“Gold fever in Cabo” – Is a cleaner, greener artisanal gold mining that is healthier for everyone possible?
“The opinions expressed in this publication are exclusively those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the point of view of the Alliance for Responsible Mining, its Board of Directors or its technical team.”
Maria Sacchetti´s article, Coordinator of medicusmundi in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique
Namuno, one of the districts of the southern region of the Cabo Delgado province – located in north Mozambique – has a gold-rich subsurface. This is, however, nothing compared to what it was back in the day according to artisanal miners of the region, when gold was much more abundant. Each passing day it is necessary to dig deeper and use more complex machinery to reach the gold.
Most miners come together to form associations, try to get legalized through the Ministry of Mineral Resources, and practices mining in areas under concession of the Government, avoiding problems with the authorities in this way. But legalization is not an easy process – it requires money and the ability to do the paperwork required by bureaucracy. Some associations work jointly with small companies or investors, which supply them with equipment (machinery), fuel, and buy the extracted gold from them.
Gold fever in Cabo Delgado, Every human activity has an impact on the land, and artisanal mining is linked to social, environmental and health issues. The use of mercury for extraction, as well as the illegal trade in this chemical and in gold, are some of the problems that we have been attempting to mitigate since 2017 with the Artisanal Mining: Environmental and Cultural Rights in Cabo Delgado project here at medicusmundi, in association with the Centro Terra Viva local NGO and the Danish Diálogos NGO, funded by the European Union. One of the project’s objectives is to increasingly introduce alternative gold extraction methods that do not use mercury. Among the various alternatives, and considering the….ReadMore
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