November 2nd 2021
Artisanal Small-Scale Mining (ASM) is one of the world’s most dangerous occupations. The World Bank estimates that 100 million children, women and men work in ASM worldwide, mostly in remote rural areas of Low-income and Lower-middle-income countries. These miners often work under extreme conditions, the communities where they and their families live are heavily polluted, and ASM is responsible for high, but preventable rates of disease, injury, and premature death.
The Collegium Ramazzini Statement REDUCING DISEASE AND DEATH FROM ARTISANAL SMALL-SCALE MINING (ASM) describes the urgent need for responsible mining in the context of growing global demand for minerals and metals for climate change mitigation
ASM is increasing rapidly. Paradoxically, a key driver of this growth
is climate change mitigation.
Climate change mitigation drives ASM because ASM is a major source of minerals and metals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, platinum, cadmium, molybdenum, neodymium, and indium that are critical for the production of solar cells, wind turbines, high-efficiency storage batteries, and electric vehicles that are essential for the transition to a low-carbon economy. The World Bank projects that renewable energy systems will require significantly more minerals and metals than current fossil-fuel-based energy supply systems and that global demand for minerals and metals will continue to increase for many decades.
The
goals of this statement, which the
Collegium Ramazzini issues during the United Nations COP 26 meeting on
Climate Change are to:
·
Provide updated
information on the neglected health hazards of ASM and on strategies for
mitigation of these hazards in the context of rapidly growing global demand for
minerals and metals to meet the urgent need for climate change mitigation;
·
Raise awareness of
ASM hazards among policy-makers and the public; and
·
Call for urgent interventions
against the grave dangers of ASM by international organizations, governments, employers,
and minerals and metals purchasers.
The Collegium Ramazzini notes the gross injustice of ASM.
While most ASM takes place in the Global South, in the same countries already suffering
the most serious consequences of climate change, most who benefit from ASM are
in the Global North and thus have a shared responsibility to encourage their
governments to contribute to reducing ASM hazards.
We cannot achieve climate change mitigation through the
use of “blood minerals”.
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The General Secretariat of the Collegium is located in the Castle of Bentivoglio, near Bologna.
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