Informal, Legal, or Illegal? Varieties of Artisanal Mining in the Global South

Yudi Partama Putra ; The population of this study is the S1 students of the 2015 Academic Year of Muhammadiyah University of Bengkulu. The number of participants who participated in the experiment is 123 students. The technique of taking samples was using purposive sampling with the criteria of samples had completed Management and Public Sector Accounting. Method of data collection used was through experimental method by using questionnaires and manipulation on research subjects. The validity test used was Pearson Product Correlation test, while the reliability test used was Cronbach Alpha. The hypothesis test used in this research was ANOVA which was accompanied by Post Hoc tukey test. The Research results showed that: 1) The level of information asymmetry has an influential information on the budgetary slack. It was shown by F-count > F-table, which is 8.302> 2.68 and p-value 0.000; 2) The Honesty influenced the correlation between information asymmetry and the budgetary slack. This is shown by F-count > F-table, which was 4,785 < 2.68 and p-value 0.010 <0.05; and 3) The results of tukey HSD and bonferoni showed that there was a difference between low and medium information asymmetry with a difference of 0.77401 and statistically significant with p = 0.0428. The difference between low information asymmetry and high information asymmetry was 0.339581 with a significance of 0.0000, the difference between moderate information asymmetry and high asymmetry was 0.339580 and the difference between medium and high asymmetry was 0.262179 with a significance of 0.003.
 Key Words: Budgetary slack, information Asymmetry, Honesty

Recent expansion of artisanal gold mining along the Bandama River (Côte d’Ivoire)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to organize the theoretical landscape surrounding explanations of the impact asymmetry and heterogeneity on inter‐firm relationships, especially alliances.Design/methodology/approachA conceptual framework integrating the resource‐based view, transaction cost economics and industrial organization is put forth to better understand asymmetry and heterogeneity in alliances.FindingsIt is argued that low asymmetry and low heterogeneity are best addressed from an industrial organization perspective. Transaction cost economics best explains alliances in high asymmetry and low heterogeneity situations while the resource‐based view is most appropriate for high heterogeneity and low asymmetry alliances. In the case of high asymmetry and high heterogeneity, the tension between the resource‐based view and transaction costs economics is reconciled.Research limitations/implicationsResearchers gain an original re‐framing of the theoretical landscape that will assist in generating new insights for future theory development.Practical implicationsThe paper lays the ground for new research directions while leaving practitioners with a better understanding of the lenses through which they should examine their firms' cooperative endeavours.Originality/valuePrevious literature seldom addressed the categorization of various theoretical approaches along the notions of asymmetry and heterogeneity in inter‐firm relationships.

