planetGOLD In Review - Event Recording
good morning good afternoon good evening we see many many people streaming in and we are about to begin today's event so over to my colleague jennifer to start making a world of difference to transition small-scale miners around the world to mercury-free technologies to provide for themselves and their families in a better cleaner and safer way and to make the connections all through the global supply chain from miners to formal markets to refiners to jewelers and electronics and all the way to you and me as consumers that is what planetGOLD does ladies and gentlemen good morning good day good evening my name is claudia ten have. i join you from the secretariat of the minamata convention on mercury here in geneva where i am the senior policy and coordination officer it is my honor to take you through today's program to review and celebrate planetGOLD a signature project of the global environment facility to tackle one of the largest mercury emission sources covered by the minamata convention the mercury emitted and released by small scale and artisanal gold miners planetGOLD led by the united nations environment program unep with the united nations industrial development organization unido and the united nations development programme undp and conservation international is a dynamic and growing program two years on from the launch of the program in london we are coming together today again this time virtually from across the globe to peak into what has been achieved so far and to look forward to what is coming up as the next chapter in planetGOLD we are joined today by a remarkable set of speakers presenters and some guests from key organizations and key governments who each in their own sphere are leading a key part of this transformational and global endeavor furthermore what makes today's event particularly special is that we will also connect directly to miners from planet gold that have already been working with planet gold to reflect on their experiences and particularly to share what they hope for and aspire to through the planetGOLD initiative and right at the end we have some news hot off the press a very special announcement so do stay tuned but before we dive in i have been asked to highlight two short housekeeping matters firstly the one is that this event is being recorded and secondly you are able to follow the event in english french spanish and mongolian just toggle to one of the other languages at the bottom of your screen under interpretation button if you would like and with that i've made the introduction but to give you an even deeper dive into planetGOLD than the video allowed us to do at the beginning it is my great pleasure to hand the floor over to my colleague ludovic bernardo to situate us where we are today on planetGOLD ludo has been conceptually and programmatically leading the work on artisanal and small-scale gold mining at unep with all the colleagues at GEF and elsewhere too for some years and he is the planetGOLD phase one program manager over to you ludo thank you claudia and good morning good afternoon and good evening to the participants i will provide you with an overview of the planetGOLD program but also some key aspects some highlights of the of the implementation to date but first i wanted to go and explain so what is planetGOLD as you know it's a GEF supported and developed program large program that was developed in collaboration as was mentioned between unep unido undp and conservation international at GEF agencies but many other partners also contributed to the development. GOLD is an acronym for in our case it stands for the global opportunities for the long-term development of the artisanal and small-scale gold mining sector next slide please so why do we work on this sector and why do we focus specifically on on this issue the sector is a global issue it's active in 80 countries around the world employing 10 to 20 million miners it's a huge workforce including a lot of women and children so it has a lot of social implications and social issues that we have to address it is a very important source of livelihood in rural areas and very and often very remote areas where they are simply not alternative livelihood options so for the miners it's important to to be able to produce gold in a sustainable and safe way so that they can sustain the livelihood of themselves and their families however it is often associated with negative social impact as i've just said but also uh heavy environmental impacts it's a sector that has a lot of impact as you can imagine on land degradation on river siltation because they work very close to um to watercourses but also uh it is the largest user is the sector is the largest user and a emitter of mercury to the environment next slide please so that's why we develop planetGOLD because of the mercury issue and reducing mercury emissions from the sector as mandated by the minamata convention on mercury which has an article dedicated to this sector at the moment uh planetGoLD is operational in nine countries available here on the map but we are working uh yeah adding up new countries there's a new set of eight countries uh that are um developing their projects that will come online um this year hopefully uh and that will be joined also by another group of countries later on so it will become a really a real family of of of projects countries from which we can really collaborate and work together to achieve mercury reduction um thank you next slide please so the planetGOLD program is organized around four components um the first one is formalization we need to work with formalized miners and mining association if we are to make a difference if we are to really uh make sustainable changes of in the sector in the phase one of planet gold we worked with countries that had started formalization this is no longer the case for the new phases as we will discuss so this is an important aspect the second component was really developed for the planetGOLD program and is really innovative compared to the previous activities was the focus and is the focus on access to finance and access to formal markets miners need to be able to find the funds needed to buy the proper equipment so that they can improve their gold recovery from the current state of around 30 percent of gold meaning they're losing at the moment 70 of gold to the tailings and to the environment to better techniques that will allow them to recover much more accessing finance is important to get the proper equipment but also accessing formal markets and working on shortening value chain so that miners get the best price they can for the gold the gold that can at the mining site uh be very similar and very close to the the london based metal association uh official gold price so that's that's a unique uh commodity in that sense and that's what i meant by transferring wealth to the to the poor communities gold has this ability of having a very high price at the producing site and then we we have a component of course on improved technologies that's what we've been doing all these years in the past uh working on exclusively mercury-free technology to extract gold and a large component on building knowledge management awareness phrasing and reaching out to stakeholders next slide please so this is done through the program advisory group and here are a number and a selected number of our advisors and as you can see we have gold refiners we have gold users gold consumers on board and that have helped us they have helped us a