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Gold Mining’s Social Impact, Explained

Conflict, Child Labor, Human Rights: What a Gram of Gold Costs People

Gold mining supports more than 100 million people – and in parts of the world it also runs on child labor, displacement and armed violence. Very often the wealth and the harm arrive in the same place at the same time. Whether a gram of gold helps or hurts people depends on which mine it came from and how that mine is run.

Key insights

  • Gold mining's social impact cuts both ways. Across around 800 mines in 44 developing countries, household wealth rises near mines, and so do anemia in women and stunted growth in young children.
  • No product is linked to child labor in more countries than gold. The US Department of Labor lists gold from 26 countries as produced with child labor. The documented cases come overwhelmingly from informal small-scale mining.
  • Gold rushes follow a pattern. Prices, disease and school dropout rise with the boom. When the gold runs out, the jobs leave and the risks stay, as the 93 miners found dead in an abandoned South African gold mine in 2025 showed.
  • Much of the world's gold loses its origin on the way to market. At least 435 tonnes were smuggled out of Africa in 2022 alone, and Swiss trade statistics, for example, record where gold was shipped from, not where it was mined.
  • Bans have not solved the problem, and documented origin can help. Blanket bans on small-scale mining or mercury have pushed the trade underground. Certification and traceability to a named mine show buyers what their gold stands for.

Table of contents

Why gold mining's social impact is hard to pin down

Gold mining's social impact depends first on which of two very different industries is doing the mining. Large-scale gold mining produces around 80 to 85 % of the world's gold with roughly one million employees.1 Artisanal and small-scale gold mining produces the remaining 15 to 20 %. Some 15 to 20 million people work in it directly, and more than 100 million depend on it.2

What one wedding ring means in working time

An 8-gram wedding ring in 18-karat gold contains 6 grams of fine gold. A small-scale miner produces roughly one troy ounce, about 31 grams, a year; an industrial mine worker around 3 kilograms. So the same ring stands for about ten weeks of one small-scale miner's work – and for less than a single day of an industrial miner's.3

That is why most of the human side of gold, good and bad, plays out in small-scale mining, and why our overview of gold mining treats the two halves of the industry separately.

Wealth and harm in the same place

The best evidence on industrial mining describes both sides at once. A study of around 800 mines in 44 developing countries found that "gains in asset wealth (0.3 standard deviations) coexist with a higher incidence of health conditions linked to heavy metal toxicity: anemia among women (ten percentage points), and stunting in young children (five percentage points)."4 The study covers all minerals, not gold alone. Its message holds for gold mining's social impact, too: anyone who reports only one half is selling something.

Much of the rest has never been counted. No global survey measures how many people mines have displaced,5 and the International Labour Organization states that "no reliable data exist on injuries" in mining.6 People who work informally rarely appear in any statistic.

Jobs, income – and who keeps the money

Per kilogram of gold, small-scale mining employs around a hundred times as many people as industrial mining: roughly 25 to 40 against about 0.3.7 Artisanal operators account for around 90 % of all employment in gold mining.8

For many, it pays better than the alternatives. In Kamituga, in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, pit managers earned an average of 191 US dollars a week during production, their deputies 92 and diggers 24, and the miners surveyed placed themselves above farmers on a ladder of well-being.9 In Ghana, farm laborers who moved into small-scale mining raised their household spending per adult by 66.6 %.10

Few of them are choosing mining over a good job. Small-scale mining, as the Intergovernmental Forum on Mining puts it, "is generally pursued as a route out of poverty or as an activity to complement insufficient income, especially in communities where alternative employment is hard to come by."8

Much of the value never reaches the miners, though. Traders pre-finance tools, fuel and mercury against a share of the output. In a common arrangement in Ghana, 30 % of production goes to the concession holder and 40 % to the sponsor before the diggers split the rest.11 In Burkina Faso, miners at the mine site receive 85 to 87 % of the international gold price for small quantities, while exporters in the same country get 97 %.12

Industrial mining pays in through other channels. In 2024, the 28 member companies of the World Gold Council reported 66.4 billion US dollars in payments to their host economies, including 12.4 billion in wages and 10.4 billion in taxes and royalties. 740.9 million of it, or 1.1 %, went to local communities; the figures are self-reported.13 Near mines in Mali, households were 30 percentage points more likely to have floors of cement, tile or wood instead of earth.14

Local households tend to feel the gold price most where small-scale mining dominates. In Mali, gold price booms reduced poverty around mines, more so around artisanal than industrial operations.15 In Burkina Faso, a 1 % rise in the gold price raised household consumption near artisanal mines by 0.12 %, while the opening of an industrial mine had no measurable effect on local consumption.16 Both studies measure what reaches nearby households, not the taxes and wages paid further away.

What happens in a gold rush – and after it

The boom

Gold rushes have shaped whole societies, and not always for the better. During the California Gold Rush, the state's Native population fell from around 150,000 in 1846 to around 30,000 in 1873, according to historian Benjamin Madley. He counts between roughly 9,500 and 16,000 people directly killed.17

The state authorized 1.29 million dollars in 1850s money to fund militia campaigns against Native people, and in 2019 Governor Gavin Newsom apologized on behalf of the state: "It's called a genocide. That's what it was."18

South Africa's gold fields, discovered in 1886, built a migrant labor system that lasted a century. By 1899 the mines employed around 100,000 Black migrant workers, housed in compounds far from their families; at its peak in the late 1980s the workforce reached around 480,000 a year.19

The pattern repeats in modern rushes. Brazil's Serra Pelada drew 80,000 men and boys by the mid-1980s.20 Since 2012, a gold rush has spread across the Sahara and the Sahel. By 2019, more than two million people were mining gold by hand in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger alone, and the International Crisis Group warned the boom was offering "a new source of funding and potentially even recruits to several armed groups, including jihadists."21

Boomtowns

Mining towns pull in people faster than they can house them, and prices rise for everyone. Near Peru's Yanacocha gold mine, incomes rose, but so did "the local price of nontradable goods."22

Research across Africa finds lower educational attainment among people who grew up near a gold mine, because the prospect of mining work led young people to cut their schooling short.23 Higher mining output goes along with more tuberculosis, and migrant miners in southern Africa, as well as their partners, have markedly higher HIV rates.24

The bust

When the gold runs out, the benefits fade. A reanalysis of the Yanacocha data found that the local effects "fade with the mine exhaustion."25 What remains are the holes in the ground. South Africa alone counts 6,100 derelict and ownerless mines, and illegal miners reopen sealed shafts.26

At the closed Buffelsfontein gold mine in Stilfontein, police cut off food and water to force illegal miners to the surface. By the time the operation ended in January 2025, 93 bodies had been retrieved from underground.27

Dangerous work: accidents and disease

Unsafe work is one of the oldest social problems of gold mining. Mining accounts for about 1 % of the world's workforce but around 8 % of fatal accidents at work, across all commodities.6 Accidents are only part of the toll: dust and mercury damage health slowly, often for life.

