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Articles on Gold mining

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Loss of formal employment in the mining industry and drought conditions in neighbouring countries are some of the factors that drive illegal mining. The Washington Post via Getty Images

Artisanal gold mining in South Africa is out of control. Mistakes that got it here

Artisanal gold mining is highly organised and rule-bound. Men, women and even children participate a hierarchy sustained by a web of buyers, sponsors and customers.
Bisimwa Hardy, 22, emerges from a shaft at Luhihi in South Kivu with a bag full of stones destined to the crusher to separate the stone from the gold. Photo by Guerchom Ndebo/AFP via Getty Images

Small-scale gold miners in DRC challenge the view that they can’t cut it

As a dynamic and mechanising form of production, artisanal mining is in more direct competition with large corporations than is commonly perceived.
An astronaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS) took this photograph of numerous gold prospecting pits in eastern Peru. (NASA/SS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center)

Pictures from outer space reveal the extent of illegal gold mining in Peru

NASA satellite images reveal the extent of gold-mining in Peru. This information can be used to shut down illegal mining and prevent environmental destruction and contamination.
Antonio, from the Yanomami village of Watoriki, photographed in November 1992. After contact with Brazilian society in the 1970s, more than half the Yanomami population died from infectious diseases. William Milliken

Covid-19, isolated indigenous peoples and the history of the Amazon

There are telling parallels between the current pandemic and those that decimated indigenous populations in the post-Columbian era in the Amazon.
Mining is a highly destructive endeavour towards our environment but demand for gems and minerals is non-stop; early colonial relationships continue to define these industries. Shutterstock

Earth Day: Colonialism’s role in the overexploitation of natural resources

Much of the devastation of our globe’s natural resources traces its origins to early colonialism. These relationships continue to define the extraction of resources that severely impact ecosystems.
Old mine sites suffer many fates, which range from simply being abandoned to being incorporated into towns or turned into an open-air museum in the case of Gwalia, Western Australia.

Afterlife of the mine: lessons in how towns remake challenging sites

The industrial patterns of mining shaped many Australian towns, which found varied uses for disused mine sites. The mining boom ensures the challenges these sites present will be with us a long time.

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