Understanding and improving policy and regulatory responses to artisanal and small scale mining
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Author(s)
O'Faircheallaigh, Ciaran
Corbett, Tony
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2016
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Show full item recordAbstract
Artisanal and Small Scale Mining (ASM) constitutes an important and growing component of the global economy. It has the potential to create livelihoods for people who have few other income earning opportunities, and to retain within national economies a large share of the wealth it creates. At the same time its potential negative environmental and social impacts are considerable. Given this combination of characteristics, ASM richly deserves to be a focus of policy and regulatory effort by the states in which it occurs. There is unfortunately little sign of such effort. ASM is often ignored by politicians and regulators. ...
View more >Artisanal and Small Scale Mining (ASM) constitutes an important and growing component of the global economy. It has the potential to create livelihoods for people who have few other income earning opportunities, and to retain within national economies a large share of the wealth it creates. At the same time its potential negative environmental and social impacts are considerable. Given this combination of characteristics, ASM richly deserves to be a focus of policy and regulatory effort by the states in which it occurs. There is unfortunately little sign of such effort. ASM is often ignored by politicians and regulators. When it does attract their focus, policy tends to be inconsistent over time and characterised by wide discrepancies between legislation, policy rhetoric and policy practice. This article uses a heuristic model to illustrate key features of existing policy and regulatory responses, and to identify the basis for a more coherent and effective response. It argues that such a response must be focused on the local or regional level because it is here that knowledge exists regarding the realities of ASM on the ground, and because national governments lack capacity for effective regulation in the remote areas where ASM often occurs.
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View more >Artisanal and Small Scale Mining (ASM) constitutes an important and growing component of the global economy. It has the potential to create livelihoods for people who have few other income earning opportunities, and to retain within national economies a large share of the wealth it creates. At the same time its potential negative environmental and social impacts are considerable. Given this combination of characteristics, ASM richly deserves to be a focus of policy and regulatory effort by the states in which it occurs. There is unfortunately little sign of such effort. ASM is often ignored by politicians and regulators. When it does attract their focus, policy tends to be inconsistent over time and characterised by wide discrepancies between legislation, policy rhetoric and policy practice. This article uses a heuristic model to illustrate key features of existing policy and regulatory responses, and to identify the basis for a more coherent and effective response. It argues that such a response must be focused on the local or regional level because it is here that knowledge exists regarding the realities of ASM on the ground, and because national governments lack capacity for effective regulation in the remote areas where ASM often occurs.
View less >
Journal Title
The Extractive Industries and Society
Volume
3
Issue
4
Copyright Statement
© 2016 Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, providing that the work is properly cited.
Subject
Human geography
Economic development policy