This study aimed to determine the psychosocial health status of women artisanal miners in the Philippines. Their socio-demographic characteristics and psychosocial health status are described to formulate a self-efficacy enhancement program to respond to their needs. This study utilized a descriptive multiple case study design. Primary data were gathered via a simple questionnaire regarding the respondents' socio-demographic profile and psychosocial health status. Other primary data sources included key informant interviews, respondents' journal entries, observations and outputs during the structured learning exercises, focus group discussion transcripts, and a researcher's log. Documentary reviews also were utilized to obtain additional facts. The respondents were selected through a fishbowl method. Results show that the participants' coping process, attitude of perseverance and stress management have a moderate impact on their ability to manage life experiences. The study resulted in a proposal for a self-efficacy enhancement program to improve the psychosocial health of women artisanal miners.Keywords: women miners, psychosocial health, coping process, stress management, self-efficacyIn March 2008, the theme Babae, Yaman Ka Ng Boyan [Woman, You Are a Treasure of the Nation], emphasizing the worth of women in nation building, was bannered to celebrate Women's Month in the Philippines. In Barangay Puntalinao, Banaybanay, Davao Oriental, Philippines, active artisanal and small-scale magnesite mining activities are visible to the community and visitors. Banaybanay is the last municipality of Davao Oriental, bordering the municipality of the Pantukan, Compostela Valley Province. Women join men at tilling and extracting minerals from steep mountains. This site was visited in October 2007 for an environmental scanning and initial investigation. The idea of conducting a study was discussed with the artisanal miners and they showed interest in the benefits of the study.The southern part of Mindanao is rich in mineral resources. Nickel reserves are worth $215 billion (USD), copper reserves are worth $6.49 billion and gold reserves are worth $2.01 billion. Mindanao accounts for 48% of the country's gold and 83% of the nickel reserves. According to Ambassador Li Jinjun, investors believe that the mining industry is the ace of Mindanao. In agreement, former resident of the Republic and current congresswoman of the province of Pampanga, the Honorable Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has made the revival of the mining industry one of her key tools in sustaining the country's economic growth (Bautista, 2005).According to the United Nations Development Program (1999), women involved in mining are more likely to be family-centered than men and spend their earnings on food, clothing, education and agriculture. In the Philippines, women artisanal miners' daily routine involves direct exposure to sunlight, climbing difficult mountains, tilling and extracting minerals, and carrying heavy sacks of rocks, in addition to household chores and family obligations after work. Moreover, some women are undergoing the physiological discomforts of menopause.In a focus group discussion (FGD) on perseverance, the women artisanal miners reported that they can bear the heat of the sun, the hazards at work and the workload at home in order to preserve their families and provide what is needed. Their husbands' incomes are not enough for their families' basic needs, typical of the life conditions of the rural poor in the Philippines. According to the Barangay Captain [Puntalinao community leader], these women persist at low-paying quarrying activities to subsist. Women artisanal miners manifest the spirit to persevere in life through their backbreaking work hours. This labor includes quarrying the rocks with a hammer and wedge, hitting the rocks in succession to break them into small pieces, packing them in a sack (which generally weighs no less than 110 pounds), and carrying the sacks to the buyer's loading area. …

An Exploration of the Psychosocial Health Status of Women Artisanal Miners in Mindanao, Philippines

Young adult heterozygous Lurcher mice constitute an excellent model for studying the role of the cerebellar cortex in motor performance-including the acquisition of new motor abilities-because of the early postnatal degeneration of almost all of their Purkinje and granular cells. Wild-type and Lurcher mice were classically conditioned for eyelid responses using a delay paradigm with or without an electrolytic lesion in the interpositus nucleus. Although the late component of electrically evoked blink reflexes was smaller in amplitude and had a longer latency in Lurcher mice than that in controls, the two groups of animals presented similar acquisition curves for eyeblink conditioning. The lesion of the interpositus nucleus affected both groups of animals equally for the generation of reflex and conditioned eyelid responses. Furthermore, we recorded the multiunitary activity at the red and interpositus nuclei during the same type of associative learning. In both nuclei, the neural firing activity lagged the beginning of the conditioned response (determined by orbicularis oculi muscle response). Although red nucleus neurons and muscle activities presented a clear functional coupling (strong correlation and low asymmetry) across conditioning, the coupling between interpositus neurons and either red nucleus neurons or muscle activities was slightly significant (weak correlation and high asymmetry). Lurcher mice presented a nonlinear coupling (high asymmetry) between red nucleus neurons and muscle activities, with an evident compensatory adjustment in the correlation of firing between interpositus and red nuclei neurons (a coupling with low asymmetry), aimed probably at compensating the absence of cerebellar cortical neurons.

This study experimentally examines the breakup dynamics and droplet statistics of laminar impinging microjets with asymmetric pre-impingement lengths. Dual-view high-speed imaging, combined with proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) and droplet size measurements, is applied over a wide range of jet Weber numbers (Wej). Two distinct atomization modes are identified. Under low-asymmetry conditions, breakup is governed by the aerodynamic-wave mode, in which aerodynamic waves developing at the trailing-edge drive ligament formation and droplet shedding. Under high-asymmetry conditions, a new upper-sheet-perforation-induced mode emerges, characterized by periodic perforations in the upper sheet and rim–jet interactions that establish a self-sustained breakup cycle and periodic atomization. Breakup length increases with Wej, but the scaling differs: nonlinear under low asymmetry and nearly linear under high asymmetry. POD analysis confirms the separation of modal responses and shows that geometric asymmetry intensifies oscillations and accelerates sheet destabilization. Droplet sizes follow lognormal distributions in all cases. For low asymmetry, the distribution width is largely insensitive to Wej and the median droplet size remains nearly constant. For high asymmetry, the distribution width decreases as Wej increases, while the median size changes little, resulting in narrower spectra and more uniform sprays. These findings clarify the distinct modal pathways of asymmetry-regulated atomization and provide guidance for the design and optimization of impinging-jet atomizers.