Accidents: small mines are far deadlier

In small-scale mines, according to the International Labour Organization, accident rates are "routinely six or seven times higher than in larger operations."6 Shafts dug without engineering, no ventilation and no support are among the reasons.

Industrial gold mining has its own record. In 1995, 104 miners died at the Vaal Reefs mine in South Africa when an underground locomotive broke through a safety barrier and fell down a shaft onto a cage carrying miners. The disaster led to the country's Mine Health and Safety Act of 1996.28

Safety has improved since. Across the member companies of the International Council on Mining and Metals, the rate of recordable injuries fell from 5.07 per million hours worked in 2012 to 2.21 in 2025. Deaths have not followed: 39 people died at member operations in 2025, most often from falls of ground and accidents with mobile equipment. The figures cover all commodities and are self-reported.29

Silicosis: the long shadow of South Africa's mines

The largest documented health harm in gold is silicosis, an incurable lung disease caused by rock dust. Around 500,000 people are potentially eligible for compensation under a class-action settlement that six mining companies agreed to in 2018. The Tshiamiso Trust set up under the settlement holds around 5 billion rand.

By February 2026, around 23,000 claims had been processed and around 2.5 billion rand paid out: half the money, for fewer than 5 % of those potentially eligible. "The migrant labour system that built South Africa's gold economy was a machine for moving value in one direction," as one analysis put it.30

Mercury: a slow poison for miners and their families

Mercury is the most insidious health risk in small-scale gold mining. Miners bind gold particles into an amalgam with mercury and then burn the mercury off, often in the open, breathing in the vapor. The World Health Organization counts mercury among the ten chemicals of greatest public health concern and calls its use in small-scale gold mining "particularly hazardous."31

The effects reach the whole body. Mercury "may have toxic effects on the nervous, digestive and immune systems, and on lungs, kidneys, skin and eyes." Symptoms of poisoning include "tremors, insomnia, memory loss, neuromuscular effects, headaches and cognitive and motor dysfunction."31

Children and unborn babies are most at risk. Mercury poses "a particular threat to the development of the child in utero and early in life," according to the WHO.31 Women often burn amalgam at home, exposing their families, and mercury can pass to infants through breastfeeding.32

The damage also reaches people who never mine. Mercury washes into rivers, turns into methylmercury and builds up in fish. In three Munduruku Indigenous villages on Brazil's Tapajós River, 57.9 % of hair samples reached 6 micrograms of mercury per gram or more.33 In nine Yanomami villages, 84 % of 287 people tested were above 2 micrograms per gram.34 We describe how mercury travels through rivers and fish in our overview of gold mining's environmental impact.

Child labor in gold mining

Child labor is among the most widespread social problems in gold mining. On the 2024 list of the US Department of Labor, gold from 26 countries is named as produced with child labor, more than any other good. They range from Burkina Faso, Ghana and Mali to Peru, the Philippines and Venezuela. Gold from six countries, among them the Democratic Republic of the Congo and North Korea, is listed for forced labor.35

The International Labour Organization estimates that "more than one million children are engaged in child labour in mines and quarries" worldwide, across all minerals.36 Where gold has been measured, the shares are stark. In Burkina Faso and Niger, "some 30-50 percent of the gold mine workforce is comprised of children; most are under the age of 15." In Mali, around 20 % of artisanal gold miners are children.36 Across all sectors, around 138 million children worked in 2024, 54 million of them in hazardous work.37

The work itself is among the most dangerous there is:

  • Digging and hauling. In Mali, at least 20,000 children work in artisanal gold mines, and "children as young as six dig mining shafts."38
  • Mercury. Children handle "mercury to amalgamate gold with their bare hands," the ILO reports.36 In the Philippines, "the youngest child interviewed who burned the mercury-gold amalgam was 9 years old."39 In Ghana, where thousands of children work in gold mining, child miners "risk brain damage and other life-long disabilities from mercury poisoning."40
  • Abuse. In a 2023 survey of 1,316 children in gold mining communities in Nigeria, 44 % reported abuse, "including verbal, physical and sexual molestation."41

The problem is not shrinking everywhere. In Venezuela's Bolívar state, the US State Department reported in 2025 that "approximately 45 percent of miners" were children, "highly vulnerable to trafficking."42

Once refined, gold carries no trace of who dug it. A ring or a bar made from gold of unknown origin can contain gold mined by children without anyone along the chain knowing. Child labor in gold is concentrated where mining is informal and families have no other income. That is also where independent control makes the biggest difference: not a ban on paper, but an auditor who checks in the mine itself.

Women, forced labor and trafficking

Women make up around 30 % of the small-scale mining workforce worldwide, across all minerals, and up to half in some regions.43 They do much of the crushing, washing and panning, and often process gold with mercury at home.

They are largely "excluded from the highest-earning activities," and discriminatory property and mining laws keep many from holding land or licenses. Gender-based violence at mining sites "is not being actively monitored by governments."44 In industrial mining, women hold only 9 to 19 % of jobs in the twelve countries studied by the Intergovernmental Forum on Mining.45

Where mining is informal and remote, forced labor follows. In Peru, researchers documented deceptive recruitment and debt bondage in illegal gold mining, with some workers "told that their wages would be retained for their first 90 days of work."46 The US State Department's 2025 trafficking report states that traffickers exploit adults and children in forced labor in Peru "principally in illegal and legal gold mining, related activities, and service jobs in nearby makeshift camps."47

Women and girls pay a particular price. According to the same report, traffickers lure women and girls from Peru, Venezuela and Bolivia to remote mining areas with false job offers and exploit them sexually.