great deal over the last two years to define the gold criteria to which the the the gold produced from the project sites will be able to access international markets next slide please so uh to give you a brief overview of what has been done so far so we've been the all the projects have been active for the last two years uh and actually uh this month marks the second year anniversary of our official launch in london at the goldsmith's center in february 2019 unfortunately we can't you cannot meet in person this time but i think it's important that we show the key activities that have been undertaken in spite of the pandemic that has hit us uh for the last 12 months next slide please so first on formalization the first component as you can see we've worked in all the countries in review of the legal framework uh to propose changes that are needed to really support the formalization of the of the program and we have identified already in many countries mining associations that will help us reach out to the miners and multiply to other sites as well training has started also to being provided next slide please on the access to finance aspect again quite a bit of progress has been made um to on especially on the outreach to finance entities to raise uh interest to train um and to to um to train the finance institutions on how they can interact with this particular sector we have already signed some agreements in many countries including load application loan applications assistance provided next slide please for mercury free technologies um this is as also um scenario where we've done a lot of projects in many countries this is not surprising this is what we've all been doing for the last 20 years this is the the more ongoing component in the program if you want uh so sites assessment has been done in all countries we've held focus group discussions with the miners to ensure that they're they're ready to take on board the new technology and for that we really insist on the increased recovery of the of the new technologies and the plants and the process systems have been identified in many countries already next slide please and finally on access to markets so that goes back a bit to the slide on the the program advisory group we've developed the planet goal criteria together with gold buyers gold refiners to ensure that the gold produced by the program will find its way in the international markets um we've built capacity at the national level on due diligence to um so that the intern the gold buyers have the assurance that the goal has been produced according to the criteria that we've set out we've done gold trade and policy recommendations in a number of countries and also supply chain mapping to help us streamline this supply chain again to improve the the gold buying price at the at the mining site um so that that's the the last of the the the key highlights that we wanted to um to showcase next slide please but if you want to have more information in much more detail we suggest that you can have a look at the annual progress report of the program which is posted on our the planet gold program website um as well as a shorter executive summary um that that is uh that's providing a snapshot of the progress of the program over the last two years of implementation these reports are currently available in english but we are doing the translation into spanish and french next slide please and uh finally of course the planet gold as a lot of other resources that we we suggest that you can um uh visit and download including guides that were provided by the global component of the planet gold on improving access to formal finance this takes on from other sectors the examples of other sectors but also other partners that are not involved directly in the program but that do provide um guidance and assistance and of course the planet goal criteria which as much i have mentioned already uh i won't take too much more of your time uh i think it's best often the progress is best heard from the people who are in the field uh and we do have now a video from our program managers of the eight countries the nine countries that will speak in their own words about the program progress so thank you very much reflections and perspectives on the past two years from kenya burkina faso colombia ecuador guyana indonesia mongolia peru and the philippines from around the world with these insights and the rich images fresh in our mind let me turn to a very distinguished panel to take us a bit deeper on mercury globally and also mercury at the national level linking artisanal and small-scale gold mining all the way up the supply and even value chain and particularly on the role of planet gold in this regard for this we are joined from costa rica by carlos manuel rodriguez ceo and chairperson of the global environment facility good morning to you carlos manuel from jakarta rosa ratnavati good evening ma'am the president of the minamata convention cop4 and also a director general in the ministry of environment and forestry in indonesia it's lovely to have you with us today from geneva monika stankiewicz executive secretary of the minamata convention on mercury we also have carrie george vice president and head of sustainability and impact of everledger and from washington good morning to you rob wing u.s alternate jeff council member of the department of state good morning good afternoon good evening to all of you and let me begin with carlos manuel planetGOLD was one of the first large programs funded by the GEF in the chemical and waste vocal area that instead of going the route of individual country projects decided to create an interconnected program um can you reflect on the value that the GEF took in this type of pragmatic approach now both as you're the ceo of GEF but also given your long and direct experience at the national level as former environment minister over to you carlos manuel well thank you so much uh claudia it is a great pleasure to be here joined by monica rosa rob and and um you know greetings from from costa rica um i mean the peninsula diosa which is in the heart of the gold mining small gun gold mining and the end the center has been our historical conflict within conservation in this case the protection of national uh kokoba national park and illegal gold mining because the park was is on top of a huge um geological of gold reservoir and um you know for since 1985 and then as a minister of environment and in mining because in costa rica the minister of our environment is also the minister of energy and mining which is this is very important claudia one one topic that as we look forward in terms of our initiatives we need to really understand which is the right institutional framework that we need to have in order to generate more impact in our effort to move to move from worse um practices uh to best practices all the way to uh technologies that are mercury free here here you see a couple of photos um i'm the guy with the right with the white shirt on on the right hand side that and that on my right hand is a hilberto he's the he's a lead park ranger in corcoval national park that was um like a month before the pandemic in probably january 2020 you know i was uh participating in a um anti-illegal uh mining in kokomo national park on the on the left-hand side you see the miners that uh we captured doing illegal mining in in the park i have done i have participated probably in 12 um operations of illegal mining in protected areas in costa rica since 1985 when i was 25 years old i was a