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Towards inclusive and responsible mining

Facilitating dialogue and collaboration for a fair and accountable mining sector

Our work on small and large-scale mining supports multi-stakeholder dialogue, promotes local voices and explores innovations that help deliver more inclusive and accountable mining sector – with empowered local communities, enlightened decision makers and sensitivity to the rights and responsibilities of all stakeholders.

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IIED's Artisanal and Small-scale Mining timeline

 

News and blogs

Water and gravity are used to separate and, ultimately, leave the diamonds (Photo: James McQuilken/@J_McQuilken)
Rehema Peter Mushi mines red garnets and sapphires in Tanzania. She recently won a grant to purchase equipment (Photo: Magali Rochat/IIED)
Artisanal and small-scale mining stakeholders in Tanzania explore solutions to key challenges (Photo: Steve Aanu/IIED)
Miners from the Tanga region in northern Tanzania participating in discussions about how to make ASM in Tanzania more sustainable (Photo: Steve Aanu)
Dialogue participants visited ASM operations (Photo: Mkhululi Nkosilamandla Ncube)
A woman miner holds a rough red garnet found at a mine in Tanzania. Tanzania's artisanal and small-scale miners are fuelled by determination and the hope to strike it big (Photo: Magali Rochat)
François plants a young rosewood tree

Sapphire mines that become forests

Long read, October 2017
View of the quarry

Small ventures, big hopes

Long read, September 2017
Small-scale miners in Ghana

The golden practices that defy gloom

Long read, September 2017
The publicity for our Twitter chat on 27 March 2017 (Image: Nick Turner/IIED)
Site de lavage des sables à saphir dans la rivière Fiherenana (Photo: Andry Rabemanantsoa / GIZ PAGE Madagascar)
Sapphire pits to be rehabilitated in Anikilabo, shown during the site visit of the major of a local mining community, Ampasy Nahampoana (Photo: Andry Rabemanantsoa/GIZ PAGE Madagascar)
Paul, a gold prospector in Burkina Faso (Photo: Ollivier Girard/CIFOR)
Women play a major role in the ASM sector in Ghana, as they do in all countries where ASM takes place. The dialogue meetings offered the chance to share ideas about improving working conditions and community wellbeing (Photo: Friends of the Nation)
Artisanal and small-scale miners in Madagascar show the dynamic nature of the sector (Photo: Fitsum Weldegiorgis/IIED)
Workers at the Dakete Gold Mine explain health and safety procedures in a powdering station. The IIED dialogue aimed to engage key stakeholders, including mineworkers, in a conversation about the future of ASM mining in Ghana (Photo: Friends of the Nation)
Women including mining engineer Judith Akorfa Buaba (centre) employed at the Dakete mine, in Ghana (Photo: Gabriela Flores Zavala)
Eighteen-year-old Maame Esi Rose, who washes ore to help her and two younger siblings survive, will contribute to the artisanal and small-scale mining sector dialogue in Ghana (Photo: IIED)

Talking mining in Ghana

News, January 2016
Levocatus Saidi Bujiku has been working as an artisanal miner for about two years (Photo: Brian Sokol/Panos Pictures)
Women crush and separate rocks containing gold ore for extraction at Nsangano Gold Mine, Mawemeru village, Geita, Tanzania (Photo: Brian Sokol/Panos Pictures)

Picturing the ASM space

Blog, June 2015
IIED's ASM workshop brought together stakeholders from across the Americas, sub-Saharan Africa and Asia to share their experiences and perspectives (Photo: Teresa Corcoran/IIED)
Employees work deep within a tunnel at the Nsangano Gold Mine, Mawemeru village in Geita District, Tanzania (Photo: copyright Brian Sokol/Panos Pictures)
Miners work deep within a tunnel at Nsangano gold mine in the Geita District (Photo: copyright Brian Sokol/Panos Pictures)

Gold for life

Blog, April 2015
A small-scale mine in Mawemeru village, Geita district, Tanzania (Photo: copyright Brian Sokol/Panos Pictures)

A mine of information

Blog, April 2015
The Zimbabwe Homeless People’s Federation secures houses, sanitation and land rights for members. Communication and participation are central to the way it works (Photo: Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI), Creative Commons via Flickr)
A small mining operation near Garies in the Western Cape, South Africa (Photo: jbdodane, Creative Commons via Flickr)
A group of miners who are working the Kawa Ijen volcano in Java, Indonesia. The miners carry sulfur down the volcano and to the processing centre where the sulfur is weighed and the miner is paid (Photo: Adam Cohn, Creative Commons, via Flickr)
Miners pushing a cart out of a mine near the Bolivian town of Potosi. For centuries this area had the richest silver mines in South America. Today many of the mines are worked by local cooperatives, but conditions are still harsh (Photo Nyall & Maryanne, Creative Commons via Flickr)
Ancestral miners rush to find gold and platinum ore at a mine wall opened by medium-scale mining (Photo: Ronald de Hommel)
Extractive industry workers are pictured on a beach; a new report recommends that transparency initiatives need to be more inclusive and relevant to local needs for communities most affected by oil, gas or mining projects (Photo: iStockphoto.com/Getty Images)
A panel discusses artisanal and small-scale mining at the Mining Indaba in Cape Town (Photo: Abbi Buxton/IIED)
An oil flare in Port Harcourt Nigeria.
Cover image from EITI and sustainable development: Lessons and new challenges for the Caspian region
Small-scale gold miners in Madagascar. Photo: Global Environment Facility
Open pit mine in Central Cebu, Philippines.
Small-scale miners dig soil mining for tin in Rwanda.
Key words related to mining and sustainable development (Image: IIED)
The Collahuasi copper mine in northern Chile is a zero-discharge operation, with much of its water being recycled (Photo: Pablo Necochea, Creative Commons via Flickr)

A meeting of mines

Blog, April 2010