Completed
The official estimates indicate that 500,000 people are directly involved in artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) in Indonesia, with 3 million people dependent on income generated by ASM activities. While ASM can be a source of poverty alleviation, the sector is frequently associated with significant environmental impacts including mercury pollution and deforestation. ASM activities in Indonesia operate mostly outside of a formal regulated framework. Following a three-year initial phase of the UN-REDD program in 2012, the Government of Indonesia passed several decrees to curb deforestation, including from ASM activities. In 2013, the Government of Indonesia signed the Minamata Convention on Mercury, a treaty that calls for new measures to formalize and regulate ASM. The government has also indicated the need to increase its understanding of the sector in order to develop appropriate policies and legislation to implement the treaties.
Led by Dr. Sam Spiegel from the University of Edinburgh, in partnership with a local NGO Yayasan Tambuhak Sinta (YTS), this project provided technical assistance to the Indonesian government at the district, provincial and national levels to improve the design and implementation of environmental policies for the ASM sector. The program advanced several objectives and capacity-building activities to promote sustainability, gender equity in development, and strengthened capacities for multi-level governance in rural Indonesia. In particular, the project supported government planning, training, and policy development as well as community initiatives using participatory methods to strengthen approaches toward land use and resource management in artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) areas.
The three principal components of the project included:
Gender
Environment
Governance
The dissemination of the project findings informed national authorities and the international community of policy and legislative challenges related to ASM in Indonesia. Through increased knowledge, local and national officials were equipped to work together towards a sustainable development plan that alleviates poverty. The project also benefited miners by increasing their capacity to engage with the government and facilitating access to project data to inform the discussion.
February 5, 2019 – Yayasan Tambuhak Sinta (YTS), in collaboration with Dr. Samuel Spiegel of the University of Edinburgh and supported by the Canadian International Resources and Development Institute (CIRDI), recently held a […]
By Dr. Sam Spiegel, University of Edinburgh. In this blog, Sam writes about his research for the CIRDI project Capacity-Building for Multi-Level Governance of ASM in Indonesia. Sam is […]