Victoire Girard (Nova SBE)

Artisanal mining in Africa. Green for Gold?

Victoire Girard
Nova SBE

Coauthors: Teresa Molina-Millán and Guillaume Vic

Abstract

The livelihoods of 130 to 270 million people depend on artisanal mining. Artisanal mining is a labor-intensive, often illegal, extractive activity. We levy research in geology, and a source of exogenous time variation, to build the first proxy of artisanal gold mining in Africa -- the main form of artisanal mining. We establish that an increase in the potential value of artisanal mining is a significant driver of deforestation. The historical increase in the gold price accounts for 8\% of deforestation continent-wide, 28\% in gold areas. In parallel, artisanal mining increases local economic wealth and may provide an alternative livelihood in case of weather shock jeopardizing agricultural output.
Finally, the bulk of the mining-induced deforestation maybe traced-back to direct deforestation, where trees are cut to make room for the mining activity itself.

Read the paper (NOVAAFRICA Working Paper No 2201)