IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jrpoli/v33y2008i4p203-209.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Reforming small-scale mining in sub-Saharan Africa: Political and ideological challenges to a Fair Trade gold initiative

Author

Listed:
  • Childs, John

Abstract

In sub-Saharan Africa, artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) has caused a range of environmental, social and economic problems. Most of the donor support pledged to improve conditions in the sector to date, however, has failed to facilitate marked improvements, in large part because emphasis has been placed on technical interventions; at the same time, impoverished miners' needs and concerns have been seriously overlooked. It is against this background that this paper critically examines the underpinnings and potential of "Fair Trade gold" as a solution to many of the problems plaguing the ASM sector and a mechanism for alleviating the hardships of its operators. Unlike the majority of ASM-support support measures implemented in the past, "Fair Trade gold" is entrenched in the discourse of "partnership" and "participation". To ensure its effectiveness initiatives must be adapted according to the specificities of ASM.

Suggested Citation

  • Childs, John, 2008. "Reforming small-scale mining in sub-Saharan Africa: Political and ideological challenges to a Fair Trade gold initiative," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 203-209, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jrpoli:v:33:y:2008:i:4:p:203-209
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301-4207(08)00044-5
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sally Smith & Stephanie Barrientos, 2005. "Fair trade and ethical trade: are there moves towards convergence?," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 13(3), pages 190-198.
    2. Mohammed Banchirigah, Sadia, 2006. "How have reforms fuelled the expansion of artisanal mining? Evidence from sub-Saharan Africa," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 165-171, September.
    3. N/A, 1996. "Note:," Foreign Trade Review, , vol. 31(1-2), pages 1-1, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sadia Banchirigah & Gavin Hilson, 2010. "De-agrarianization, re-agrarianization and local economic development: Re-orientating livelihoods in African artisanal mining communities," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 43(2), pages 157-180, June.
    2. Marylyn Carrigan & Morven McEachern & Caroline Moraes & Carmela Bosangit, 2017. "The Fine Jewellery Industry: Corporate Responsibility Challenges and Institutional Forces Facing SMEs," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 143(4), pages 681-699, July.
    3. Hilson, Gavin, 2009. "Small-scale mining, poverty and economic development in sub-Saharan Africa: An overview," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(1-2), pages 1-5.
    4. Sinan Erzurumlu, S. & Erzurumlu, Yaman O., 2015. "Sustainable mining development with community using design thinking and multi-criteria decision analysis," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(P1), pages 6-14.
    5. Saldarriaga-Isaza, Adrián & Villegas-Palacio, Clara & Arango, Santiago, 2013. "The public good dilemma of a non-renewable common resource: A look at the facts of artisanal gold mining," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 224-232.
    6. Munier, Nathan, 2016. "“The one who controls the diamond wears the crown! The politicization of the Kimberley Process in Zimbabwe”," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 171-177.
    7. Jennifer Kunz & Stephanie May & Holger J. Schmidt, 2020. "Sustainable luxury: current status and perspectives for future research," Business Research, Springer;German Academic Association for Business Research, vol. 13(2), pages 541-601, July.
    8. Fritz, Morgane M.C. & Maxson, Peter A. & Baumgartner, Rupert J., 2016. "The mercury supply chain, stakeholders and their responsibilities in the quest for mercury-free gold," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 177-192.
    9. Ledwaba, P.F. & Mutemeri, N., 2018. "Institutional gaps and challenges in artisanal and small-scale mining in South Africa," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 141-148.
    10. Meike Schulte & Sreejith Balasubramanian & Cody Morris Paris, 2021. "Blood Diamonds and Ethical Consumerism: An Empirical Investigation," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(8), pages 1-18, April.
    11. Sippl, Kristin, 2020. "Southern Responses to Fair Trade Gold: Cooperation, Complaint, Competition, Supplementation," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    12. Richard Perkins, 2013. "Sustainable Development and the Making and Unmaking of a Developing World," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 31(6), pages 1003-1022, December.
    13. Siwale, Agatha, 2018. "Can rural producer organisations transform rural production and trade? The case of Zambia's artisanal and small-scale mining associations," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 506-515.
    14. Heidingsfelder, Jens, 2019. "Private sustainability governance in the making – A case study analysis of the fragmentation of sustainability governance for the gold sector," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 1-1.
    15. Fernando Morante-Carballo & Néstor Montalván-Burbano & Maribel Aguilar-Aguilar & Paúl Carrión-Mero, 2022. "A Bibliometric Analysis of the Scientific Research on Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(13), pages 1-29, July.
