SITUATION ANALYSIS OF THE SMALL-SCALE GOLD ... - WWF

essential baseline data for regulatory efforts. Regulation remains impossible as
long as we do not know who we are dealing with.
Secondly, the mining population is heterogeneous in terms of ethnic origin,
family background, living conditions, and many other socio-cultural aspects.
Some garimpeiros are transitory visitors to Suriname, with little vested interest in
the country other than its gold. Others have established families, sent their
children to Suriname schools, learned the local language, and are integrated in
Suriname society. There are Maroon men from forest villages who work for nine
months in a row in the mines, away from their wife and children, who suffer from
a lack of clean water and malaria at home. Yet the Maroon mining population also
includes women who come to trade for a couple of weeks out of the year. They
may be sharing their meals with a Hindustani excavator operator, who has come
to earn investment money for a business in town. Prior to developing
interventions, policy makers should identify a target group and consult with
members of this group to assess program relevance and efficiency.
Last, Suriname miners are not systematically organized, for reasons discussed in
an earlier WWF report 2 . It is impossible to approach miners as individuals.
Miners‟ participation in workshops and other elements of participatory policy
reform requires that miners form cooperatives or associations. We are not the first
to observe this. To date, however, no governmental department or nongovernmental
organization has made a serious effort to organize local small-scale
miners.
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