young guy helping create the park and two things are very clear to me one is small artisanal miners they don't die out of age they die very soon for whatever reasons it can be healthy related issues or it can be violence but that's a fact and the second thing that i have learned through 30 years of working with legal and illegal small-scale mining is that they never get out of their poverty status condition they never nobody makes a good living out of these um activities and um and uh yes as i remember all of this i remember all of these you know what i see here is a it's a human crisis uh this is you know the the big tech take away message of my experience as foreign minister of mining in dealing with small artisanal is it's a human crisis what is that it's a human crisis particularly nowadays that and in many places uh could be impacted uh many of the work that we did around you know generating jobs out of our nature-based tourism and here where i am right now also it's a good example because the even though most of those miners are 25 to 35 years old the sons of the old miners in the park are tourist guides right now and because of the pandemic they were jobless and what happened they went once more with illegal mining in the box so this is illegal mining on the park also we had i had a lot of experience in in illegal mining in other places you know crucitas was uh was his easter side in the border of nicaragua costa rica banned industrial open pit gold mining uh but we never prepare ourselves to ex spontaneous illegal thumb mining and as we pass this regulation uh a small a lot of informal miners coming from nicaragua invade this side in the end began doing illegal mining and the government was totally incapable to dealing with this um the situation and the same thing that you see in the in the amazon basin at a smaller scale of course but as a minister i was unable claudia to deal with the mercury issue totally i i was not trying to deal with it i was unable to track it the mercury i knew was coming from mexico which were the routes i i didn't had trained people to do the enforcement but most importantly because i i even though i had participated a lot on enforcement activities to implement the environmental law and i am a strong believer of the environmental rule of law this is a human element and people do do these activities based on their needs or the lack of opportunities so we with governments we need to come up and be able to present solutions and and one key two key elements in this other side were key lessons that i want to bring um into the our planetGOLD effort which is one is how do we formalize them we need to formalize them and it's not as yeah as you know sending a sociologist or an expert to gather them and make a coop it is way complicated because individualism is within the heart of what they do they are totally exploited by somebody else and you know these illegal mining activities are really associated to drug trafficking human trade uh and diseases um you know malaria was something new to us in 50 years it was brought by illegal immigrants and i finished with my last point here claudia which is the fact that you know when i as a minister i began doing sampling of the soil and the waters on on mercury it was extremely extremely high and dangerous and i didn't have any as garment any capacity to go and clean up the site and of course as a minister i got the you know the political opposition and the congress and many others on my neck asking for short-term magical solutions there are no short-term magical solutions when you deal with small-scale artisanal gold mining there are not short-term solutions so here are two messages uh for for for today one is uh you know um we need to understand which are the right institutional frameworks uh we need to promote at the country level to be able to have long-term lasting solutions this is to say that the ministers of environment and the ministers of health are the ones who are really interested in this issue not necessarily the ministers of mining and in the case of costa rica where you had mining any environment in the same agency under the same minister things were relatively easier than what i saw in nicaragua or what i saw in the rest of latin america where you got a minister of mining that is only thinking on industrial large-scale money and those issues are regarding artisanal or things that are are kind of politically uh alone and then how do you go from dealing with a mercury um uh problem on the side to a mercury free technology i mean that process we need to be right there with the countries helping them going from worst practices uh to best practices and then um into mercury free technology use uh so i i want to finalize that um yeah we need to put attention to those who are way beyond informality which are in the illegal realm uh risking their lives and um working under extreme conditions where human rights are not respected and they are totally splitted because yes we were because for us in these um last few years in this partnership which by the way has been extremely successful we've been working with those group that has been kind of easily accessible because they are there they are not formal because they don't have a legal condition but uh they are easy easy to find and engage i'm also thinking on those who are deep in the jungle uh out of any possibility for us to really out out do outreaching and contacting we need to bring them together we need to have a strategy as we look forward so thank you so much claudia for the opportunity thank you very much manuel um also in particular for shaping it in in the pictures that you showed in terms of what it looks like and how it was not only in costa rica but also in the neighboring countries so with your permission if i may take us across the globe to indonesia to a large country one of the largest in the world the third largest asian country a very diverse country as well your country is part of planet gold we would love to know a bit more about um how do you reflect currently on on planet gold and its ability to help indonesia with this mammoth challenge and the benefits that you can see for your country please rosa thank you very much for your question claudia first of all allow me to say good evening from jakarta and good morning good afternoon to all of you i would like to extend my sincere gratitude to the organizers of this event for inviting me to this important and timely event it is my great honor to join with this distinguished panel of experts indonesia is thankful to be selected as one of nine partner countries of planetGOLD third world plays an essential role to support countries commitments to the minamata convention on mercury particularly in eliminating mercury from the supply chain of good from asgm sector the planetGOLD project in indonesia called the integrated sound management of mercury in indonesia's asgm, or ISMIA, has directly supported indonesia's attempts to eliminate the use of mercury in 2019 the president of indonesia issued a presidential decree on the national action plan on mercury reduction and elimination the decree sets a target to eliminate mercury from asgm sector by 2025 in that context the gold izmir project has assisted us a lot to achieve that target the project helped us formulate regional action plans for the reduction and elimination of mercury at the provincial and regency level provide inputs on technical radio regulation on asgm sector develop mercury free technology create innovative finance models provide