Gold mining is a dirty and dangerous industry. It can displace communities, contaminate drinking water, hurt workers, and destroy pristine environments.
Picture a vast, dry, Martian like landscape ravaged by industry and polluted by the dumping of toxic waste. Here, men, women and sometimes children are forced to work long hours, often in intense heat and terrible conditions for wages that will barely meet their basic needs. Indigenous communities are frequently displaced and lose their traditional ways of living, their land, and often their rights. Miners earn as little as a $1 a day. As well as frequent serious injuries, daily exposure to massive levels of lead, mercury cyanide and nitric acid affects permanently the health of workers, causes premature births and even death.
Heavy metals leak into the earth around mines and contaminate drinking water. Gold for just one ring produces around 20 tonnes of toxic waste, all too frequently dumped into the world’s waterways polluting waters around the world, threatening the drinking water, food supply and health of communities as well as aquatic life and ecosystems.
Picture a vast, dry, Martian like landscape ravaged by industry and polluted by the dumping of toxic waste. Here, men, women and sometimes children are forced to work long hours, often in intense heat and terrible conditions for wages that will barely meet their basic needs. Indigenous communities are frequently displaced and lose their traditional ways of living, their land, and often their rights. Miners earn as little as a $1 a day. As well as frequent serious injuries, daily exposure to massive levels of lead, mercury cyanide and nitric acid affects permanently the health of workers, causes premature births and even death.
Heavy metals leak into the earth around mines and contaminate drinking water. Gold for just one ring produces around 20 tonnes of toxic waste, all too frequently dumped into the world’s waterways polluting waters around the world, threatening the drinking water, food supply and health of communities as well as aquatic life and ecosystems.
The International Labour Organisation estimates that about one million children aged 5 to 17 are engaged in small-scale mining and quarrying activities worldwide. These children toil under dangerous conditions and go without access to schools, health clinics, and other basic necessities. |
A detailed account of exploitation in a gold mine in Uganda has recently been published in the Telegraph. Anyone with compassion and conscience may care to bother to read it.
If you don't want to be party to this suffering ...
Solidaridad, which founded the first fair-trade label for coffee in 1988, has been working with miners, traders, jewellers, and fair-trade organizations to develop a framework for responsible gold mining. Since 2006, the organization has been training miners in Latin America to improve their environmental and social practices and gain access to the European market. It has also initiated support programs for miners in Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, where working conditions are even more grim.
Solidaridad wants to make fair-trade gold the standard, not the exception.
It's not difficult to buy rings which are Fairtrade and Fairmined certified. There are jewellers around the country such as John Titcombe in Bristol, Jon Dibben in Cranleigh and Kaanaanmaa in Wokingham.