Artisanal and Informal Mining Digging Deeper: Conversations on Mining and Just Transitions

Katie: In our research for this series, we have often come across the question of artisanal mining. This is a contested and diverse phenomenon. In some places artisanal mining is being used as a genuine livelihood option, but in other cases it seems to be total exploitation.

We wanted to talk to you about these issues in different kinds of artisanal and informal mining landscapes. We are especially interested to hear about how you see the conditions and circumstances - political, economic, legal, social and movement power related - that might create the possibility for artisanal mining to provide sustainable and decent livelihoods?

Could I ask you to start by sharing a little about the contexts you are working in? What does artisanal or informal mining look like? Who are miners selling products to? What are the environmental problems associated with it? 

Gisselle: My research concerns mining practices in Andean countries, including Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. I work with indigenous communities that have incorporated artisanal and small-scale mining as a livelihood, and these communities include a substantial number of women. Around the world, artisanal and small-scale mining employs around 20 million people, and accounts for about 20% of gold supply to global value chains. 

However, women’s participation is often undercounted. Rough estimates suggest that around 30% of artisanal, small-scale miners are women. In my fieldwork, 50 or 60% of people mining gold were women, especially among those using more artisanal methods. In Colombia they are called barriqueras, in Peru some of them are called pallaqueras, in the Andes, or chichiqueras in the Amazon, and in Ecuador they are called jancheras. They do not often identify as members of an indigenous community, however, they come from racialized and remote areas.

They face challenges including the recognition of their activities, because women are often invisible in the mining cadastre. When accessing a mining right or mining permit, state categories often do not include the gender box. Women are especially exposed to specific pollutants, such as mercury, which is still used to process gold. They may take these materials into their homes, because of their care responsibilities, exposing children and other members of the household to them.

So we need to think about the specific conditions women are experiencing, including in the process of mining, the type of resources, techniques and capital they have access to. Men are more often employed for machinery handling and for more technologically intensive methods, whereas women are exposed to further harm through artisanal methods. 

So it's important to think about how to provide adequate funding, training and materials for them. It is also a question of indigenous governance. In the Andes, a misconception is that indigenous people straightforwardly refuse or reject mining activities. It may be the case when this is an imposition without participation, decision-making and informed consent, as has happened regularly with the expansion of the large-scale mining extractive frontier in the last decades. But indigenous communities also perform mining as part of their own territorial projects.  

It is important to consider how indigenous territories are envisioned. While the state may allocate community lands based on simple area measures, indigenous territories are an assemblage of relations that cannot be narrowed to a square meter, or to a property right. So, in their responses to this, indigenous communities may claim mining rights. But they may see this very differently than other small-scale mining communities. They are trying to accommodate extraction, conservation and environmental remediation, all in a way that allows them to viably and sustainably govern their territories.

So it's important to think about ‘rights of difference’ in artisanal and small-scale mining, which points to acknowledging the embeddedness of mining within place-based knowledge systems and ethnic autonomy to govern traditionally owned lands. It is a sector where the rural poor find employment. But it is also a sector where indigenous people find opportunities for consolidating their territorial rights. Hence, it becomes an indigenous and environmental justice question. 

Doi Ra: In Kachin state, in Myanmar, we have different kinds of mining. We have jade, amber, gold and rare earth minerals mining, all in the same landscape. For amber and rare earth minerals, artisanal mining is not possible. It requires big capital and big machines to extract these, so artisanal mining of these materials mostly stopped after British colonization, and even before that it required some level of technology. But for gold mining, there are artisanal mining activities. 

It is not a main livelihood, but a supplement. Many areas in Kachin state are formed of highlands so people struggle to grow enough food to sustain themselves. Mining allows people to meet their subsistence needs by selling to neighbours or traders for extra income. But right now, this mining industry has really changed. There is no longer respect for customary land rights and property relations have changed a lot. [Since the military coup in 2021] the state has passed laws to grant mining concessions to cronies and members of the military. 

The [Ethnic Armed Organisation or revolutionary force] Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) is in a struggle for territory with the military. This is intensifying the mining industry because revolution needs money. The KIO, rather than a non-state actor, is a state-like body, and we see it taking on state functions, acting like a state. 