capacity building to miners and gradually assist them towards formalization the current pandemic created some challenges in delivering the outcome of ismia project in a timely manner site visa field work project monitoring and engagement activities have become more difficult with travel restrictions i and my colleagues at the indonesian ministry of environment and forestry have discussed these challenges intensively with unbp indonesia office who is responsible for the implementation of planet code project in the country i would like to ensure that the government of indonesia is committed to supporting the project and helping it become accomplished to the targets on time the indonesia government will continuously support the implementation of the project through innovative ways in this difficult situation such as pursuing online and face-to-face workshop with strict health protocol and maximizing local government roles in supporting activities at six project sites across indonesia the government also assists undp in ensuring that the process of permit application to implement this project such as waste management permit environmental impact analytical permit and building permit are fully fulfilled i believe that by the end of 2023 when the ismia project will end we will be able to achieve significant progress in many areas such as more robust regulatory framework more comprehensive capacity building plans and guidelines for artisanal miners financial schemes to support transition towards mercury free technology and formalization of artisanal miners gender mainstream in scm communities and the creation of alternative social economic activities for asgm miners those achievements will provide a strong basis for indonesia to progressively move towards a more rigorous approach and policy to eliminate the use of mercury in astm sector and in line with our national action plan and in accordance with the minamata convention thank you thank you very much rosa and following on from carlos manuel you provided in fact that government view back again in terms of how to try to look at all of the different challenges that that face any person or any government trying to address what are legitimate livelihoods but but also important constraints and challenges thank you very much rosa this allows me now to go a bit closer to home which is to invite monica the executive secretary of the convention on mercury to ask monica if you could reflect um how the program such as uh planetGOLD supports the convention overall or put differently how can the work of that program complement also the work of the secretariat to support parties please monika thank you so much claudia good day uh thank you so much for the event and for having me to speak it's a really pleasure to be with you and let me recognize my co-panelist carlos manuel thank you so much for sharing your professional experience but also personal thoughts and thank you madam president for your commitment and indonesian commitment to the project and to the convention and for leading the way and i'm looking forward to hearing uh presentation and contributions from carrie and rob today in the morning i actually watched the video that you ludovic has been showing us today and as it often happened when working remotely my six-year-old son heard me watching something and he came in and it was the first time actually where he showed a real interest in what i do professionally i was able to explain which are the countries what's happening on the pictures are the people it was a really special moment for me so i would like to really thank not only for this magnificent material but also for all the work of the agencies of the countries and all the people involved in the program you are really making a real difference and i'm really honored to be part of this journey back to your question claudia the global environmental facility is set forth in the convention as part of our financial mechanism and carlos manuel you have heard me saying it but the convention and the GEF is a perfect match on one hand we have a blueprint with a well thought through and actionable measures and on the other hand we have a funding mechanism that enables a major and transformative change and we both both of those wants to make the the world a better place to live as secretariat we work very closely with the GEF secretariat and agencies to ensure that all of its minamata convention investments are completely in line with the treaty and with the needs that we are hearing from the parties i see planet gold is a very good example of a program that is fully in line with our convention as many you know the convention intentionally addressed the use of mercury in artisanal and small scale mining in a flexible and non-punitive way understanding that if the convention simply banned the use of mercury in asgm the risky work would be driven further underground and that's not that would not get us anywhere many people are earning their livelihood from this work so the convention calls for a real and lasting change and that is what the planetGOLD is working to deliver programs like planetGOLD provide practical examples and experiences to parties that are now working on strategies under the national action plans madam president provided one example each party that has a sgm that is more than insignificant is required by the convention to put in place national action plan and we have so far in the secretariat received 11 such plans and the parties are not only see they need to implement them but they really do so so the action plan is not a document that is put on shelf or on a website and that's it and the visible progress within the planet gold creates an incentive for other parties to get the national action plans in order as no one wants to be left behind and there is also a close relationship between the planetGOLDand the global mercury partnership so we can continue to use the existing well-established multi-stakeholder partnership and platform to further enhance the reach of the program's dissemination and to conclude claudia let me say that the investments such as within the planet gold move us forward collectively and globally to meet the goal of the convention which is to protect the human health and the environment from the emissions and releases of anthropogenic mercury thank you thank you very much monika and you've made the perfect link in many ways to the next speaker so thank you very much for that um speaking of making the links and drawing in all the different sectors um carrie may i turn to you next to double click us into the perspective from the private sector you've been engaged in a response in responsible sourcing at both an electronics company and also at jura and so you have first-hand experience with the challenges but also the opportunities to establish responsible trusted traceable supply chains of a given resource in our case now gold from the point of view of the buyer from your point of view from the private sector what are the most important actions that planet gold can take or is taking to facilitate this be very grateful to hear your views over to you absolutely um it's a pleasure to be here particularly among such distinguished panelists and hearing their contributions this work is absolutely essential um a little background uh so as you said i've been in the electronics industry at apple for over five years and then the jewelry industry for several years now but particularly working at a key star jewelry company in san francisco that has quite a presence