Fair gold? Institutionalising labour and environmental standards along the certified gold supply chain

Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) has increased precipitously worldwide, namely because of a consistently-high market price for gold.

The sector’s rapid growth, however, has yielded mixed results: it has been associated with significant social, environmental and health-related impacts, but it has provided millions of otherwise-jobless people with employment.

Solutions, therefore, are desperately needed which address these adverse impacts while simultaneously harnessing and maximizing the sector’s economic benefits for the poor. One approach that shows considerable promise is the certification of “fair” gold supply chains.

Focusing on “Fairmined”, a pioneering gold certification label, this project seeks to develop a more nuanced understanding of what “fair” means in terms of the labour and environmental standards that it entails.

Drawing on a multidisciplinary research team the project aims to understand who benefits from the institutionalisation of these standards, and why.

The 4-year qualitative study will analyse documents and semi-structured interviews with supply chain actors, including marginalised ASM miners in Colombia and Burkina Faso, two of the main locations where Fairmined-certified gold is sourced.

It will advance academic debates and policy efforts in global mineral governance, which is not only an important, but an urgent project, in an age that sees increasing demands, and too little offer for, “fair” minerals.