But because artisanal mining is no longer contributing to generating income for them, this is putting artisanal mining livelihoods at risk. Mining requires access to land, and people are increasingly losing this. Many peasant households cannot survive on their own anymore and have to depend on mining. Previously artisanal mining meant ‘doing their own thing’, on their own time, under their own conditions to support their livelihoods. Now, they have to go to a capitalist mine site where they work as cheap wage labour at very high risk. So the conditions have totally changed. This is part of a much broader “crisis of social reproduction” that peasant households are facing. 

Katie: Can you each tell me, from your understanding, what defines artisanal, informal or small-scale mining? Because it seems to refer to the level of technology, but also for example the extent to which people control their own labour. So I would be interested to hear the definitions you are each working with.

Gisselle: There is no intrinsic definition about what is small-scale or artisanal. Across different countries it is an incredibly inconsistent category. In Ecuador, for example, ‘medium’ mining is defined as extraction with the capacity to move up to 1000 tonnes of material per day. But in Peru, it is up to 5000 tonnes of material per day, five times more. 

In addition to ‘large-scale,’ ‘medium’, ‘small-scale’ and ‘artisanal’ we have other categories in Andean countries. We have ‘subsistence mining’ and ‘ethnic mining zones’ in Colombia, ‘grassroots recycling’ in Ecuador, ‘state mining’ and ‘cooperative mining’ in Bolivia, and ‘private mining,’ which is the opposite of cooperatives or state mining. So mining is defined in relational terms. And this can all change based on whether one sector of mining is gaining power, or if political struggles are taking place to make different activities visible and recognised.

This is also related to how international coalitions have started to advocate for the sector. The term Artisanal Small-scale Mining (ASM) emerged out of international development discussions that started at the International Labour Organisation and then percolated into the World Bank. And then was adopted by the United Nations. It was first conceived as a category to think about how to give viability to this alternative rural livelihood. This was especially important in the African case, where artisanal small-scale mining was very important in crisis times of famine, war, floods and environmental calamities. But today, mining looks very different. In Peru, for example, ‘opportunistic’ miners are trying to fit themselves in the small-scale category, when they should definitely be placed in the medium or even large-scale category. 

So for me, artisanal and small-scale mining first refers to a development discourse that can be mobilized to claim recognition for specific practices. And second, it is a specific legal category, with incredible variation in different contexts. 

Katie: It is very interesting to hear this historical and political perspective, that this is a category people are using to make a specific claim for human rights, for support, for recognition.

Doi Ra: Thank you Gisselle for this categorization. It is very interesting!  I understand it quite differently. For me, artisanal mining always brings me back to traditional livelihoods. In my context, a mostly agriculture-based economy, mining is always a supplement. In artisanal mining, people go to the river in their leisure time, panning gold. Children also participate. It is like a family affair. The term ‘artisanal mining’ recalls this happy lifestyle. 

But in addition to the scale of this mining, we need to consider the political conditions around artisanal mining. Artisanal mining is not wage-labour. It is more like ‘petty commodity production’ as Henry Bernstein describes it: people produce to address their needs; they control their own conditions of production; they have free access to land and rivers; they can manage their own labour time. 

A recent report about artisanal mining in the jade sector in Myanmar was talking about a company that extracts huge volumes of earth, and jade miners search for stones within this rubble. They are not wage labourers employed by the company, but they find stones in the rubble and sell them to middlemen. They were described as artisanal miners, but I don't agree with that. So indeed, there are different definitions. 

Katie: It’s interesting how this mirrors the discussion in food sovereignty about 'what is a small-scale farmer'? These categories are real, but very context dependent. And people are using these concepts for different reasons, sometimes to make claims, or to appeal to a simpler time.

This leads into the next question about 'what should artisanal mining be'? Under what conditions does artisanal mining make a positive contribution to people's livelihoods and contribute to some kind of ‘sustainable rural livelihood’? Can it be less exploitative and less extractive? What would that look like? And what are the social and political conditions behind that? What are the conditions that allow people to control their labour? Could artisanal mining be a real alternative to large-scale industrial mining, and if so, how?

