GOMIAM

My work on small-scale gold mining in Suriname was the starting point for a large comparative Amazon wide project funded by NWO/WOTRO (2011-2016) in the CoCooN program under the name GOMIAM. The full name of the project is Small-scale gold mining and social conflict in the Amazon: Comparing states, environments, local populations and miners in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Suriname. In GOMIAM a team of researchers from six different countries worked on environmental harms and socio-political conflicts resulting from small scale gold mining in the Amazon basin. We analysed issues such as the threat to livelihoods of indigenous people resulting from pollution caused by gold mining, the cross-border tensions that arise when miners move into neighbouring countries, and the legal and economic effects of the traffic of gold and mining equipment.

See www.gomiam.org for more information on this research and policy project.