PIRE-Sustainable Communities & Gold Supply Chains: Integrating Responsible Engineering & Local Knowledge to Design, Implement & Evaluate Sustainable Artisanal Mining in L America

Colorado School Of Mines, Golden CO

Investigators

Abstract

Juan Lucena (PI), Elizabeth Holley, Jessica Smith, Nicole Smith, Kathleen Smits (Colorado School of Mines) This project brings together cutting edge engineering, social science scholarship, and community development to make artisanal and small scale gold mining (ASGM) more sustainable. ASGM is common in mineral rich developing countries. This type of mining produces about 30% of the gold in the world used in jewelry, finances, electronics, aerospace, and medicine. ASGM causes large-scale deforestation, air/water contamination, and chronic human diseases, especially from the mercury used to process the ore. Despite these impacts, ASGM is a critical livelihood strategy for millions of people worldwide. Existing efforts to introduce sustainable ASGM practices, primarily through mercury-free processing technologies, have not achieved long-term sustainability because they are believed by miners to be inefficient or uneconomical. This project will break this trend by educating US engineers to co-design, implement and evaluate sustainable and culturally appropriate ASGM technologies and practices with miners and affected communities in Colombia and Peru. For the first time, US engineering faculty and students will work with Colombian and Peruvian faculty, students, and mining communities to develop improved technologies and techniques, coupled with social organizations, to make ASGM cleaner, safer, and more sustainable. While tackling this complex international problem, this project will contribute to developing a global US engineering workforce. ASGM systems are simultaneously social, technical, and ecological, involving miners and communities, geologic deposits, ecosystems, technologies, and scientific and engineering expertise. This project will break new scholarly ground by developing an integrated, community-centered approach to discovering how the multiple dimensions of ASGM production systems influence one another, in order to design, implement, evaluate, and ensure long-term sustainability of ASGM practices. Using a combination of social science, human-centered design, and engineering methods, this project will make at least 4 key scholarly contributions: 1) identifying the local knowledge that miners and affected communities hold on mercury exposure, on techniques for minimizing this exposure, and on environmental remediation strategies; 2) advancing engineering and social science research on the role of local knowledge in participatory environmental monitoring; 3) widening the ASGM social science and engineering literatures to include remediation; 4) testing criteria for Engineering for Sustainable Community Development in the real world. This project will also test how engineering students from two different educational models (training in humanitarian engineering vs. expanded curriculum in the humanities & social sciences) compare in how they understand the social context of engineering and how they work with non-US peers and communities. Through the project's affiliation with the Alliance for Responsible Mining, the Governors' Climate and Forests Task Force, and the networks of its Advisory Board, the project can expand its impact beyond Colombia and Peru into other countries as well as beyond gold mining into other minerals like cobalt.