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Report: 2nd ASM Learning Hub

April 6, 2022

By Environmental Governance Programme (EGP)

Key Messages

There is growing interest in how to improve the governance of ASM activities, which is perceived as necessary for the orderly development of this part of the mining sector, and to enhance its social and environmental performance. By now, we have several decades of experiences of different attempts to achieve successful ASM governance. However, as contexts differ – both within countries, and between regions - there is no general ‘best practice’ that can be identified, but rather several different possible practices and approaches. It is also important to understand the multiple attempts and methods that could have been more effective.
The different approaches of how to manage the ASM sector can be understood as ranging from: (i) Laissez-faire approach, with limited intervention by the State, which is based on the rationale that ASM miners are mainly driven by poverty and have a right to earn a livelihood, and that their low level of mechanisation may not cause widespread environmental harm; (ii) Full ASM support, adopted by a growing number of countries that developed special regulations and provisions for the ASM sector, aiming to support the sector to develop further, but in a more orderly fashion; and (iii) Equal treatment, in countries where small mining operators are subject to the same regulatory requirements and provisions as large mining operations.
The ASM sector is overall not well monitored, but a recent estimate suggests that some 40 million people were directly engaged in the sector in 2017, with around 150 million people depending on ASM for their income and livelihoods across 80 countries in the Global South. ASM is also a significant producer of critical transition minerals needed for manufacturing solar panels and batteries for electric cars, as well as popular electronic products, such as laptops and phones. It is widely expected that this sector will keep growing in coming years and decades.

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2nd ASM Learning Hub, held on April 6, 2022. Illustration by Caroline Sellstone/sellstone.se.

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Report: 2nd ASM Learning Hub

Footnotes

Cover photo: A man washing diamonds in a mine in Kono, Sierra Leone. Credits: iStock.com/Abenaa

FootNotes

Cover photo: A man washing diamonds in a mine in Kono, Sierra Leone. Credits: iStock.com/Abenaa

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