Volumes of Fairtrade gold grew in 2015 as consumers show support for Fairtrade. Increased volumes will lead to greater financial premiums to Fairtrade miners in Peru. As thousands of people get behind Fairtrade Fortnight 2016 (Feb 29-Mar 13), positive volume growth in Fairtrade gold as well as in four out of the five main Fairtrade food categories all sent a strong signal that shoppers and businesses are still standing up for Fairtrade, despite the tough market.
Fairtrade mining co-operatives in Latin American sold 170 kg Fairtrade gold to the global market, generating a Fairtrade Premium of $340,000 on top of the selling price to invest in community projects. Although still quite small overall, estimated sales volumes of Fairtrade fine gold grew by a dramatic 440% in the UK in 2015. Meanwhile the number of registered goldsmiths using Fairtrade gold across 11 markets increased to 389, of which 142 are UK based.
Santiago Ramirez Castro from MACDESA said, “We’d like to invest in x-ray equipment and surgical material. We need it urgently; it would help us diagnose many diseases not only in the mine, but in the community, the district, even the region, as the nearest city where you can have an x-ray is 300 km away.”
Sociedad de Trabajadores Mineros S.A. (SOTRAMI) was established in 1989 in the Atacama Desert, Central Peru. SOTRAMI’s 300 miners work in a hard-rock mine which tunnels into the side of a mountain. Miners need to be physically fit to enter the mine and get to the deeper levels. Miners use dynamite to blast out an area of rock which they then dig further with hand or pneumatic drills for ore, before it is sorted on the surface. Air is pumped from the surface to the deeper levels of the mine to ensure miners can work safely.
Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) attracts an economically weak and vulnerable rural and urban workforce. Miners and their families live in nearby Santa Filomena, which was established by small-scale agriculturalists, unemployed and landless people displaced by violence in other regions of Peru, who took to informal mining. The mine supports 500 families.
Today there are 88 shareholder workers in two groups and an additional 30 self-employed miners working in the mine plus the women’s group and five engineers who manage the mine and processing plant.
After forming SOTRAMI, the group began working towards the elimination of child labour and working towards international labour standards, which today form the basis of the Fairtrade and Farimined standard for gold. Victor Juan Hurtado Padella, 67, Deputy Mayor of Santa Filomena, explained: “Until conditions were made safer the women and children were unable to live with the miners. We have learnt that children should not work but should be in school.”
The Atacama Desert suffers high daytime temperatures and receives little rainfall in an area with elevations above 2,000 m which makes the supply of clean safe water unreliable. SOTRMAI now has permission to use a spring which is drying up to supply the community and processing plant. SOTRAMI used to exchange partially processed ore containing small amounts of gold for water. However this is no longer common practice. Sometimes the water supply, which is delivered in weekly rations in barrels, is not always purified properly causing sickness. Victor explained that “miners used to carry five gallon barrels of water for cooking but there was not enough to wash in. They had to leave when the water ran out, but since then a road as been built and we now have buses which transport water to us.”
SOTRAMI use mercury and cyanide to process the gold they mine as they cannot use water and gravity methods to extract gold from ore. SOTRAMI has built its own processing plant which means they can now more efficiently process ore for higher quality gold and better prices. This also means that chemicals are only used by trained workers. Mining operations can pollute and deplete local water sources if not properly managed in agreement with their local community. SOTRAMI must ensure drainage of effluents from processing areas be disposed of safely and neutralised to remove toxic substances. SOTRAMI has reduced their environmental impact and as they process much less ore than large-scale mining per ounce of gold, the magnitude of its impact on the land is much smaller. The use of pollution control technology with good environmental management has brought significant improvements. Fairtrade environmental requirements are designed to manage, reduce and mitigate the use of toxic substances, to control emissions of dust to air, and mud effluents into water systems, and to ensure proper water management, enhance ecological restoration practices, including protection of biodiversity, whilst taking into account their human and capital resources in the short and longer term. The Fairtrade premium can be invested in this area to implement cleaner processing technologies and to improve the environment for the miners, their families and communities, as well as for local wildlife.