The most recent Global Mercury Assessment estimates that human-made mercury releases are approximately 2,220 tons per year and that a significant source is artisanal and small-scale gold mining (UNEP 2019). The ubiquity of mercury and its negative effects on human health and the environment have given rise to mercury governance schemes at different administrative scales, and Colombia banned the substance from mining in 2018. This ban is depicted as protecting the environment and human health from toxic mercury, but it has been highly contested within artisanal and small-scale gold mining communities. This contribution will show that the contestations of the mercury ban are intimately related to the deeply political and representational qualities of mercury held by artisanal and small-scale gold producers. Hence, mercury governance has become an important dimension of a broader negotiation over the place of historically marginalized and increasingly criminalized artisanal and small-scale gold producers in contemporary extractivism. The combination of legal framework analysis with semi-structured interviews and ethnographic work in two gold mining towns in Colombia provides a more nuanced and politicized understanding of local opposition to mercury governance that moves beyond simplistic assumptions about mercury users and their contaminated bodies. 

Facing the rapid proliferation of artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) in the 2000s, states with commodity-dependent economies pursued different strategies to regulate the activity. While some states have chosen to co-operate — that is, they have included informal miners in policy enforcement processes — others have chosen to coerce; that is, they have used heavy-handed policies against informal miners. This article assesses the effectiveness of these strategies in increasing compliance. We leverage a view of policy effectiveness that considers the type of state-society relations a policy fosters. We look at how different state-society relations impact the relevance a policy has to the subject it attempts to regulate. We argue that although imperfect, co-operation helps the state overcome its limitations on the knowledge of ASM and its limited institutional powers to enforce regulations alone. By learning about the activity in question and developing ties with the informal miners, the state can produce feasible regulation that is more likely to be followed. We build our theory using a parsimonious sequential game that highlights the relationship between the state and the informal miners. We illustrate the equilibrium by comparing the outcomes of the regulatory strategies pursued in Bolivia and Peru during the commodity boom of the 2000s.

Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining (ASGM) in Archaean greenstone provides a significant source of income for rural communities. Understanding of the particle size distribution of gold is an important parameter for its recovery as it determines the most appropriate and effective mineral processing methods. However, published information is scarce. This study set out to determine the particle size distribution of gold in the ASGM areas in Migori, southwest Kenya. The Neoarchaean Migori Greenstone Belt in southwest Kenya hosts the ‘Migori Goldbelt’. Gold mainly occurs in coarsely crystalline quartz 'reef' veins associated with sulphide mineralisation as well as in banded iron formations and more disseminated in tuffaceous rocks. Based on scanning electron microscope grain count data, the mean particle size of the gold grains was found to be 3.5 μ m, too fine-grained for effective recovery by sluice boxes. Taking the weight of the gold particles into consideration, 80 per cent of the weight of the gold is coarser than 15 μ m and could be recovered using a shaking table. Adopting improved ASGM practices would increase the recovery of fine-grained gold and help to reduce the amount of hazardous substances used in the recovery process. Improved gold recovery would help to boost local economies, secure livelihoods and enhance the quality of life for ASGM communities.

