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This section informs on the pilot projects implemented by ARM with miner’s organizations and support organizations in each country, to test the real life functioning of the proposed standards. It includes general information about the geographic scope, the players and the involved organizations in the pilot projects, and all the news and progress emerging from the pilot testing process with miners and women miners. |
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Ground Testing of Standard Zero with Miner’s Organizations |
Pilot testing of Standard Zero will take place first in Latin America and later in Africa and Asia for two reasons: firstly, being a global organisation born in South America, ARM has its broadest networks of stakeholders and potential producer support organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean. Secondly, due to their own efforts and consistent support by well-managed international cooperation programs, Latin American miners have reached significant levels of organization, so that they are empowered and have a fairly good chance of being certified by the end of the pilot projects in 2008.
Just over the past 12 months Latin American miners have formed the following organisations: the National Society of Artisanal and Small-scale Miners of Peru (September 2006), the Regional Latin American Organization of ASM (December 2006) and the Confederation of Artisanal and Small-scale Miners of Colombia (June 2007). This is a dynamic process with organised ASM at its heart.
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Pilot Countries |
The first pilots will take place in Bolivia, Colombia, Peru and possibly Ecuador. Building on ongoing processes and seeking a representative sample, the technical committee has defined the following criteria for selection of pilot countries:
- A variety of national contexts and laws for ASM.
- Different types, sizes and levels of organization of ASM to see how the standards perform in communities where different organizations are interlinked in the supply chain and how to address this complexity.
- Different types of gold mining, i.e. Alluvial and hard rock.
- Different ecosystems: tropical rainforest, Andean mountain, and Atacama Desert.
- Different processing techniques, i.e. amalgamation, cyanidation, mercury-free gravimetric methods, etc.
- Legislation that offers transparent mechanisms for private persons to export metal, i.e. precious metals export is not the monopoly of a few people or of the government.
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Pilot Producer Organizations |
To be selected for pilot testing the organization must comply with the following criteria (NOTE: at least two women miners’ organizations will be included in the pilot projects in Latin America):
- Be legally registered and organized, or be affiliated to a registered organization and be willing to comply with the proposed standards in order to sell through that registered producer organization.
- Have a demonstrable trajectory of progress, as a producer organization, towards social and environmental responsibility.
- Have an existing process so the pilot does not need to start from zero.
- Have the interest and commitment of the producer organization to act as leader and multiply the process among its peers, sustained by a letter of intention.
- Demonstrate the existence of a partnership between a producer organization and a support organization (NGO, government agency or academia) that will ensure the technical quality of the evaluation of Standard Zero and the application of a participatory approach based on learning by doing,
- Have a mining concession with mineral potential.
In most cases the point of entry will be a producer organization with all its local ramifications. These may include, apart from the members of the organization, partner organizations working inside the mining concession of the pilot case, the suppliers of processing services, transporters, refiners and traders. In other words a supply chain approach will be applied where possible.
The object of this approach is to test the mechanisms whereby formalized producer organizations can incorporate the informal groups and producer family units within the same mining village, and act as drivers and incentives for improved performance of ASM community to generate improved quality of life in the village as a result.
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