In Senegal's gold region of Kédougou, they exploit "women and girls as young as 12 years old in sex trafficking"; a study cited in the report estimates that one in five people in commercial sex there are trafficking victims. In Guyana's interior, Indigenous Warao women recruited as cooks in the mines are often forced into commercial sex.48

When Peruvian police raided La Pampa, the country's largest illegal gold mining area, in 2019, they rescued 52 women and 20 girls from trafficking in three operations.49

Land, resettlement and Indigenous rights

A large mine needs land, and people usually live on it. Of the mines researchers examined, around 44 % were linked to resettlement during operation, often more than once. Because companies rarely publish their resettlement plans, no one knows how many people have been moved overall.5 Of 270 documented resettlement events linked to mining since 1969, more than 90 % took place in fragile states.50

At Ahafo in Ghana, Newmont resettled around 2,200 people into 400 new houses and issued formal land titles for the first time, while disputes over crop compensation and a lack of jobs for young people remained.51

In Mali, the construction and expansion of the Sadiola gold mine displaced three villages. According to a 2007 investigation by the International Federation for Human Rights, the measures "did not enable the population to attain the same standard of living as before the move," and blasting cracked the new houses.52

At the Grasberg copper and gold mine in Indonesian Papua, the Amungme and Kamoro peoples lost access to 100,000 hectares of ancestral land. Indonesia's National Commission on Human Rights found that the operator "had never compensated the Amungme and the Kamoro as the original stewards of the land."53

International law protects Indigenous peoples unevenly. ILO Convention 169 requires governments to consult them "before undertaking or permitting any programmes for the exploration or exploitation" of resources on their lands (Article 15). Only for relocation does it require their "free and informed consent" (Article 16).54 Just 24 countries have ratified it, most of them in Latin America; in Africa, only the Central African Republic has. Germany ratified it in 2021.55

Company commitments lag further behind. In the 2022 Responsible Mining Index, only "a few companies" had formally committed to free, prior and informed consent, one of the lowest-scoring indicators assessed.56

In the Amazon, legal and illegal mining together cover more than 20 % of Indigenous lands.57 In Brazil's Yanomami territory, overrun by illegal gold miners, the government declared a public health emergency in January 2023.58

Violence around the mines

Some of the gravest abuses in industrial gold mining involve the people guarding the mines. At Porgera in Papua New Guinea, Human Rights Watch investigated six alleged gang rapes by members of the mine's security department between 2008 and 2010.59

At Barrick's North Mara mine in Tanzania, the research group RAID documents at least 77 people killed and 304 injured by the police responsible for mine security since 2006. Barrick disputes the account and points out that it does not control the police.60 In 2024, Barrick subsidiaries settled a UK High Court claim by 14 Tanzanian claimants without admitting liability.61

The killings have not stopped: Human Rights Watch linked police guarding the mine to at least six deaths between February and May 2024, with no arrests. Barrick says it "does not, and cannot, have any de facto control over the police."62

In July 2026, the dispute reached the gold market itself: 30 claimants joined a legal claim against the London Bullion Market Association over its certification of gold from North Mara. The allegations had not been tested in court as of September 2026.63

Where industrial concessions overlap with small-scale mining, clashes are common; we compare the two sectors in artisanal versus large-scale gold mining. In January 2025, Ghanaian soldiers shot small-scale miners on the AngloGold Ashanti concession at Obuasi. At least seven people died, according to the armed forces, and nine according to the national small-scale miners' association. No official findings had been published by 2026.64

At Kibali in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, around 5,500 diggers work inside the concession, and "security forces have used excessive force in efforts to clear these sites."65

People who speak up are at risk, too. Of 790 attacks on human rights defenders linked to business in 2025, 181 were connected to mining, more than any other sector, and 86 % of the identified perpetrators were state actors.66 Global Witness counted 124 land and environmental defenders killed worldwide in 2025, 11 of them in connection with mining.67 In Peru, 66.3 % of the country's socio-environmental conflicts are linked to mining.68

Conflict gold, crime and the money trail

When armed groups control the mines

Gold mining's social problems do not end at the mine gate. Gold is easy to carry and hard to trace, which makes it ideal for armed groups. In eastern Congo, 61 % of recorded small-scale miners faced illegal levies by armed actors, and 85 % of them work in gold.69

The US response made things worse. After the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 required companies to disclose so-called conflict minerals, violence rose in territories with gold mines: battles by 44 %, looting by 51 % and violence against civilians by 28 %.70

In 2024, the US Government Accountability Office concluded that the rule "has not reduced the occurrence or number of violent events in eastern DRC" and that most gold "was smuggled out of the DRC through neighboring countries, usually destined for Dubai."71

Sudan and Russia

In Sudan, gold helped finance the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary fighting the country's army since 2023. In January 2025, the US sanctioned the RSF's leader and seven companies in the United Arab Emirates, including a gold trader that "purchased gold from Sudan, presumably for the benefit of the RSF, and subsequently transported it to Dubai." The same day, the State Department determined that the RSF "has perpetrated genocide."72 At least 400 tonnes of gold were smuggled out of Sudan between 2012 and 2024.73

Gold has flowed to Russia, too. According to an estimate by the advocacy group 21 Democracy, Russia and the Wagner Group earned more than 2.5 billion US dollars from African gold between February 2022 and late 2023.74 The US has sanctioned Wagner-linked companies in the Central African Republic for converting local gold into US dollars.75

Peru and Venezuela

In Peru, criminal gangs fight over gold. In May 2025, 13 security workers of a contractor linked to the mining company Minera Poderosa were found murdered in a mine shaft in Pataz. The government imposed a curfew, sent in the military and suspended mining for 30 days.76 In Venezuela's Orinoco Mining Arc, a UN fact-finding mission found collusion between state actors and armed groups, and abuses including killings, disappearances and sexual violence.77

Where the gold goes

At least 435 tonnes of gold were smuggled out of Africa in 2022, worth 31 billion US dollars. That year, the United Arab Emirates took 47 % of Africa's gold exports and Switzerland 21 %.78

Switzerland is one of the world's biggest gold hubs, importing, trading and processing up to two-thirds of the gold mined worldwide.79 Between 2012 and 2022 Switzerland imported more than 1,670 tonnes of gold from the Emirates.78 Swiss trade statistics record the last country of shipment, not the mine, so gold from anywhere can arrive as Emirati gold.78

The money trail also runs through legal channels. African countries lose an estimated 450 to 730 million US dollars a year in corporate income tax to tax avoidance by multinational mining companies,80 and in a 2014 OECD analysis the extractive sector accounted for 19 % of foreign bribery cases, more than any other.81

Regulation leaves gaps. The EU Conflict Minerals Regulation, in force since 2021, requires importers of gold to check their supply chains along the lines of the OECD due diligence guidance. It does not cover recycled metals or finished jewelry, and in 2022 it applied to just 477 companies importing above its volume thresholds.82

Exempting recycled gold creates an incentive to declare gold as recycled. In practice, a single processing step after refining can be enough for freshly mined gold to be relabeled that way.83 More on this in our article on why regular recycled gold is not a solution.