Gisselle: Thank you Doi Ra for what you said regarding imagining a unique lifestyle and a way of turning mining into livelihood. That resonates with ideas of artisanal labour, not only for mining, but different sectors, such as farming, as Katie was bringing up. I have kind of a controversial approach to this, but that's what I had to realize with my fieldwork.

I would say that the type of artisanal mining that belongs to this idyllic landscape, no longer exists. Not because the artisanal methods are not in place, but because the environment has been dramatically changed by mining itself. I refer to 'mineral ecologies', and how people are transforming landscapes, so that these now demand different mining methods and practices – as well as governance and organisation - continue mining. So, it's a mutually reinforcing circle. 

The clearest example is the cratered moonlike landscape mining leaves behind in the Amazon, with ponds and abandoned small-scale mining sites. We are no longer finding mining practices in undisturbed environments. So our understanding of mining must be adjusted to these new contexts.

Traditional communities, including black communities in Colombia and indigenous people in Peru, are coming to terms with that, but in complicated ways. Their practices are invisible, so they are not regulated, and they don't enjoy different rights or protection. So, in Colombia’s province of Chocó in my fieldwork, I found two deeply connected stories between the two rivers of San Juan and Atrato. The Atrato is one of the few rivers in the world that has gained personhood rights, usually raised as an example of Rights of Nature. Local communities presented a lawsuit before the Colombian government to claim rights, demanding the remediation of this river from mercury pollution. 

However, in the same province, the San Juan River has an older history of folk mining practices, dating back to pre-colonial times among indigenous communities, and in colonial times among black communities. Here, mining is conceived as an ancestral practice. 

However, these black communities, when talking to the Colombian state, argue that ancestrality should not be interpreted as artisanality, because that would mean they would be tied to a set of practices and techniques when the environments are no longer adequate for those practices. For example, the practice of zambullidero or diving, where a person must jump into a mining pond to reach gold-rich mud, placing a rock on their backs to dive easier. This practice was never fully safe, but now it’s not safe at all. These ponds have been disturbed so much that they are unsafe and can crumble. So, there is a relationship that develops between artisanal black miners, explorers, and small-scale companies that bring in capital and machinery. Because they may need that machinery to make their traditional mining safer, for example. So that was a key contention in our case. 

This raises questions about the environments we are talking about: why do people enter into these alliances with ‘extractors’? How do these dynamics of ‘conflicted coexistence’ arise? For activist networks, that raises the question of the blurred lines between extractivism and anti-extractivism. These communities are definitely aware of the environmental impacts they are suffering with mining, including that children suffer the dangers of mining; the deepening of the gendered division of labour; the expansion of brothels, alcohol consumption, etc. which comes with mining camps. This is not exclusive to small-scale mining, and happens also with large-scale mining. It’s something that masculinized labour entangles, when you have too many men embedded with machismo ideas, all of them together in one area and with cash flow. 

However, mining is also a viable livelihood for the immediate needs they have, so they are willing to make these concessions. In the trajectory of the San Juan River, mining does not have the same history. Communities there come from an agro-forestry livelihood background, and mining has only recently expanded. So communities are not interested in forming these pernicious alliances with machinery, but in claiming more artisanal mining to accommodate different activities within their land. 

So zooming out, where mining has different histories, different senses of ancestrality, and relationships with technology, and where landscapes have been transformed in different ways, these are influencing communities’ decision-making on the types of mining practices they want to develop. And even though the state does not like nuance, nuance is necessary to accommodate indigenous desires, indigenous ambitions to govern their territories. 

Katie: Doi Ra, are there other things you want to add on the conditions under which artisanal mining could be a real livelihood for people?

Doi Ra: Actually, I'm very pessimistic about the scenario right now, because every rainy season in Kachin state, there are huge floods. Houses on the riverbank are being swept away. Disasters related to mining are happening almost every year. Landslides occur in big mines. 