Artisanal gold mining in Pelangan Village, Sekotong District, West Lombok relies on two main ore-processing methods: the gelondong (ball-mill) and rendaman (soaking) system. While these practices support the local economy, the separate use of mercury in gelondong and cyanide in rendaman raises serious environmental concerns. This study evaluates and compares the environmental impacts of both systems using a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. Data were collected through direct observation, field interviews, and secondary sources, and analyzed with SimaPro 9.0 using the ReCiPe 2016 Midpoint (H) method. The assessment covered impact categories including global warming, human toxicity, eutrophication, and aquatic ecosystem toxicity. The results show that the gelondong system contributes the most to global warming, with total emissions of 15,140.71 kg CO₂-eq, compared to 12,989.67 kg CO₂-eq from the rendaman system. In the human toxicity category, gelondong generated 11,318.86 kg 1,4-DCB-eq, significantly higher than the 3,995.82 kg 1,4-DCB-eq produced by rendaman. These findings demonstrate that both methods present distinct environmental risks. Practical interventions such as wastewater treatment and mercury-capture technologies are essential to reduce chemical pollution and promote more sustainable artisanal mining practices.

A responsible mining approach to the economic modeling of small-scale gold mining

We live in a time where new technologies seem to promise new solutions to old problems. One example of digitalisation that is very in fashion right now is blockchain technology. Blockchains are the subject of a lot of media hype: promising everything from the protection of privacy to its final destruction, from a new intrusion of artificially intelligent machines to the salvation of humanity. As discussed in Industriall’s research paper, The Challenge of Industry 4.0 and the Demand for New Answers, mining falls into the ‘low’ immediate impact category of Industry 4.0. However blockchain technology ranks high among pathways proposed to address and tackle labour abuses and other unsustainable practices in mineral supply chains. What is a Blockchain? Fundamentally, blockchain is an information security strategy. It provides a different level of security than, say, defending a database at the perimeter of the computer it resides on. Blockchain security is at the level of specific records or blocks of data, structured in what are called ‘linked lists’. Each item on each list has identifying data and a pointer to the previous item and/or the next item. Each new block of data must authenticate itself at particular nodes by some kind of proof, for example performing a mathematical operation on the current block, in order to be added to the chain. This proof must be difficult to falsify but easy to verify, to discourage spammers and hackers. This creates a data chain where one can be reasonably certain that each item was added in chronological order and not manipulated. It works fairly well with Bitcoin, for example. It is this property that makes blockchain seem attractive for the task of verifying the cobalt supply chain. Cobalt mining and the DRC New technologies such as smartphones and electric vehicles require batteries, and have greatly increased global demand for cobalt, a rare metal. It is estimated that over 60 percent of the world’s cobalt resources are to be found in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Industriall general secretary Valter Sanches recently described the working conditions at some multinational mining companies’ operations in the DRC as ‘appalling and disturbing’. In a letter to DRC President Kabila after a fact-finding mission to Glencore’s DRC mines, Sanches wrote that the global union was ‘saddened and outraged’ to discover ‘the daily experience of abuse and violation of fundamental labour rights of Congolese mine workers at these operations are in total disregard of the laws of the country and collective bargaining arrangements. The testimonies of around 80 workers represented by the union, offer clear proof of the abuse and violation of their labour rights and human rights, extending beyond the mine operations into their homes, families, communities and the surrounding environment’. A traceable and verifiable digital record of cobalt from its origin in mines in the DRC through to its installation in the battery of a Tesla would, proponents argue, enable anyone to know exactly when and in which mine – and potentially even by which miners – the particular cobalt in a particular battery was produced. This could provide assurance that environmental and social abuses, such as child labour, or abuse of trade union rights – were not used in the production of the cobalt, or if they were, enable tracing and tackling the abuses for remedy or punishment. Access to remedy is fundamental, and represents the litmus test for blockchain technology’s utility in bridging the divide between abuse and remedy. Technological Limitations It is worth remembering that even though we use terms like ‘blockchain’, in reality there is no abstract entity called a blockchain, it is just a network of physical computers, owned by a variety of people, using an agreed-upon authentication protocol. Where are these physical computers, and what are their characteristics? Are they vulnerable to failure or compromise? The application of blockchain to the cobalt supply chain raises the problem of capacity. It can be assumed that most small-scale producers, particularly so-called artisanal miners, will not have the resources or capacity to participate as a node in the chain. Artisanal mining, even though it is legal in the DRC and forms a large part of the...

Artisanal mining in Southern Tanzania: Preliminary reflections on a ‘Green squeeze’

An energy-saving method of organic dyeing of agates