Three claims that don't hold up

"Gold always brings the resource curse"

The evidence does not support it. A review of the research found that "only one type of resource has been consistently correlated with less democracy and worse institutions: petroleum, which is the key variable in the vast majority of the studies that identify some type of curse."84 Gold booms have reduced poverty in Mali.15 Specific harms, such as the effect on schooling described above, are real, but they are not a law of nature.

"Industrial mines use child labor on a large scale"

Documented child labor in gold comes from small-scale mining. Human Rights Watch's field research on children in Tanzania's gold mines deals exclusively with small-scale operations.85 Industrial mining has its own problems – security forces, land, disease – but children in the mine are not among the documented ones.

"Banning small-scale mining or mercury is the solution"

Bans have mostly moved the problem. Ghana banned small-scale mining from 2017 to 2018. Around one million people lost their income,86 yet "there was no notable decrease in unlicensed ASGM," and robberies rose in mining areas as people looked for other ways to survive.87

In Ecuador, mercury in mining is prohibited, but "it continues to be used clandestinely."88 The global mercury treaty deliberately sets no immediate ban, and the Fairmined Standard explains why: otherwise "95% of all artisanal miners would be excluded."89 And in Congo, the de facto boycott that followed Dodd-Frank brought more violence, not less.

Is there a better way?

Yes – gold mining's social impact can change, and it starts with knowing which mine your gold comes from. Refined gold looks the same whatever its origin, so only documentation tells you what it stands for. Some systems attach binding social requirements to the mine itself and have them checked independently:

  • The Fairtrade Gold Standard guarantees small-scale mines at least 95 % of the London gold price plus a premium of 2,000 US dollars per kilogram, spent by a committee that represents all social groups. FLOCERT audits compliance, including the ban on child labor, in the mine itself.90
  • The Fairmined Gold Standard pays a premium of 4,000 US dollars per kilogram, decided on by a committee that explicitly includes women miners, and has compliance checked by independent certification bodies.91
  • Swiss Better Gold accredits 27 small-scale operations in Colombia and Peru with 7,352 miners.92
  • Single Mine Origin keeps ethically mined gold from selected, well-run large-scale mines traceable to one named member mine.93
  • The IRMA Standard is the most demanding standard for industrial mines, with requirements on human rights and free, prior and informed consent. Six stakeholder groups, including affected communities and unions, govern it as equals. No mine whose main product is gold has completed an IRMA audit yet.94

Stepping stones matter, too. The CRAFT Code of the Alliance for Responsible Mining gives small-scale miners who cannot yet meet the Fairmined Standard a framework to show basic due diligence and improve step by step.95 The UN-backed planetGOLD programme had supported 41,821 miners in formalizing their operations by mid-2025.96

None of these systems makes a mining region prosperous overnight. What they change is who pays for better conditions, and who checks. What that looks like on the ground is the subject of our articles on responsible small-scale gold mining and responsible large-scale gold mining.

FAQs: Gold mining's social impact, explained

What are the social impacts of gold mining?

Gold mining supports more than 100 million people, mostly in small-scale mining. Its main social problems are child labor, dangerous working conditions, forced resettlement, violence by security forces and armed groups, and smuggling. Which of these dominates depends on the individual mine and how it is run.

Is child labor used in gold mining?

Yes. The US Department of Labor lists gold from 26 countries as produced with child labor, more than any other good. Almost all documented cases come from informal small-scale mining, where children dig shafts, haul ore and handle mercury.

What is conflict gold?

Conflict gold is gold whose mining or trade finances armed groups or human rights abuses. Documented examples include gold from eastern Congo, from areas controlled by Sudan's Rapid Support Forces and from Wagner-linked operations in the Central African Republic.

How does gold mining affect local communities?

It often brings income, jobs and infrastructure, but also rising prices, health risks, loss of land and conflict. Research across 44 developing countries finds household wealth and heavy-metal-related illness rising at the same time near mines.

Is gold mining ethical?

It can be, but not by default. Ethical gold mining requires fair pay, safe work, no child labor, respect for land rights and independent checks. Certified small-scale gold and gold traceable to a named, well-run mine are the most reliable ways to know.

Does recycled gold avoid these problems?

Not by itself. Recycling does not change conditions where gold is mined, and weak definitions allow freshly mined gold to be declared recycled after a single processing step. The EU Conflict Minerals Regulation does not cover recycled metals at all.

How can I tell if my gold was ethically sourced?

Ask for the name of the mine and the documentation behind it. A certificate from Fairtrade or Fairmined, or traceability to a single named mine, gives you an answer. "Recycled" or "responsibly sourced" alone does not.

Key takeaways

In a nutshell ...

  • Ask which mine, not which metal. Gold can bring income or harm to the same region; the mine, its operator and its buyers decide which.
  • Child labor is one of gold mining's most widespread social problems – and a solvable one. It is concentrated in informal small-scale mining, where independent audits in the mine make the difference.
  • Look past the refinery. Hubs record where gold was shipped from, not where it was mined, and recycled gold falls outside the EU's due diligence rules.
  • Excluding small-scale miners makes things worse. Bans and boycotts have cost incomes and fed violence; buying certified gold from them rewards the ones who do it right.
  • Ask for the mine – and the documentation behind it. Certification and single-mine traceability are the tools that let you see what a gram of gold stands for; whether you buy a ring, a bar or a kilogram for production, ask your supplier for both.

Get active, be the change!

Gold will keep being mined as long as people value it. The question is who benefits. We try to offer gold where that question has an answer: with documented origin, from mines that work under binding standards. Take a look at the ethical gold in our shop – or ask us what would fit your production.