So is there a place for artisanal mining? Even if we stopped all big mining, the landscape has been destroyed, and the methods used do not allow the soil to recover. Rare earth mining uses corrosive chemicals to bring out heavy transition minerals. So is there a way to continue? Kachin people are tired of this mining. It also creates a lot of ethnic tension between different groups. 

The whole country is in crisis, so Kachin state attracts many migrants, coming to village areas, doing gold mining, buying up lands. Regarding state laws, the laws are there, but they are not really there. Informal access mechanisms operate rather than legal ways. It is all about power relations. If you know ethnic groups, the KIO, the military, people in power, you can get access. The commons have become a kind of a free for all. If this is your village, you can say ‘this is our village land, you don’t do that, you don’t do those things’, but if it’s like a river, people really cannot say anything. The gold miners will just say: ‘oh, we pay tax to these people, you cannot say anymore’. Informal taxation is going on a lot. 

How do you make governance mechanisms in this context of informal arrangements? People say this is because the area in unstable, war is going on, you cannot do governance, but even in other countries not affected by war, are good governance mechanisms viable? 

Maybe artisanal used to be a good alternative livelihood, and could be a viable income source for people, as it is even now. But we really need land reform, a socially just land reform, before artisanal mining can take place.  

The wealth creation from mining is huge, and the agricultural sector is struggling.  If the agricultural sector was doing well, people would not be forced to resort to mining, capitalist mining, or being a wage labourer. So at least in Myanmar, we really need to have good agricultural reform and land reform. 

Katie: I was planning to ask you about what power imbalances might be corrected or exacerbated by shifting to more artisanal mining? But it sounds like the question might be better asked the other way around: What kind of existing power imbalances need to be corrected in order for viable and sustainable artisanal mining to be a possibility, to offer some kinds of opportunities? 

Gisselle: It is very interesting how you reframed the question, but I think your previous question also makes sense. Because if artisanal small-scale mining having some kind of viability would already correct the power balance in a way. National governments have a rent-seeking orientation [trying to maximise the profit they make from controlling resources] and are more inclined to accommodate large-scale mining than small-scale mining, which is not an attractive source of revenue, taxes, etc. Local governments can be more inclined to include small-scale operators because this is a source of revenue for them through formal and informal channels, including corruption, government officers that have mining claims, etc, so they are more likely to be allies. 

Different international development organisations are also thinking about technological upgrades, responsible production and maintaining a clean environment. They are interested in phasing out mercury, introducing incentives for miners to adopt more responsible practices. And sometimes these coalitions align. My research with Alejandra Villanueva showed that in Peru in the early 2000s, international development actors and the national government found a moment of synergy to introduce the legal category of ‘artisanal small-scale miner’.

However, international coalitions and national governments shift, and small-scale mining is a sector that is subject to incredible inconsistency. So there are no long-term policy frameworks that can give stability for miners to plan and think about how to develop their activity with coherence. 

In Peru, where alluvial mining [in river beds] in the Amazon was banned, the Peruvian government created a new ad hoc authority called the high commissioner, led by a senior military official. The high commissioner bombed and destroyed mining machinery, without a clear strategic plan. This violated human rights and intimidated people. In one case (Madre de Dios) the local Catholic church went to the Peruvian Congress to say these operations were raising fear in the communities and destroying indigenous lands.  This type of top-down approach, where coercion is used to persuade miners to adhere to formal guidelines is the prevailing governance system in the Andes in the past four decades, and with little success as per the evident expansion of illegal mining. 

Katie: What is the alternative to this top-down structure which is trying to extract more value for the state? What does that look like for communities?

Gisselle: Well, it's very clear for me that this should be a bottom-up approach. That is not going to be perfect, and it does not imply giving total freedom for small-scale artisanal small-scale mining anywhere. But I think any accommodation should include as leading voices indigenous communities and women, who have been the most marginalized and most impacted by these top-down efforts. They should also be involved in civil efforts to regulate the use of force. 

There is a dire lack of civilian oversight of military involvement and spending on illegal mining. Often the military become complicit in illegal mining, and corruption becomes the currency. So the effectiveness of military interventions in producing peaceful territories should be questioned. And the prevailing narrative that illegal mining should be eradicated by all means is seeding fear and mistrust in local communities. 

