©SAM
September 14th, 2015
Artisanal and small-scale mining in Colombia and Mongolia has success stories but also faces certain challenges in the formalization of the activity and in ensuring that it is a responsible and sustainable source of income for miners and their communities. Today a high-level delegation from Mongolia led by the Minister of Mines and composed by the Mineral Resource Authority of Mongolia, and other industry representatives, come to Colombia to meet with a number of important public and private institutions who work in the mining sector in the country to learn from the Colombian experience as well as to share its own.
The visit has been organized by the Alliance for Responsible Mining (ARM) and the Presidential Agency for International Cooperation of Colombia, APC-Colombia, in collaboration with the Sustainable Artisanal Mining Project (SAM Project) of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). Mongolia and Colombia are both among the countries where a number of artisanal and small-scale gold mining organizations have reached Fairmined Certification. The Fairmined Standard and Certification System was developed by ARM to encourage the implementation of good social, environmental, organizational and economic mining practices through access to ethical markets. Through Fairmined Certification, ARM seeks to contribute to the transformation of artisanal and small-scale mining and improve the quality of life of the miners and their communities.