Further reading

Sources

  1. planetGOLD, The planetGOLD programme and the large-scale gold mining sector (large-scale mining around 80 % of global gold production); World Gold Council, Gold mining industry contributed over US$171 billion to global economy, June 2, 2015: gold mining companies "directly employed over one million people" (2013 data). ↩
  2. planetGOLD, Frequently Asked Questions, 2024 (500–600 t a year); World Gold Council / Metals Focus, Gold Demand Trends Full Year 2025 – Supply, January 2026 (world mine production 3,671.6 t); 500–600 t of 3,671.6 t is 14–16 %; World Gold Council, Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining (up to 20 %; "up to 100m are indirectly reliant on ASGM"). Employment: UNEP Global Mercury Partnership, Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining (10–15 million); IGF, Transforming ASGM: Progress in Formalization, February 2025 ("just under 20 million miners"); planetGOLD, An Introduction to ASGM ("more than 100 million people"). ↩
  3. Our own calculation. 8 g ring in 750 alloy = 6 g fine gold. Small-scale: 15–20 million miners (midpoint 17.5 million) at 500–600 t (midpoint 550 t) gives around 31.4 g per miner and year, roughly one troy ounce (31.1 g); 6 ÷ 31.4 × 52 weeks ≈ 9.9 weeks. Industrial: roughly 3,122 t (3,671.6 t world mine production minus around 550 t from small-scale mining) shared by around 1 million employees gives around 3.1 kg per employee and year; 6 ÷ 3,122 × 365 days ≈ 0.7 calendar days. The two counts are not symmetrical – small-scale figures include seasonal and part-time work, industrial figures mostly full-time jobs, and industrial headcounts exclude many contractors – so the result is an order of magnitude, not a precise ratio. ↩
  4. von der Goltz & Barnwal, Mines: The local wealth and health effects of mineral mining in developing countries, Journal of Development Economics 139, 2019. All minerals, not gold alone. ↩
  5. Owen & Kemp, Mining-induced displacement and resettlement: a critical appraisal, Journal of Cleaner Production, 2015: "no global survey has assessed the scale of MIDR" (citing Downing 2002); 41 resettlement events at 33 mining sites; around 44 % of mines in the operating phase associated with resettlement. All commodities. ↩
  6. International Labour Organization, Mining: a hazardous work: mining accounts for "only ... one percent of the global workforce" but "about eight percent of fatal accidents at work"; "Accident rates in small-scale mines are routinely six or seven times higher than in larger operations"; "No reliable data exist on injuries." All commodities. ↩
  7. Our own calculation from notes 1 and 2: 15–20 million people at 500,000–600,000 kg of annual production gives 25 to 40 people per kilogram; around 1 million employees at around 3,122,000 kg gives about 0.3 per kilogram. Order of magnitude, see note 3. ↩
  8. IGF / IISD, Global Trends in Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (ASM), 2018, p. 3: artisanal operators contribute "to 90 per cent of total employment in gold mining". ↩
  9. Geenen, Stoop & Verpoorten, How much do artisanal miners earn? An inquiry among Congolese gold miners, Resources Policy 70, 2021: survey of 453 miners in Kamituga, South Kivu, 2015; "pit managers earn on average $191 per week, their right hands $92, experts $52 and pelleteurs $24" during production periods. Earnings vary strongly over time. ↩
  10. Mabe, Dauda & Owusu-Sekyere, Artisanal small-scale mining, farm labour attraction and household welfare in Ghana, Resources Policy 86B, 2023: farm laborers who joined small-scale mining "increased their consumption expenditure per adult equivalent by 66.6 percent". ↩
  11. OECD, Illicit Financial Flows: Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining in Ghana and Liberia, 2020, p. 31. ↩
  12. planetGOLD / The Impact Facility, Overcoming Practical Barriers for Integrating Responsible ASM Gold into International Supply Chains, September 2022, p. 5: 85–87 % of the LBMA fix at the mine site for small quantities, 97 % for exporters. ↩
  13. World Gold Council, The Social and Economic Contribution of Gold Mining, 2024 data, published 2025; self-reported by member companies. Share our own calculation: 740.9 million ÷ 66.4 billion = 1.12 %. ↩
  14. Chuhan-Pole, Dabalen & Land, Mining in Africa: Are Local Communities Better Off?, World Bank, 2017. All industrial mining in the study countries, predominantly gold. ↩
  15. Coulibaly, Foltz, Parker, Olurotimi & Traoré, The effects of mining on local poverty in developing countries: Evidence from Mali, World Development 180, 2024. ↩
  16. Bazillier & Girard, The gold digger and the machine. Evidence on the distributive effect of the artisanal and industrial gold rushes in Burkina Faso, Journal of Development Economics 143, 2020: "a 1% increase in the gold price increases consumption by 0.12% for households near artisanal mines. Opening an industrial mine, in contrast, has no impact on local consumption." ↩
  17. Benjamin Madley, An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873, Yale University Press, 2016, summarized by the USC Center for Advanced Genocide Research, Benjamin Madley lecture summary, October 31, 2016: "Between 1846 and 1873, the California Indian population plunged from 150,000 to 30,000"; between 9,492 and 16,094 California Indians killed, "and probably more". The decline had several causes, including killing, disease, starvation and enslavement; the population figures are estimates. ↩
  18. Office of Governor Gavin Newsom, Executive Order N-15-19, June 18, 2019: "the state authorized $1.29 million in 1850's dollars to subsidize these militia campaigns". Quote from Newsom's speech: Erin Blakemore, History.com, California Slaughtered 16,000 Native Americans. The State Finally Apologized For the Genocide, June 19, 2019. ↩
  19. Vosloo, Extreme apartheid: the South African system of migrant labour and its hostels, Image & Text 34, 2020: "by 1899, 13 years after the discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand, the gold mines employed 100,000 black migrants"; Harington, McGlashan & Chelkowska, A century of migrant labour in the gold mines of South Africa, Journal of the South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, March 2004 (peak of around 480,000 a year in 1986–88; around 90,000 in 1899). ↩
  20. Timothy Killeen, A Perfect Storm in the Amazon, 2nd edition, 2021, republished by Mongabay, Brazil's wildcat mining is deeply rooted in its politics and thirst for minerals, July 2024: "At its peak in the mid 1980s, the population of miners reached 80,000 men and boys". ↩