particularly among new millennial buyers in an industry where a lot of buyers are going to other consumer goods as such i've had a good experience with what does it take to actually bring new material into the market and continually buy from what could be considered in many companies a high-risk sector gold and particular artisanally mine gold is one that buyers them in the downstream uh let's say a company like apple or brilliant earth or other jewelers still don't know how to buy effectively from the most legitimate or the most progressive organizations fair mind and fair trade has not grown enough to be able to meet market demand and nor has there been an approach that allows for that scaling so i'm going to name a couple of key points that i think were really critical areas for us to be able to address other material supply chains and i think could be brought into gold as you guys are looking for being able to demonstrate planet gold progress and particularly mercury reduction and and promote and incentivize those actors in in the field to actually continue with that work there needs to be a link that they're getting the incentives that match the end consumer demands right now the biggest organizations that are managing gold uh certifications so from a conflict minerals perspective or from an anti-corruption or know your consumer you can't search by mercury so that's a problem there should be linkages with these main actors um that was a critical tipping point in terms of the material uh sourcing where we started having a different types of let's say in a technical world interoperability among tools and technologies but in this case among standards and projects on the ground with compliance activities that are maybe midstream it seems very distant it's a critical link that has to be made and if we can start selecting by that you'll see a massive shift in terms of downstream producers understanding of these issues and their interest in them and then that can go into future co-development with uh and co-funding projects um with uh GEF and other organizations that are working on these things in the field i would uh encourage that in a in a way that can be done and coordinated among those organizations among the leading companies that have already done projects on gold um and activities and we'll see a consortium and collaborative effect from that moving forward from that what we also see is different types of equivalencies among programs it's very overwhelming for companies downstream to try to purchase from so many different types of artisanal mining projects they don't know where to um engage and actually the first time i came got involved and started connecting with the GEF was in an effort to do some sort of co-funding and understand where i could target um there can be more done there because there's a lot of companies just wanting to put their money where their mouth is so to speak in terms of this work and being able to find the right types of facilities to do that um that can actually influence their supply chain will be important and finally putting some of the terms in language that will make sense for companies that they're already having to do so sustainable development goals making those impact data possible making it something that can be digested easily um so really long reports are not particularly welcomed all the time in the private sector so we need to simplify simplify simplify and make it just something that can be done as part of normal operations um but those are just a few high-level uh aspects i think would be a really important and we're looking at this from both a technology perspective at everledger as well as a different type of government and private sector partnership opportunity with different companies in different fields but when we look at different ways to manage and pull in data whether that be in a narrative report or different impact metrics or sensor data that can be done in the future i think we can see some real scaling effects with this type of public-private partnership and technology i'll hand it back over to you perfect carrie you finished on partnerships and that's exactly where i wanted to pick up the ball and throw it over to rob rob the united states has had a long history of supporting work on reducing global mercury pollution in general but also asgm in particular and his first party to the minamata convention i remember that day very well why is mercury so important to your government and how does planet gold complement your bilateral efforts over to you rob no thank you very much and first i just want to say thank you for having me as a panelist here um and i'm super honored to be on this panel with carlos manuel and rosa and monica and carrie and also claudia you and ludovic it's just an honor to to be here and to be able to talk about the work we do in the u.s um on this issue um it's a pleasure to be here with you for this conversation about planetGOLD which has been one of the flagship projects undertaken by the GEF in support of the minamata convention as you said the united states is proud to have been the first country to join the minamata convention on mercury which is an excellent hands under monica's stewardship we look forward to joining rosa and others at the fourth conference of the party of minamata hosted by the government of indonesia and we are proud supporters of the GEF of the work that GEF has done from the beginning in support of implementation of the minamata convention this enthusiasm carries over into our work with us government in addition to participating in the design of the original GEF gold program and and now currently on the program advisory group many u.s agencies including the state department uscid and the environmental protection agency and the department of labor and interior have been actively working and collaborating on projects in the asgm sector some of our bilateral regional efforts on mercury like the mercury program when running my office in the state department the office of environmental quality are great places to test new ideas and technologies relevant for relevant for asgm develop relationships and build capacity for example in suriname we are working with two large-scale gold mining companies to improve their working relationships with asgm sector and testing out a a modular processing equipment constructed specifically for alluvial mining and which can be moved from one mining site to another once the ore has been been exhausted the planet gold program complements our efforts by translating the most up-to-date scientific ideas technologies and approaches into action within the countries enrolled in the program by taking on much of the capacity building work planetGOLD also provides space for united states and other GEF donors to launch projects that anticipate future issues that will impact mercury use these donors these these donor-led projects are in themselves complementary to planet gold work and have much more potential working from the planet gold foundation and i think just to maybe more directly answer your question i think in the beginning you talked about some of the statistics that 20% of gold comes from asgm and that that there's asgm mining in 70 countries in the world and um that um i can't remember the other um you know that there's i think 45 million people working in planetGOLD i don't have that statistic written down in front of me or working on working in this sector so it's an incredibly large sector that cuts across the entire world and um you know there's all sorts of issues that we've heard about today that are you know important from from all sorts of different perspectives for the us for from a national security perspective to a um to an economic development perspective and also a lot of gold that gets released in the environment ends up in the a lot of story mercury that gets released into the environment ends up in the u.s so there's all sorts of different reasons why this