Doi Ra: I also agree with the need for a bottom-up approach. Communities on the ground know best where these mining activities should be placed, at what scale, and for what duration. But because there are power imbalances, we might also need elements of a top-down approach. This does not mean only the state or international mechanisms (which tend to be very state-centric). There are other actors that are as important as the state. For my region, there is the KIO. Rare Earth Mining is also occurring in areas controlled by other local militia’s – who are not KIO – and who are giving permits to China to extract in their area.  

So how can international mechanisms work in these conditions? The state has limited power to impose regulation. At the same time, some actors are missing from these discussions, and there is no structure to hold them accountable. For instance, China plays a big role in the mining industry, but how is China included in accountability mechanisms? Businessmen generally come from China through informal channels, not through formal government-to-government agreements. 

Anna Tsing's book illustrates how the messy reality on the ground doesn't matter once you get to a level of the supply chain – technical standards make everything look pretty. 

For rare earth minerals something like 80% of the global supply comes from Kachin state, but after a certain level of the supply chain, it doesn't matter that it comes from conflict-affected areas. Journalists try to interrogate companies allegedly using metals from Myanmar, but they deny it because there is no trace. So shady things are going on in the global supply chain. How can we make it accountable? Bottom-up is the key, but we also need comprehensive, 360-degree accountability mechanisms.

Katie: Your point about the way the international governance system relies on a certain vision of the state is very interesting, and the fact that there are very powerful actors who are not the state. You also mentioned the possibilities and limitations of community governance mechanisms and the historical ways in which people-controlled commons. What are your thoughts about possibilities for local commons and community control, and for international movement solidarity?

Gisselle: Critical minerals are a really pressing concern today. Where are the critical minerals going to come from? Small-scale mining is a lab for what extractivism in the future may look like. Abandoned gold mines in the Andes, or platinum mines in Colombia, still harbour other elements that are unexplored. They are attracting new attention from prospectors around the world. 

In Ecuador, the remaining material from small-scale gold mining is also valuable.  The local name is ‘piñata’, you get whatever you can find. And because of the rising demand of critical minerals, that piñata, that remaining material, is becoming more attractive for local smelters, local processing plants to work with, extract and to sell. And that is money that is going under the radar, and mostly leaving the communities.

In Peru as well a recent study explored the potential of abandoned mining ponds in the Amazon for their potential rare earth value. So, small-scale mining reflects onto the critical minerals rush. Mining waste is no longer going to waste, but becoming valuable for new rounds of extraction. These new rounds of extraction have yet to consider the perspectives of the communities where this mining waste is so as to enable bottom-up territorial projects that could consider other alternatives for environmental remediation and conservation.  If communities are given the platform to raise how they want to organise their territories for viable livelihoods, mining may have a place but it's not necessarily as the only activity. And it could be important to consider ways to transform mining waste into value, but also into forest, or into other livelihoods. 

Working with indigenous women in the Madre de Dios region through my fieldwork, many have ambitions to develop aquatic based livelihoods, where ponds could contribute to revitalization of their food security, for example, activating regional networks of aquaculture and fisheries. They see the forest can recover through these. However, more attention is given to forest carbon capture value (for the REDD+ market). This could lead to some gains for communities, but it remains to be seen, as it is not happening yet.

Fisheries and the river is a much more immediate livelihood. So the critical minerals rush is inscribing an extractivist future in areas where the future has not yet been determined. And communities should have a say in what happens in these mining waste areas.

Doi Ra: On the commons and who is going to pay for the damage that communities have suffered, communities should have a voice in restoring the commons to their former condition. Regarding land redistribution, land restitution, for production and social reproduction, they know how to manage their lands. They have been doing that for years, but they need support to restore the commons, which have been damaged for so many years. It needs support from the state and international community, as well as payment from corporations who have benefitted from this big mining sector.

Katie: Thank you so much both for taking the time to share with us! You have left us with a lot of new and interesting questions, which is always my favourite outcome of a conversation like this.