  21. International Crisis Group, Getting a Grip on Central Sahel's Gold Rush, Africa Report No. 282, November 13, 2019: "more than two million individuals in these three countries are directly involved in artisanal gold mining: one million in Burkina Faso, 700,000 in Mali and 300,000 in Niger". ↩
  22. Aragón & Rud, Natural Resources and Local Communities: Evidence from a Peruvian Gold Mine, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 5(2), 2013, pp. 1–25. ↩
  23. Ahlerup, Baskaran & Bigsten, Gold Mining and Education: A Long-run Resource Curse in Africa?, Journal of Development Studies 56(9), 2020 (working paper version): individuals with a gold mine in their district during adolescence have "significantly lower educational attainment", explained by "myopic educational decisions when employment in gold mining is an alternative". Mostly industrial mines. ↩
  24. Stuckler, Basu, McKee & Lurie, Mining and risk of tuberculosis in sub-Saharan Africa, American Journal of Public Health 101(3), 2011 (country level, all minerals; the association with gold output holds after adjusting for HIV); Corno & de Walque, Mines, Migration and HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa, Journal of African Economies 21(3), 2012: migrant miners from Lesotho and Swaziland around 15 percentage points higher HIV prevalence. ↩
  25. Orihuela & Gamarra-Echenique, Fading local effects: boom and bust evidence from a Peruvian gold mine, Environment and Development Economics 25(2), 2020, pp. 182–203. ↩
  26. Auditor-General of South Africa, Media statement: Derelict and Ownerless Mines Performance Audit%20FINAL%20(002).pdf), March 31, 2022: 6,100 derelict and ownerless mines; "illegal miners open previously sealed mine openings". All commodities. ↩
  27. Parliament of the Republic of South Africa, Media Statement: Minerals and Petroleum Resources, Police Committees Welcome Presentations on Derelict Mines and Operation Vala Umgodi, March 18, 2025: "93 dead bodies that were retrieved from underground". On the operation: Daily Maverick, Stilfontein mine rescue ends with 78 dead, 246 rescued and ringleaders in custody, January 16, 2025. ↩
  28. Minerals Council South Africa, We remember Vaal Reefs, on the accident of May 10, 1995 and the Mine Health and Safety Act 29 of 1996. ↩
  29. ICMM, ICMM reports 2025 safety performance of members, July 30, 2026: 26 reporting member companies, all commodities, employees and contractors; self-reported. Leading causes in 2025: fall of ground (10) and mobile equipment (10). ↩
  30. AngloGold Ashanti, South African silicosis and TB class action settlement, 2019 (six companies; Tshiamiso Trust); Fidelis Hove, South Africa: Gold Mining's Long Shadow, Daily Maverick via allAfrica, September 3, 2026 (around 500,000 potentially eligible; around 23,000 claims processed and around 2.5 billion rand paid by February 2026; quote). Trust of around 5 billion rand: AngloGold Ashanti (above). Share our own calculation: 23,000 ÷ 500,000 = 4.6 %; 2.5 ÷ 5 billion rand = 50 %. ↩
  31. World Health Organization, Mercury and health, fact sheet, October 24, 2024: "Mercury is considered by WHO as one of the top ten chemicals of major public health concern"; "Mercury use in artisanal and small-scale gold mining is particularly hazardous, and health effects on vulnerable populations are significant." ↩
  32. World Bank / Delve, 2023 State of the Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining Sector, 2024: women "processing gold with mercury in their homes"; mercury "can be transferred to young and unborn children through breastfeeding". ↩
  33. Basta, Viana, de Vasconcellos et al., Mercury Exposure in Munduruku Indigenous Communities from Brazilian Amazon, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 18(17):9222, 2021: 57.9 % of 197 hair samples at or above 6 µg/g. ↩
  34. Fiocruz, Yanomamis from nine villages harassed by illegal mining are contaminated with mercury, April 2024: 84 % of 287 hair samples above 2.0 µg/g, Upper Mucajaí, data collected in October 2022. ↩
  35. US Department of Labor, Bureau of International Labor Affairs, 2024 List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor, September 2024. Gold listed for child labor in 26 countries (Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Colombia, DR Congo, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Indonesia, Kenya, Mali, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Peru, Philippines, Senegal, Sudan, Suriname, Tanzania, Uganda, Venezuela, Zimbabwe) and for forced labor in 6 (Burkina Faso, Chad, DR Congo, North Korea, Peru, Venezuela); gold is the good with the most child labor listings. ↩
  36. International Labour Organization, Child Labour in Mining and Global Supply Chains, May 2019. The figure of more than one million children covers mines and quarries worldwide and all minerals; the share for Mali refers to a 2015 study. ↩
  37. ILO / UNICEF, Child Labour: Global Estimates 2024, Trends and the Road Forward, June 11, 2025. All sectors; the report gives no separate figure for mining. ↩
  38. Human Rights Watch, Mali: Artisanal Mines Produce Gold with Child Labor, December 6, 2011 (report A Poisonous Mix). ↩
  39. Human Rights Watch, "What … if Something Went Wrong?" Hazardous Child Labor in Small-Scale Gold Mining in the Philippines, September 30, 2015. ↩
  40. Human Rights Watch, Precious Metal, Cheap Labor: Child Labor and Corporate Responsibility in Ghana's Artisanal Gold Mines, June 10, 2015. ↩
  41. International Labour Organization, Child labour in the artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) sector in Nigeria: A situational analysis, 2023; 1,316 children in four communities. ↩
  42. US Department of State, 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report: Venezuela, September 2025, reproduced by ecoi.net. ↩
  43. World Bank, World Bank Urges Action for Gender Equality in Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining, February 5, 2024, on the Delve 2023 State of the Sector report: 13.4 million women, 30 % of 44.67 million people in small-scale mining, all minerals, likely an undercount; IGF / IISD, Women in Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining: Challenges and opportunities for greater participation, 2018: women "make up around 30 per cent of the total workforce, and up to 50 per cent in some regions". ↩
  44. World Bank / Delve, 2023 State of the Sector (note 32) and World Bank press release (note 43): "Discriminatory property laws and land tenure agreements"; "Gender discrimination, enshrined in mining laws"; gender-based violence "is not being actively monitored by governments at ASM sites" (report). ↩
  45. IISD / IGF, Women and the Mine of the Future: Global Report, April 2023. All mining, twelve countries. ↩
