet, although this is an appealing – and popular – analogy for artisanal mining in West Africa, the image of the “gold rush” has been demonstrated to be rather problematic when the actual mobility dynamics of artisanal gold miners are considered. Continue reading
By Bram Ebus
Muzo, Colombia – It is here where clouded forests overgrow the mountain slopes in which world’s most valuable emeralds are hidden. For much of history, Colombia has been the global provider of emeralds, though in the last decade it has given way to Zimbabwe and Brazil. In an attempt to organize mining and to not miss out on the profits of emeralds that often are smuggled out of the country, the government decided to formalize the sector in 2001.
As often is the case, the presence of precious resources like emeralds are a catalyst to conflict. The shiny green gemstone brought many lawless barons to the region and the heavily fought-over emeralds caused one of Colombia’s most bloody eras. One of these barons, the (late) emerald czar Victor Carranza, formed an army of mercenaries in the region during the 1970s and 1980s and can be seen as the creator of one of Colombia’s most lethal paramilitary forces. His private army originally functioned to protect his business against emerging guerrilla threats in the region, but as more families in the emerald sector started to surround themselves with men with guns, a war was at hand. Nobody was able to compete with Carranza, who despite the many attempts on his life died of cancer at the age of 77 in 2013.
In the current day and age, the mining panorama underwent some changes due to the governments efforts to regain control over the mining industry and its profits, and to end the ´wild west´ times in the western Boyacá region, where thousands occupied the rivers. Colombia hoped that mining could be one of the new ‘motors of the economy’ and a new mining legislation was ap