Health and environment in Congo's artisanal mines: a participatory action project.

Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) accounts for approximately one fifth of global mine production and sustains tens of millions of livelihoods. At the same time, it is associated with a range of detrimental environmental and health impacts. For instance, ASGM is linked to deforestation, mercury pollution, respiratory diseases, and mine accidents such as tunnel collapses, asphyxiation, drowning and landslides. Since about six years I am codirector of CEGEMI, the Expertise Center on Mining Governance at the Catholic University of Bukavu in DRC's South Kivu province. Previous research by CEGEMI members has documented some of the abovementioned health and environmental effects. Yet despite these risks, hundreds of thousands of people continue working and living in the mines, as they (in)directly depend on them for their livelihoods. Nevertheless, they are likely to suffer from the consequences of deforestation, water, dust pollution and soil degradation in the long run. What remains little understood, however, is whether the persistence of such harmful practices is mostly a matter of limited information, of limited resources (financial, material), of prioritization (trade-off between short-term economic gain and long-term gains), of structurally unequal power relations, of bad governance or misguided government policies, or due to something else. As long as this is insufficiently understood, all proposed solutions risk to either not be adapted to the context, or not be accepted by local populations (as happened in the case of the recent Ebola outbreak). Building on this and together with a CEGEMI team, I aim to find out how artisanal miners and local communities, but also other supply chain actors and (non-)governmental organizations can be actively involved in sensitization and adoption of better mining practices. To this end, we will set up a participatory action research in one selected mine, and try to learn from this experience to set up similar projects in other mines in the future.

Keywords:OCCUPATIONAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH, PREVENTION, HEALTH EDUCATION

Disciplines:Environmental health and safety, Occupational health and safety, Ecological anthropology, Medical anthropology, Social and cultural anthropology