is important to us and why we're very proud to be um the first party to the minamata convention and that we continue to do our own bilateral work and support planet gold so i'll stop there for now i'm super short i hope that was helpful thank you absolutely helpful and um just uh listening to all of all of you it's just it's very very clear that it requires many hands it requires many heads and it requires quite a few hearts to to put together such a multifaceted program and then to take it into all these different places whether it's in indonesia ozar or whether it is colors manuel into the areas that that or while you're closest to your your home um so with this i just want to mention to everybody we will hear a bit more from each of the panelists um at the conclusion of the event but now if if you allow me i would like to hand the floor to the men and women who mine for a living from kenya to indonesia to the philippines peru and mongolia to each in their own words highlight their hopes and their aspirations for planetGOLD while planetGOLD is a relatively young program the GEF has had the foresight to work on asgm programming for some 20 years may i turn to uh director of the GEF evaluation office to give us a short reflection on the GEF interventions in this sector over to you you have thank you very much claudia and good morning good afternoon uh good evening to everybody i would first like to thank the organizers for inviting me to this important seminar which has been very interesting to me as i'm sure it is um for all of all of the participants i'm glad to have this opportunity to say a few words about the evaluation of the GEF interventions in the artisanal and and gold a small scale gold mining sector that my office the um gef independent evaluation office recently conducted i'm also glad that the evaluation did confirm some of the points that have been made by the earlier interventions the evaluation performed post-completion assessments of outcomes for three medium-sized projects from the GEF-5 period that is from about 2010 to 2014 as claudia said there were projects in this field much earlier than the planetGOLD these projects were all focused on asgm mercury reductions in many cases we found that mercury use fell already during project implementation and has continued to fall since then which points to some encouraging signs of sustainability having said that the switch in these cases was largely from mercury to cyanidation which is obviously not a technology promoted by the GEF or planetGOLD for that matter one common lesson that from these old projects was that most miners struggle to access finance from regular legal sources because the sector is not formalized and is often associated with illegality this makes the miners unable to invest in pro project promoted non-mercury technologies even if they wish to do so the gold program which for the gef represented a significant increase in investment in the asgm sector has responded by making access to financing and markets its largest component as we have heard so they are testing the hypotheses that more financing will lead to more transition to cleaner technologies there has thus been notable learning from the past experiences with old older GEF funded projects in moving towards these newer interventions to promote broader adoption of its work on access to financing the gf will still have to expand its activities assisting governments in implementation of formalization policies in the artisanal and small-scale gold mining sector broadly recognized as a critical step for solving many of the sectors problems overall the artisanal and small-scale small gold mining provides a good opportunity to continue the gf shift to a more holistic multi-focal area integrated programming and to connect with health interventions given the broad range of issues faced by this sector the gf should also seek to link asgm and its chemicals and waste focal area funding more broadly with other focal areas such as biodiversity conservation international waters and land degradation at least in certain geographies so the full evaluation report is available on our website and i'll put that link into the chat it was there earlier but it doesn't hurt to repeat i guess and and that's all i've got to say at this moment so thanks very much for your attention thank you very much juha and we'll see the links and any other links we will also of course make available after this this uh this event as well so we've looked at the past and now it's a time to look uh towards the future planet gold is set to expand and i'm delighted to turn to miguel morales the senior vice president at conservation international to speak to the upcoming chapter for planet gold please miguel thank you very much and thank you for inviting me to be part of this presentation what i'd like to talk to you about is uh what is next and how we're going to be expanding the wonderful very positive work that the planetGOLD initiated initiative started and in that regards we are expanding uh to from nine active projects that ludovic mentioned before to additional eight countries and if you can go to the next slide please um so we are working now if you look at the map the areas in gold are the countries where the planet goal is already working they are active projects and we're expanding now to nine to eight new new countries the ones in blue on the map and what i'd like to do for you today is give a very brief presentation some highlights about the new countries that we are um we're bringing to this initiative uh i'll be talking only about two countries per per continent and highlight some of the some of the uh major things that we're gonna be working with all these projects are currently under uh development and we hope that within this calendar year we're gonna be submitting the products for these child projects as we call them within the initiative next slide please so in america we have uh three new countries that will be joining the planet goal initiative bolivia honduras and suriname i wanted to highlight for for bolivia for example that this uh the asgm sector is uh one of the main sources of exports for the country and it's very important for the economy of bolivia one of the issues that i also wanted to to signal here is that um not only mining and the exposure of miners to mercury is a problem in the country but also that bolivia has become or is becoming a regional hub for informal trade of mercury within the region and we hope that that also will be one of the topics that the country will address or start addressing through the the gf project in bolivia also mining small scale mining is driving deforestation and we need to start thinking about how to bring together uh topics such as land use biodiversity conservation and livelihoods in a more safe way for suriname which is a very small country with a lot of forest deal at least 50 of the annual gold production comes from the asgm sector that's a very high percentage of all the gold that's being produced in in in suriname and it's also uh important to signal here to to mention that about 40 000 