Although no women work inside the mine, they work on the surface sorting ore for processing. Gina Davila, aged 29, is married to a miner and has two children aged four and five. Gina is a mineral sorter, which means she sorts the ore by selecting pieces which contain gold with a tool called a manito (little hand). These are then sold to SOTRAMI, who then process it and sell it on. 180 women work in shifts and at the end of each month share the income made between them. The women are all members of the Pallaqueras (mineral sorters) Women’s Association which was established in 2003 in response to the need to arrange shift work which allows women and single mothers to work safely and organised. There are two groups who work 2pm-6pm daily around childcare demands and domestic responsibilities.
Through Fairtrade, Gina has met other women who mine in South America and received training on health and safety in the workplace. This network provides support and has inspired the women to establish a crèche so that childcare can be shared and women can work without taking their children to the mine site. Gina explained: ‘It was very awkward taking our children to work and it was very bad for the children, breathing in all that dust.’
The mining organisations which Fairtrade are working with have already begun to benefit from just entering into the Fairtrade system particularly in the areas of health and safety and democratic organisation. As Victor explained: “There have been so many changes since we have organised ourselves into a company.” However with the global launch of Fairtrade gold products in early 2011 they now trade their gold and receive a Fairtrade Minimum Price and Fairtrade Premium for their gold. “Before we used to mine the gold and sell it to an intermediary who paid for it, then he sold it to someone else and so on until it was exported. But now, since the arrival of Fairtrade to support us, we already have better prices and people cannot cheat on us so easily,” Victor said.
The community in Santa Filomena has established a pre-school for 140 local children, which means not only do children have access to education but also have somewhere safe to be looked after while their parents are working. With Fairtrade Premium funds, the teachers want to hire someone to maintain the building and secure a reliable water supply for the children. As the number of children attending is increasing more teachers also need to be recruited. Gina from the women’s group really likes having the pre-school but explained: ‘I’m not totally happy with the state of the crèche. I’d like more things such as someone trained in childcare so we do not have to look after the children ourselves. When I got married I hoped to give my children a better life, education and the opportunity to go to university… the pre-school and crèche opens up these chances to my children.’
Gina hopes that the Fairtrade Premium will be used to arrange workshops for women to learn skills outside of mining such as tailoring and to buy sewing machines to make better sacks for the ore. ‘We’ve had lots of improvements in our community but our great aim is to install electricity pylons. If we sell through Fairtrade we’ll be able to receive the premium and this could be a great help for the whole community.’
Victor would like to use Fairtrade Premiums to re-connect the community to the internet so that they can monitor the international gold prices and sell directly to customers as well as allowing children to study.
Elsewhere, Fairtrade has been awarded a Comic Relief grant of £868,219 to extend its ground-breaking African Gold Programme which aims to support the world’s first responsibly sourced gold from East Africa. The four-year program builds on a pilot funded by Comic Relief from 2012-2015 which supported nine mining groups across Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda to work towards Fairtrade certification.
The grant will allow these mining sites to further invest in their own development, increase productivity and eventually deliver sales in to international Fairtrade markets.
Michael Gidney, Chief Executive of the Fairtrade Foundation said: “The situation faced by small-scale miners across Africa is a scandal that should have no place in modern supply chains. We are working to create a Fairtrade business model that will change that, and we are delighted that our renewed support from Comic Relief will enable us to make even faster progress”.
Support from Comic Relief has already brought benefits to miners like Johannes Ojowi from MICODEPRO mining group in Kenya who says: “The training we have received through Fairtrade has enlightened us here. It has taught us how to mine, to be safe.”
Over the next four years the African Gold Program will support miners to work towards certification and to improve the safety, cleanliness and productivity of their mining sites by improving their access to finance and training.
There are currently two Fairtrade certified mines in Peru, SOTRAMI and MACDESA, with a total annual production of 800 kg of gold and 200 kg of silver. Once the African mines become Fairtrade certified, they will add a further 44 kg gold to volumes available to international Fairtrade markets. First launched in 2011 in the UK, jewellery made from Fairtrade gold can now be bought in many markets around the world including recent launches in Switzerland and the USA. Fairtrade offers jewellers and businesses three different ways to sell Fairtrade gold.