ARTISANAL AND SMALL-SCALE GOLD MINES IN BURKINA FASO ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

The water trade, especially in the Sahel zone, remains the monopoly of the village that accepts to supply the miners with wells or boreholes. This trade, though an inexhaustible source of user conflicts with farmers, is a well-spring of substantial profits. The village of Boulonga (1,500 inhabitants) that, during the dry season, supplies about 50 m 3 /day of water to the neighbouring site of Alga at a cost of CFA 3,750/m 3 , daily receives in exchange between CFA 150,000 and 200,000 (up to € 305), or more than CFA 100/day/inhabitant. However, with the exception of some pit owners, most artisanal gold miners have neither the culture nor the financial capacity to build up a sizeable capital. Their “meagre” earnings of about CFA 800 to 1000 per day (€ 1,20 to 1,55 a day) are mostly spent on site to cover daily essentials, such as food, water, lodging, transport and health services, the cost of which commonly is prohibitive in artisanal gold mining areas. Most itinerant gold miners, whether local or foreign, have trouble saving enough to help the family that stays behind in the village. Most of the wealth locally created by gold-mining activity never leaves the province (Fig. 3). PRP: pit owner; GDP: pit watchman; MNR: miner; TRM: ore transporter; GDH: shed watchman; CON: crusher; PIL: grinder; TRE: water transporter; LVR: sluice washer; VAN: winnower; PRM: mill owner; MEU: miller; RLV: rewasher. Fig. 3 – Reference site of Alga – distribution of income (in kCFA/day) in terms of tasks and distance between mining site and the original village THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT NEEDS MONITOR<strong>IN</strong>G Artisanal gold mining in Burkina locally can cause adverse ecological impacts, such as unprotected abandoned sites, infertile farm land, damaged forests 4 , groundwater lowered through excessive pumping 4 At Gueguere (Ioba Province) equivalent of almost 30 ha of forest has been destroyed for shoring up a trench of 100 m length an 25 m depth. 8
(with non-recycled pumping water), and various types of Man-made pollution, in particular from electric batteries 5 . However, the main environmental problem resides in the massive use of chemicals on site, especially mercury. This element, legally forbidden and not even a decade ago virtually unknown by the artisanal gold miners in the country, today is found on almost all such sites of Burkina; it is estimated that in producing each gram of gold, between 0.5 and 1 gram of mercury is used for amalgamating the gold concentrates at the end of flotation. Nation-wide, between 500 and 750 kg Hg 6 are used annually on the sites; this mercury, which mainly originates from Ghana, is sold by the collectors for between CFA 500 and 1,000 (€ 0,75 an 1,50) per “ball” of 15 to 20 grams, or CFA 25 to 50/g. Under the climatic conditions of the country, most of the mercury will vaporize, and the risk of contaminating the water resources is minimal. As part of the PRECAGEME 7 project, eight water samples from the major Essakane site (Sahel province of Oudalan) were analysed (Zunino and Ki, 2001). No trace of mercury was detected (
Page 1 and 2: ARTISANAL AND SMALL-SCALE GOLD MINE
Page 3 and 4: P : Poura L : Pays Lobi 1 : Nagrigr
Page 5 and 6: However, in the cotton-growing sout
Page 7: F = PrD/PrR = PrD/[(Rtτ1 × Efτ1
Page 11 and 12: WHY THE CHOICE OF SMALL-SCALE ENTER
Page 13 and 14: 3. The gold is complexed on zinc at
Page 15 and 16: - Technical difficulties to have ac
Page 17 and 18: seeing the emergence of a network o

ARTISANAL AND SMALL-SCALE GOLD MINES IN BURKINA FASO ...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?