people rely on on this sector in suriname for the their livelihoods in addition in suriname there are issues of illegal uh people coming from neighboring countries the guardian payers from brazil for example along with the maroons which are tribal peoples of african descent are the main people mining in this area and we really are working with with the child project from suriname to address some of those issues if not all of those issues but these are long-term problems that will require long-term investments not only from the gf but from other donors next slide please in africa we're developing projects new projects in ghana nigeria the republic of the congo madagascar and uganda but i wanted to bring your attention to two countries here they're all very important but given the constraints of time just wanted to mention that nigeria for example 90 of the gold production comes from artisanal and small-scale miners there are about half a million people that depend on this activity for their their livelihoods that's that's remarkable that's very important and we have to remember that in nigeria relatively recently the country experienced a rare case of combined contamination with this in this sector where miners were not only exposed to mercury that they used to mine but also uh they were exposed to lead that coexist within the the or where gold uh is found so there are many issues that the child project for nigeria will be addressing and again it's important to mention here that um when we talk about mining especially in this sector the artisanal small scale gold mining we're talking about multiple problems that need to be addressed and hopefully the initiative will continue to do that because we are already doing that and the other country that i wanted to mention here in in yuga is uganda and africa um the the this sector uh employs or or or is currently occupying 30 000 miners and this is the the the the topic that i wanted to mention in some regions is the the the mining is largely done by women and especially in alluvial mining areas in in in this country between 20 and 30 percent of the workforce force in the mining sector can turn children and there is an urgency for formalization and also alive alleviate these issues in in uganda next slide please um the new uh child projects or countries that are joining the extension or the next step next phase of the goal the planet goal initiative one of the issues that we really want to emphasize is the formalization of the sector and we're going to be piloting what's called as a landscape approach but uh is based on jurisdictional boundaries such as municipalities provinces or states and what we're trying to do is bring together different stakeholders at the sub-national level to be able to talk about issues that have to do with the environment social issues policies and economic issues and and the main or one of the focuses will be that the government will have to be present in this jurisdictional approaches to drive the next steps in in this initiative next slide please just very briefly uh what is the jurisdictional approach um jurisdictional approach of being used in production and more sustainable production of other commodities especially in the agricultural sector and what we're trying to do is apply this framework where um the boundaries of the the landscape are defined actually by government administrative boundaries as i said before there can be states or provinces or municipalities where governments local governments uh alongside with the central government are uh willing and have the political will to work on formalization and the other things that we will continue doing with the clinical um planet goal extension the objective here is to bring together different stakeholders that have different interests and different uses of the land and the resources on the land and try to reconcile environmental social economic interests and again the center point is that different stakeholders the private sector uh the rural people working in different aspects of the the production and local governments will come together to set an agenda define the plans and implement the plans to make uh the the initiative more sustainable and another uh point that we want to explore is the the sustainable goal sourcing from a commodity that's produced within a very determined region of the country that's uh uh what we're trying to do with this piloting this approach we're not saying that every single country in this next step is going to pilot this but we are going to do everything we can to provide the the training the capacity building the tools to incentivize the formalization of the sector and as ludovic said many of the countries that are including the first part or the first phase of planet gold were already in the process of formalizing the sector now we're including other countries that have to start doing this as a way of uh improving the use of the the mining of gold in this sector next slide please the jurisdiction approach um also is a very good complement to the supply chain management what we're trying to do is bring governments and align the interests of the government with the interests of the people living in in these landscapes and these jurisdictions we as i mentioned before is a is a framework where multiple stakeholders will participate in where we're going to try to make sure that different interests of different stakes in in the land and the resources are represented within within the plans and the execution of those plans jurisdictional approach is also very good at bringing production and conservation for multiple commodities not only gold mining although the planetGOLD initiative will concentrate and we will use gold as the platform we we our intent is to look at the landscape or the jurisdictional landscape in a more holistic way such as uh production of agricultural commodities and be able to thrive towards a more more uh sustainable production overall and what we're trying to do here also is to have a greater impact at scale instead of going mining by mind by mind sites next slide please some of the potential benefits of this approach that we will be promoting during the expansion the the next phase of the plant goal phase is trying to increase efficiencies by working at the landscape jurisdictional levels with multiple mining sites within this these landscapes and thus we can avoid the cost of going mine by by mine approach that can be more expensive and also less efficient we're trying to or we will continue doing the establishing the direct links between markets interest and the government policies and enforcement we want to address uh more prominent the co-benefits and those co-benefits can be for example better watershed health conservation of biodiversity for smart mining and many other co-benefits that we can leverage using gold as an entry point for these initiatives another one is that we can also take a a more focused um look into human health and additional commodities as i mentioned before and improve traceability because we can we we only need to trace the the origin of goal within that jurisdiction and not individual minds next slide please and this is the last slide and during this new phase the global coordination project what we're going to be doing in terms of the jurisdictional approach is three things capacity building first because the jurisdictional approach has been as i said has been applied successfully to other commodities but we're we're trying to apply this to to the uh the sector that is our