    16. Bodenheimer, Miriam, 2014. "Certifying improvement, improving certification: An analysis based on the artisanal and small-scale mining sector," Working Papers "Sustainability and Innovation" S9/2014, Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI).
    17. Hook, Andrew, 2019. "Over-spilling institutions: The political ecology of ‘greening’ the small-scale gold mining sector in Guyana," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 438-453.
    18. Mark L. Wilson & Elisha Renne & Carla Roncoli & Peter Agyei-Baffour & Emmanuel Yamoah Tenkorang, 2015. "Integrated Assessment of Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining in Ghana — Part 3: Social Sciences and Economics," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 12(7), pages 1-24, July.
    19. Itohan Otoijamun & Moses Kigozi & Sikiru Ottan Abdulraman & Adelana Rasak Adetunji & Azikiwe Peter Onwualu, 2021. "Fostering the Sustainability of Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (ASM) of Barite in Nasarawa State, Nigeria," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-23, May.
    20. Hilson, Gavin & Hilson, Abigail & McQuilken, James, 2016. "Ethical minerals: Fairer trade for whom?," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 232-247.
    21. Gavin Hilson & Chris Garforth, 2012. "‘Agricultural Poverty’ and the Expansion of Artisanal Mining in Sub-Saharan Africa: Experiences from Southwest Mali and Southeast Ghana," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 31(3), pages 435-464, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hiroshi Fujiki & Edward J. Green & Akira Yamazaki, 1999. "Sharing the risk of settlement failure," Working Papers 594, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    2. Kris James Mitchener & Matthew Jaremski, 2014. "The Evolution of Bank Supervision: Evidence from U.S. States," NBER Working Papers 20603, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. , G. & , & ,, 2008. "Non-Bayesian updating: A theoretical framework," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 3(2), June.
    4. Jutta Kister, 2013. "Fair trade in Germany left the niche market. Power shifts observed in global fair trade value chains," Economia agro-alimentare, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 15(3), pages 35-54.
    5. Andrei Kapaev, 2013. "Remark on repo and options," Papers 1311.5211, arXiv.org.
    6. Daniel Sanches, 2016. "On the Inherent Instability of Private Money," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 20, pages 198-214, April.
    7. Ricardo de O. Cavalcanti & Andres Erosa & Ted Temzelides, 1999. "Private Money and Reserve Management in a Random-Matching Model," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(5), pages 929-945, October.
    8. James J. McAndrews & William Roberds, 1999. "Payment intermediation and the origins of banking," Staff Reports 85, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    9. Allen Head & Junfeng Qiu, 2007. "Elastic Money, Inflation, And Interest Rate Policy," Working Paper 1152, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    10. Hentati-Kaffel, R. & Prigent, J.-L., 2016. "Optimal positioning in financial derivatives under mixture distributions," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 52(PA), pages 115-124.
    11. Fong, Wai Mun, 1997. "Robust beta estimation: Some empirical evidence," Review of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 167-186.
    12. Freixas, Xavier & Parigi, Bruno M & Rochet, Jean-Charles, 2000. "Systemic Risk, Interbank Relations, and Liquidity Provision by the Central Bank," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 32(3), pages 611-638, August.
    13. repec:ulb:ulbcvp:p0025 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Santiago Moreno-Bromberg & Luca Taschini, 2011. "Pollution permits, Strategic Trading and Dynamic Technology Adoption," Papers 1103.2914, arXiv.org.
    15. Steven Brams & D. Kilgour, 1998. "Backward Induction Is Not Robust: The Parity Problem and the Uncertainty Problem," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 45(3), pages 263-289, December.
    16. Christian Volpe Martincus & Andrés Gallo, 2009. "Institutions and Export Specialization: Just Direct Effects?," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(1), pages 129-149, February.
    17. Zelenyuk, Valentin, 2015. "Aggregation of scale efficiency," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 240(1), pages 269-277.
    18. Junfeng Qiu, 2011. "Bank money, aggregate liquidity, and asset prices," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 12(2), pages 295-346, November.
    19. Antunes, Antonio & Peeters, Dominique, 2001. "On solving complex multi-period location models using simulated annealing," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 130(1), pages 190-201, April.
    20. John Wilkinson, 2007. "Fair Trade: Dynamic and Dilemmas of a Market Oriented Global Social Movement," Journal of Consumer Policy, Springer, vol. 30(3), pages 219-239, September.
    21. Postlewaite, Andrew, 1998. "The social basis of interdependent preferences," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(3-5), pages 779-800, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jrpoli:v:33:y:2008:i:4:p:203-209. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/30467 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.