  46. Verité, Risk Analysis of Indicators of Forced Labor and Human Trafficking in Illegal Gold Mining in Peru, January 2013. ↩
  47. US Department of State, 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report: Peru, September 2025, reproduced by ecoi.net. ↩
  48. US Department of State, 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report: Peru (note 47), Senegal ("A research study estimated one in five individuals in commercial sex in Kedougou are sex trafficking victims") and Guyana, September 2025, reproduced by ecoi.net. ↩
  49. Diana Hidalgo, IDEHPUCP, Luego de Mercurio 2019: los resultados de este mega operativo respecto de la trata de personas, Revista Memoria, April 30, 2019: "52 mujeres adultas y 20 niñas" (52 adult women and 20 girls; translation Fairever). ↩
  50. Owen, Kemp, Lèbre, Harris & Svobodova, A global vulnerability analysis of displacement caused by resource development projects, The Extractive Industries and Society 8, 2021: 270 mining-induced displacement and resettlement events, 1969–2019; more than 90 % in fragile states. All commodities. ↩
  51. ICMM, Managing the impacts of resettlement: Ahafo, case study with Newmont figures. ↩
  52. International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Mali: Mining and human rights – International fact-finding mission report, 2007, p. 20. ↩
  53. Mongabay, Grasberg mine's riches still a distant glitter for Papuan communities, October 2017, reporting the findings of Indonesia's National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM). ↩
  54. International Labour Organization, Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169), Articles 15 and 16. ↩
  55. United Nations Treaty Collection, Convention (No. 169) concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries, accessed September 2026: 24 ratifications, Germany the most recent (2021). Regional distribution (most ratifications in Latin America; in Africa only the Central African Republic) from the ratification list. ↩
  56. Responsible Mining Foundation, Responsible Mining Index Report 2022 – Summary, 2022, p. 33: 40 companies, 250 mine sites, all commodities; assessment of public disclosure only. ↩
  57. World Resources Institute, New Study Reveals Mining in the Amazon Threatens 20% of Indigenous Lands, October 7, 2020. Legal concessions and illegal mining, all commodities. ↩
  58. Brazilian Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, Dois anos de ações federais na Terra Yanomami, January 20, 2025. ↩
  59. Human Rights Watch, Gold's Costly Dividend: Human Rights Impacts of Papua New Guinea's Porgera Gold Mine, February 1, 2011. ↩
  60. RAID, Barrick's Tanzania gold mine, one of the deadliest in Africa, investigation April to October 2022; Barrick, North Mara: response to allegations. ↩
  61. RAID, Barrick subsidiaries settle UK court case alleging deaths and injuries at North Mara, March 27, 2024. ↩
  62. Human Rights Watch, Tanzania: Police Linked to Killings at Gold Mine, June 12, 2024. ↩
  63. Leigh Day, New allegations of killing and torture by security forces at African gold mine as 30 people join legal claim against the London Bullion Market Association, July 9, 2026. ↩
  64. Dubawa Ghana, Obuasi shooting: all the details about the killing of miners by Ghana's military, January 30, 2025. Accounts of the death toll differ between the Ghana Armed Forces (7), the government (8) and the Ghana National Association of Small Scale Miners (9). We found no published findings of the official inquiry as of September 2026. ↩
  65. IPIS and PAX, Mapping artisanal mining sites in the Kibali gold mine concession, December 8, 2025. ↩
  66. Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, Navigating a global crossroads: Human rights defenders and business in 2025, 2026: 790 attacks in 80 countries, 181 linked to mining. ↩
  67. Global Witness, At least 124 Land and Environmental Defenders killed globally in 2025, September 16, 2026. ↩
  68. Defensoría del Pueblo del Perú, Reporte de Conflictos Sociales n.° 270, August 2026, press note of September 21, 2026: 92 socio-environmental conflicts, of which 66.3 % linked to mining (all mining, not gold alone). ↩
  69. IPIS, Analysis of the interactive map of artisanal mining areas in eastern DRC – 2023 update, 2023: 829 sites, around 132,320 miners. The interference share covers all commodities at the surveyed sites; 85 % of the miners recorded work in gold. ↩
  70. Stoop, Verpoorten & van der Windt, More legislation, more violence? The impact of Dodd-Frank in the DRC, PLOS ONE, 2018: "For territories with the average number of gold mines, the introduction of Dodd-Frank increased the incidence of battles with 44%; looting with 51% and violence against civilians with 28%, compared to pre-Dodd Frank averages." ↩
  71. US Government Accountability Office, Conflict Minerals: Peace and Security in Democratic Republic of Congo Have Not Improved with SEC Disclosure Rule, GAO-25-107018, October 2024. ↩
  72. US Department of the Treasury, Treasury Sanctions Sudanese Paramilitary Leader, Weapons Supplier, and Related Companies, January 7, 2025; see also US Treasury, Treasury Sanctions Companies Fueling the Conflict in Sudan, June 1, 2023. ↩
  73. SWISSAID, African Gold Report: Sudan: "At least 400 tonnes of gold have been smuggled out of Sudan between 2012 and 2024." Estimate. ↩
  74. Berlin, Clement, Elufisan, Hicks & Kész, The Blood Gold Report, 21 Democracy, December 2023: "Wagner and Russia have earned more than US$2.5 billion from blood gold since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022." Advocacy publication based on qualitative case studies of the Central African Republic, Sudan and Mali; not independently verified. ↩
  75. US Department of the Treasury, Treasury Sanctions Illicit Gold Companies Funding Wagner Forces and Wagner Group Facilitator, June 27, 2023: Midas Ressources and Diamville; "In 2022, Diamville participated in a gold selling scheme that entailed converting CAR-origin gold into U.S. dollars." ↩
  76. Infobae, Mineros secuestrados en Pataz fueron hallados sin vida, May 4, 2025. Minera Poderosa stated that the workers "brindaban servicios a contratista vinculado a la empresa" (provided services to a contractor linked to the company; translation Fairever). ↩
  77. UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela, The human rights situation in the Arco Minero del Orinoco region and other areas of the Bolívar state, A/HRC/51/CRP.2, September 2022. ↩