interest in this initiative and we're going to provide capacity building through webinars serious and topical presentations the development and deployment of tools and methodologies to make sure that those countries that want to embrace the jurisdictional approach uh have the tools and the ways to to to advance their projects and finally product review consultations and knowledge sharing so that's from my end and thank you very much again for for the opportunity to give you the flavor of what is coming and it's coming pretty soon because uh the the the new eight uh country projects are right now develo in in development full development and we hope that before the end of the calendar year where they're gonna be entering implementation thank you so much thank you miguel um i think you've given an excellent flavor of what's to come and also explained uh the jurisdictional approach quite well you might see in the chat box there are all kinds of comments there for you to peruse we will move on now because i i did mention earlier that we had a special announcement at the end um so let me call on a little one more time the floor is yours over to you thank you um and it was a great um moment to listen to all the the panelists and speakers and uh as was mentioned many times you know the outreach and communication and educating a bit the public on what the choice they can make when they buy gold so that it really makes a difference at the mining site the people who already need it the most is really important i think there's a slide coming uh so yeah so as uh was mentioned by salim in the chat i don't know if many uh of you saw it at the beginning uh we've been working uh with oro monaco for a while now in the planetGOLD program and in the global mercury partnership and they have invited us at an event organized by the better world forum around the cannes film festival this summer in july in the south of france and the event will be a whole day event with many partners that are involved in the planet gold program talking about ethical gold again to really make some efforts to um to to talk to the public and to inform the public on how our choices can influence um the mining the miners in each of these mining sites and countries uh where we are operating so we will communicate more on this event this is just an announcement but we're really looking forward to participating in this thank you perfect little thank you very much when we can't travel to some of these wonderful regions we can certainly live through them or live in them through through art of movie and art of visualization and certainly films are a way to shape new ideas amongst people so this is a remarkable and very very good move congratulations to all of those involved so this leads us to the end the final thoughts and i would like to turn to our panelists one more time um just with a small caveat to say that rosa has had to excuse herself it's quite late in jakarta as you can imagine and she's had to do one more official engagement tonight but i would like to turn to rob carey monica and carlos manuel in that order can you share a sentence a final sentence reflection with the audience as a way of a take-home message after today's meeting after today's discussions it could be something that you would like to add that hasn't been said or something you'd like to reiterate or it could be something new that maybe you only thought of or realized today so rob if i may start with you no thank you very much and this has been an incredibly informative and educational program today so thank you for all of the speakers and thank you for all the panelists and all of the presentations i'm super impressed and i know i've learned a lot and and we've been working on this issue in my office for almost as long as i've been there 15 years and just really quickly i just want to emphasize a few things one is this is really important work really excited to see what is planned for the future we need to continue to do this work it is a huge pervasive issue that truly needs a global approach and you know i think the jeff is the best place to do it the one thing i want to do is just as emphasize the importance of communication and information sharing i think that's key but i don't think and i want to double down on what kerry said earlier that doesn't mean big long reports i don't think that helps anyone so i love the idea that you're gonna get the canned film festival and be doing and information sharing and you know you know sort of like getting the word out about this at a place like can and also something that kerry said related to the um you know the making sure that the the buyers um know and know where to get gold that's mercury free and how to do that i'm just from a personal perspective my one of my nieces is a is a jeweler she makes her own jewelry and she's super successful in in in denver and she is you know always on the lookout for you know mercury-free gold and so i know this from a personal perspective that's not always easy to find so i think connecting the markets is super important and i will i'll stop there those i think are the are the things that i'd like to end this with um thank you very much incredibly good program thank you very much rob and over to carrie yeah i'll just underscore everything rob said um really couldn't be more grateful for this event it's so timely as we're looking at a post pandemic how do we really engage and re-engage with supply chains that maybe have a linguist or have been put on hold now is the time to really start engaging the private sector from my perspective there is a host of different types of collaborative opportunities that are going on to actually do this type of communication and to connect the markets so i would encourage all of us to make sure this isn't the firs this is the first of many conversations not the last um and so if we can get together uh you know continue the conversations really find the opportunities to connect these supply chains and these amazing programs on the ground with the people that are doing the work as well as the ngos that are supporting the efforts on the ground um we will be able to go much farther and pull this all the way through to 2030 and 2040 and 2050 goals perfect thank you very much carrie i would have called on monica but she's literally just entered a consultation um about our cop preparations but she asked me to point out and just to remind of of the article a little while ago that mercury was even found in the mariana trench so really we have mercury we have work to do on mercury everywhere don't we but with this let me let me call on carnos carlos manuel please over to you oh thank you so much claudia and um it's very difficult to me to say in a couple of words everything that i have in my mind and to react to the many interventions because this topic is very close to my mind i will do my best i'll bring three topics that i tend to believe that are extremely extremely important as we look forward into the future the first one is yeah i totally agree with you all the jurisdictional approach is a right investment it will give us a long-term benefits it's going to be very challenging but also we need to put is a dose of reality when we're talking about you know doing the irritational approach because there's a new element that the baseline has shift from the first uh phases of um of our planetGOLD to today and that is because of kobe so any any new regulation any new improvement and enhancement o
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