Gold deposits in Colombia

Colombia is very rich in gold and other mineral resources. Once you get to know more about the mining industry, this is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because these resources can add significant value to the country's economic development. A (potential) curse because mining always leaves an environmental and social footprint. Can a balance be found?

Mario Escobar is an entrepreneur from Colombia who firmly believes that a balance can be found and that clean and socially responsible mining can be done. His company ASHMONT started a few years ago with a few Canadian investors. Mario worked previously at the Bogota Stock Exchange and became convinced that the country's mining industry needed a new and holistic approach. His company has a few licenses for gold and copper exploration in three different provinces. One of their projects is in Minas Santa Cruz, a community which I visited in February this year. A group of migrant artisanal miners started the community 24 years ago and it is truly a "wild west" town which could be found 100 years ago in western Canada. The local economy is almost 100 % informal.

Mario contracted a staff of about 30 to work in the community of Minas Santa Cruz. Half of them are geologists and technicians who test the ASHMONT concession on the content of the gold. The other half are a variety of idealistic professionals who undertake social projects with the community from a kindergarten with a playground made out of recycled materials, an organic garden as an environmental learning project for youth and adults, and food handling safety training for the small local restaurants where most people work without any formal training.

During the past two years the Ashmont team - which goes up & down every day in the local river boat (called "chalupa") - has worked to gain confidence from the local population. Later this year ASHMONT hopes to start a production unit which will be imported from Korea and functions as a "closed circuit" system, bringing no polluted water into its environment. The local miners will be encouraged to bring their rocks to this plant in order to start reducing the horrendous amount of mercury and other chemicals used in their artisanal (and very inefficient) way of production.

Time will tell whether Mario and colleagues can make their concept work which would result in a much cleaner mining processes and healthier work circumstances for the small scale miners. There are a variety of such initiatives in the country. One of such projects I visited is called the GRAMALOTE project in Antioquia owned by Anglo Gold Ashanti (South African mining giant) and operated in a joint venture by B2GOLD (Canadian owned mining company). I made a blog post about this project in March.

In a Colombian mining magazine one can find more and more write-ups about socially responsible mining. The article above describes a project in the Colombian Amazone region where of course the environmental caution needs to be very high. With a little bit larger scale operation and with the backing of CSR inspired investors, this exploration company has proven to cause a lot less damage to the delicate eco-system than the traditional artisanal local miners.

This article describes the need for the different national ministries to work much closer together than just in their own "tunnel visioned" traditional ways.

Would we be better off without mining at all? Probably from an environmental point of view, yes. But hundreds of thousands of artisanal small scale miners and their families make a living with mineral mining around the world. If we all would stop buying and using cell phones, jewelry and many other products, we could stop mining maybe. But I can just not see that happen....

So, just like we started 40-50 years ago to become more aware of the need to be more careful with our water resources and recycle & compost, we must continue the path to make mining a process as clean as possible and with true social responsibility. No doubt that we still have a long way to go, but professionals such as Mario are blazing the trail.

Our CIDA funded and ACCC managed program here in Colombia has as objective to contribute to this process by offering training programs to artisanal miners and their families & communities. It is a long term goal and will probably only change over generations, but we have to try.....