2609
Socioeconomic and Environmental Diagnosis of Small Scale Mining in Brazil
Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) represents the largest share of mining operations in Brazil. Despite its importance in terms of people employed and production volume of specific minerals mined, official statistics available about the sector are incomplete, in parts outdated and spread between different institutions of the Brazilian administrative landscape. In order to close this knowledge gap, the Ministry of Mines and Energy (MME) has contracted Projekt-Consult for conducting a comprehensive and updated inventory of the Brazilian ASM sector with the objective to better understand its socioeconomic dynamics and offer solutions to the environmental impacts it generates.
A large team of mining engineers, geologists, GIS specialists, and social and environmental scientists from Projekt-Consult has undertaken a comprehensive assessment. The visit of more than 400 mining sites and several in-depth regional case studies enabled a unique database as basis for generating policy recommendations to better understand and regulate the sector. All information was fed into an GIS-based online database.