  78. SWISSAID, Press release: Gold study 2024 and On the trail of African gold, May 30, 2024: "At least 435 tonnes of gold was smuggled out of Africa in 2022, the equivalent of 31 billion USD"; UAE 47 %, Switzerland 21 % and India 12 % of African gold exports in 2022; Swiss imports of "more than 1670 tonnes of gold" from the UAE between 2012 and 2022; "gold imported from the UAE is considered Emirati even if its real origin is elsewhere". Estimates. ↩
  79. ETH Zurich, Swiss Minerals Observatory, Swiss Minerals Observatory, accessed September 2026: Switzerland "even imports up to two-thirds of globally extracted gold." Other figures differ because they measure different things: the Swiss Federal Council puts Swiss refineries at "etwa 40 Prozent der weltweiten Kapazitäten" (about 40 percent of global refining capacity; Goldhandel und Verletzung der Menschenrechte, November 14, 2018; translation Fairever); WWF Switzerland states that "50%–70% of the world's gold" is refined in Switzerland, without giving a basis, and notes that only around a third of the gold bought by large Swiss refineries is unrefined mined gold (The Impact of Gold, 2021, pp. 3 and 22); SWI swissinfo.ch estimates that Switzerland "refines roughly one-third of this newly mined gold" and traces the often-quoted 70 % to a 2012 industry estimate (US tariff negotiations reaffirm Switzerland's role as a gold hub, updated November 17, 2025). Imports and trade include refined bars, recycled and investment gold that pass through the country, so they exceed the share of newly mined gold actually refined there. ↩
  80. IMF, Countering Tax Avoidance in Sub-Saharan Africa's Mining Sector, November 5, 2021, on the IMF Departmental Paper Tax Avoidance in Sub-Saharan Africa's Mining Sector, 2021. All mining. ↩
  81. OECD, OECD Foreign Bribery Report, December 2, 2014: 427 cases concluded between 1999 and 2014; the extractive sector – oil, gas and mining together – accounted for 19 %. ↩
  82. European Commission, The regulation explained (obligations from January 1, 2021; "Those operating beyond the metal stage do not have obligations under the regulation"); Regulation (EU) 2017/821, Article 1 (1(6): the regulation "shall not apply to recycled metals"); European Commission, Review of the Conflict Minerals Regulation, COM(2024) 415, September 24, 2024: in 2022, 477 of 8,286 identified EU importers of tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold were above the volume thresholds. ↩
  83. IUCN NL, Recycled but not responsible: loopholes in recycled gold from the Amazon, May 7, 2025. ↩
  84. Michael L. Ross, What Have We Learned about the Resource Curse?, Annual Review of Political Science 18, 2015, p. 241. ↩
  85. Human Rights Watch, Toxic Toil: Child Labor and Mercury Exposure in Tanzania's Small-Scale Gold Mines, August 28, 2013. ↩
  86. Osei, Yeboah, Kumi & Fredua Antoh, Government's ban on Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining, youth livelihoods and imagined futures in Ghana, Resources Policy 71, 2021: "approximately one million persons, who were engaged in the sector lost their jobs and income sources". Estimate. ↩
  87. Hunter & Ofosu-Peasah, Mapping Ghana's Expanding Gold Sector. Part One: The Challenges of Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining, Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, June 2025, pp. 34–35. ↩
  88. planetGOLD, Ecuador: "Although the use of mercury in mining is prohibited by law, it continues to be used clandestinely throughout the ASGM sector." ↩
  89. Minamata Convention on Mercury, Text and annexes, Article 7 and Annex C (reduce and, where feasible, eliminate mercury use in small-scale gold mining through national action plans); Alliance for Responsible Mining, Fairmined Standard for Gold from Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining, version 2.0, 2014, section 2.1: an immediate elimination would mean "95% of all artisanal miners would be excluded". ↩
  90. Fairtrade International, Fairtrade Standard for Gold and Associated Precious Metals, version 1.2 (in force until June 30, 2027): minimum price of 95 % of the LBMA fixing and Fairtrade Premium of 2,000 US dollars per kilogram of fine gold (4.5.3/4.5.4); premium committee representative "in number and gender" (4.1.1); land rights, free prior and informed consent, ILO Convention 169 (1.4.2/1.4.3). Audits by FLOCERT. ↩
  91. Alliance for Responsible Mining, Fairmined Standard 2.0 (note 89): Fairmined Premium of 4,000 US dollars per kilogram of fine gold (5.2.5); premium committee with fair representation of all social groups, including women miners (4.1.1/4.1.2); certification by certification bodies recognized by ARM. ↩
  92. Swiss Better Gold Association, Impact Report 2025, 2026: 27 accredited operations in Colombia and Peru, 7,352 miners; 960,566 US dollars invested in 28 projects in 2025. Programme figures, not the effect of any single product. ↩
  93. Single Mine Origin, SMO Gold: "Every ounce of SMO Gold is traceable to a named source mine"; SMO, SMO Gold Introduction Brochure, 2026: "SMO only works with carefully selected member mines, that adhere to the strictest ESG principles and undergo an annual assurance audit". ↩
  94. IRMA, Independently Assessing, last updated July 13, 2026 (gold appears only as a by-product at platinum group metal mines); Governance (two board representatives from each of six sectors); IRMA Standard for Responsible Mining, v1.0, 2018 (social requirements include human rights due diligence and free, prior and informed consent). ↩
  95. Alliance for Responsible Mining, CRAFT Code 2.1, October 16, 2024 ("an open and collaborative framework that drives progressive improvement in artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) practices", aligned with the OECD Due Diligence Guidance); Standards and certification (an achievable benchmark for organizations "not currently capable of meeting the advanced performance requirements of the Fairmined Standard"). CRAFT is a framework, not a certification label. ↩
  96. planetGOLD, Annual Progress Report 2024–2025, cumulative results to June 2025: 41,821 miners assisted in their formalization; programme in 28 countries, funded by the Global Environment Facility and led by UNEP. ↩
About the authorS
Picture of Florian Harkort

Florian Harkort

Florian Harkort founded Fairever in 2015 after witnessing the harsh realities of artisanal gold mining first-hand during his work in development cooperation. He believes that gold can only be truly beautiful when its origin is transparent and the people behind it are treated with dignity. Today, he challenges vague sustainability claims and advocates for responsible gold that supports mining communities instead of hiding them from view. His goal: to give jewelers, brands, and investors the clarity they need to choose gold with a proven positive impact.
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