Search

Ethical supply chain initiatives, such as mandatory human rights due diligence (mHRDD) and responsible sourcing initiatives for minerals, are rapidly multiplying. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, faced with violent conflict and a range of human rights issues, has grown into a laboratory for such initiatives, to an extent that it has become difficult to see the forest for the trees. In this working paper, we make an attempt at providing a comprehensive – though inevitably incomplete – overview of initiatives, programmes, and projects (past, present, and upcoming) that have been created by actors at different levels of the supply chains in response to growing concerns around Congolese minerals. More specifically, these measures relate, first, to the 3Ts (tin, tantalum, tungsten) and gold, extracted in particular in the conflict-affected eastern provinces and second, the more recent booming demand for copper and cobalt (2C) from the provinces of Haut-Katanga and Lualaba in southeastern DRC. With a theoretical focus on participation, this working paper lays the groundwork for further research on the participation of small-scale producers in the design, implementation, and governance of transnational mineral supply chain initiatives.

Dans l’Est du Congo, le commerce des minerais constitue un moyen de subsistance pour les populations locales, mais aussi une source de financement pour les groupes armés. Face à ce dilemme, les entreprises ont été progressivement soumises à des obligations de vigilance, visant des chaînes d’approvisionnement responsables. Mais l’efficacité de cet outil se révèle faible dans ce pays, pour imposer le respect des droits humains et environnementaux.

Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) is the world's largest source of anthropogenic mercury emissions and releases. These have devastating consequences for miners' health and the environment. Most of the >20 million ASGM miners worldwide are not officially recognized, registered, regulated, or protected by state laws. Formalization-the process of organizing, registering, and reforming ASGM-is mandated by the Minamata Convention on Mercury. Previous attempts to reduce mercury emissions from ASGM have largely failed. Our perspective argues that signatories to the Convention will only succeed in reducing ASGM mercury emissions and releases with comprehensive bottom-up formalization approaches centered around working with miners, and significant external funding from consumers, large mining corporations, and governments. The approximate global 5-year cost of this approach could be US$355 million (upper and lower estimate bounds: US$213-742 million) if scaled per country, or US$808 million (US$248 million-US$2.17 billion) if scaled per miner.

In many mineral-rich regions across the globe, state actors are not the sole – or even the primary – actors regulating access to mineral wealth. Instead, a range of other actors are not only undertaking efforts to regulate access to mineral-bearing land, but are also fulfilling important functions in regulating labour markets. Examples include traditional or religious authorities, associations of traders, miners’ cooperatives, landowners, mining financiers, and non-state armed groups. In this chapter, we review anthropological approaches to mineral resource governance, focusing on what is governed as well as on how this governance takes place, by whom, and for whom. Relying on empirical examples from all over the world and reaching across scales – from the global to the local level – we reveal the complexities of social relations and the multiple interactions across different but entangled scales. Focusing on the governance of land and labour as the two key factors of production in mineral extraction, this chapter also provides important insights into who stands to benefit and lose from prevailing governance arrangements.

Ce papier cadre dans le projet "InForMining. Une étude approfondie de l'informalisation dans la production mondiale de l’or", financé par la Fondation pour la recherche flamande (FWO) et supervisé par le Prof. Dr. Sara Geenen et le Dr. Boris Verbrugge à l'Institut de politique de développement, Université d'Anvers en Belgique. Le projet a comme objectifs d’analyser les dynamiques d’informalisation dans la production mondiale de l’or, ainsi que leurs effets sur les travailleurs. En réponse au premier objectif, nous avons étudié l’informalisation comme une tendance structurelle dans le système mondial de production de l’or dans le livre "Global gold production touching ground" (Verbrugge et Geenen, 2020). En réponse au deuxième objectif, nous avons étudié la question du travail informel au sein des zones minières dans trois pays et trois continents : le Pérou en Amérique Latine, les Philippines en Asie et la RDC en Afrique. Dans ce papier nous présentons les résultats d’une enquête qui a été faite en RDC en collaboration avec le Centre d’Expertise en Gestion Minière (CEGEMI) de l’Université Catholique de Bukavu.

This paper is part of the project ‘InForMining. An in-depth study of informalization in global gold production’ funded by the Flemish Research Foundation (FWO) and supervised by Prof. Dr. Sara Geenen and Dr. Boris Verbrugge at the Institute of Development Policy (IOB), University of Antwerp, Belgium.2 The project has two main objectives: (1) to study informalization processes in the global gold production system and (2) to study their effects on workers. Responding to the first objective, we studied informalization as one of the structural trends characterizing global gold production. This resulted in the book Global Gold Production Touching Ground (Verbrugge & Geenen, 2020). In response to the second objective, we studied the question of informal labour in mining areas in three countries across three continents: Peru in Latin America, the Philippines in Asia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in Africa. In this paper, we present the results of a survey carried out by PhD student Eugenia Robles Mengoa and the team of Bantay Kita in the Philippines. Bantay Kita is a coalition of social organizations dedicated to the transparency and accountability of extractive industries. The data were analysed by Eugenia Robles and consultant Rafael López.