Artisanal gold mining

by Luca Catalano Gonzaga
Part of Child survival in a changing climate
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Indonesia is highly vulnerable to climate change but is also the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, when taking into consideration the deforestation of Borneo’s rainforest. (UK Unicef Report 2015 http://www.unicef.org.uk/Latest/Publications/Climate-change-violence-and-young-people/). The land, which gold hunters rip open today in search of one of the most precious metals, was once covered by a luxuriant forest. In the villages of Tumbang Tariak and Tumbang Miwan, in the Indonesian Island of Borneo, many people defy the Law – the extraction of gold is an illegal activity -, and endanger their own health. The Government’s legislation gets circumvented by corrupting its public officials, who turn a blind eye to it. The search for a little Eldorado of their own is the purpose of many families around here: a few years of hard work suffice to earn as much as needed to be able to leave this desolate place, full of mud and poisons, and to buy a house in town and start a new life there. In the Gulung district alone, there are 10.000 gold searchers. That is, if possible. The informal miners – as they are known – do not have access to sophisticated technologies and they use mercury to extract gold, mixing the ore that contains gold with water, in order to form an amalgam. Immediately afterwards, the mix is heated to remove mercury by evaporation, while the contaminated water is thrown into the Kahayan River that crosses the surrounding villages. The whole water table becomes contaminated. People drink water polluted with mercury, the same that is used to irrigate the cultivated fields thus poisoning the whole food chain. Mercury kills. And yet the search for gold does not stop before the wounds inflicted upon nature, which here seems to be only a distant memory. There are no trees, long ago uprooted to dig without mercy a land that has become a permanent swamp caused by the jet of the water pumps used by the miners to bring all detritus to the surface. And this is the most delicate and risky stage of the extracting process. This year alone 24 people have lost their lives submerged by the mud, because the walls could not hold any longer and then suddenly collapsed. After the selection of the detritus and the overuse of mercury, gold is separated out, weighed and priced. (text by Luca Catalano Gonzaga)

  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. Yuber, 22 years old, leads the waterflow into the mercury-polluted river, after having separated the gold grains from the detritus.
  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. Eko, 20 years old, channels the water out with the help of a hoe. In spite of being illegal, the extraction of gold goes on as does the deforestation of the Borneo rainforest. It is estimated that in Indonesia there are approximately 250,000 illegal miners, with an annual extraction of about 100 tons of gold.
  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. Edi, 18 years old, is working with a hoe to ensure that the water goes out.
  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. The sediments that contain the gold grains are pushed by the water-pump jet. This illegal activity has led to the deforestation of the luxuriant forest of Borneo.
  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. Alvaro, 18 years old, and Hardi, 21, move away the detritus with the water jet. Water pump jets are used to excavate the terrain and to deep holes in preparation for the gold extraction process.
  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. Dani, 18 years old, clears the land by removing the tree roots before using the water-pumps.
  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. Miners clear-cuts the swampy rain forest and dredges up the soil in the hunt for gold, poisoning the environment and themselves with mercury and leaving thousands of acres of wasteland.
  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. Pariko, 41 years old, checks the mechanical pumps that extract water and detritus containing the gold grains. Water is extracted and brought to the surface leaving along the wooden pathway the debris containing gold grains. In order to extract gold from other minerals, mercury – a highly polluting and prohibited substance- is used.
  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. Mechanical pumps that regulate the water extraction and debris to surface. Artisanal-scale gold mining (ASGM) is a large cause of this deforestation and brings with it extensive environmental, social, governance, and public health impacts, including large carbon emissions and mercury pollution.
  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. Kilat, 16 years old, is checking the mechanical pumps that bring to the surface what has been extracted underneath.
  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. Control of surface mechanical pumps for suction of water and debris containing grains of gold.
  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. A fire intentionally lit by the gold diggers in order to push themselves further into the Borneo’s rainforest, to search for new gold-fields.
  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. First excavation phase for gold extraction, with the use of mechanical excavators rented from gold miners.
  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. All that is left of the environment after gold extraction. Long ago ,this area was dominated by the Borneo rainforest, one of the green lungs of the Earth. One of the richest ecosystems in the world.
  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. An area already exploited for gold research. The extraction activity has completely destroyed the surrounding environment.
  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. In spite of being illegal, the extraction of gold goes on as does the deforestation of the Borneo rainforest.
  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. Gold excavation areas. At first, mechanical excavators are used, later water-pump jets to bring to the surface, thru pressure motors, the debris containing gold grains.
  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. Water is extracted and brought to surface leaving along the wooden pathway the debris containing gold grains. In order to extract gold from other minerals, mercury – a highly polluting and prohibited substance – is used.
  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. Yuber, 15 years old, at work during the gold extraction phase. Worldwide, some 15 million artisanal gold miners, including 4.5 million women and 600.000 children, are poisoned by direct contact with toxic mercury.
  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. Arif, 16 years old, uses a dose of mercury to separate gold from other minerals. The mine workers use mercury as a reagent to extract the precious material, but this heavy metal causes severe damages to the environment and to miners’ health. Many children start working with direct contact to mercury from the very early age of seven.
  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. Gold is extracted by using mercury to separate its grains from the detritus, and then it is overheated until it becomes a solid mass. The price of one gram of gold is 390.000 rupees (25 euros).
  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. A family of gold finders in the village of Tumbang Tariak. In the Gunung district alone, there are more than 100.000 gold finders dedicated to an activity that is officially illegal.
  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. Miner during a break. The miners often show typical symptoms of mercury intoxication, such as movement disorders (ataxia, tremor, dysdiadochokinesia, etc.).
  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. A mother nurses her son, in her home in the village of Tumbang Tariak.
  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. Mother and son at their home in the village of Tumbang Miwan. Exposure to mercury in these small-scale mining communities is a serious health hazard, especially to the children.
  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. Tumbang Miwan village. A baby sleeping close to his cat.
  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. Imel, 21 years old, gold miner, with his son close to his home in the village of Tumbang Miwan.
  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. Wedding of an artisan gold miner.
  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. Family of artisanal gold diggers. Illegal gold mining is ubiquitous in Borneo. It poses threats to the environment and health risks to indigenous people.
  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. A family of artisanal gold miners. Home to the biggest industrial gold mine in the world, Indonesia also hosts an extensive artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) sector. Artisanal mining has been practiced throughout Indonesia for hundreds of years, but the sector has seen exponential growth over the last two decades.
  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. Hardi, 30 years old, with his wife and two daughters, at their home in the village of Tumbang Miwan. Gold finder for six years now, he earns around 4 million rupees per month (260 euros). He dreams of stopping his work at the mine in four years and moving to Palangkaraya.
  • Rainforest of Borneo, District of Gunung, Indonesia 2014. Young women play volley-ball, close to their home in the village of Tumbang Tariak, while waiting for their husbands and relatives to return from the gold extraction areas.

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