Women in development minerals: Artisanal and small-scale mining, governance, and the SDGs

The world is confronted with numerous global challenges, including rising inflation, wars, energy crisis, cybersecurity threats, supply chain disruptions, and pandemics. Central to these challenges is the issue of climate change, which threatens social, environmental, and economic stability, potentially leading to an unprecedented global catastrophe if left unchecked. In developing economies, these problems are further exacerbated by poverty, poor-quality institutions, and unemployment rates. Recent global efforts to combat climate change and other environmental damages include the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Despite their strengths, one of the major weaknesses of the SDGs is the conflictual nature of SDG 1 (No Poverty) and the environmental SDGs (SDG 12, 14, 15 and 17). This paper aims to demonstrate that for small-scale miners in sub-Saharan Africa, these conflicting SDGs coupled with fragile socio-political environments, exacerbate the issue. Using a qualitative lens and Zambia and Ghana as case studies, the paper first argues that the ‘informal spaces,’ in which these artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) operators function are a result of their socio-political context. Within such contexts, survival transcends all else and the environment unwittingly suffers due to poor policies and inadequate health and safety education. Secondly, drawing on multistakeholder platform collaborative governance theory, the paper underscores the need for formalisation and argues that a collaborative governance approach, modelled on existing Community Based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM) schemes, is crucial for achieving the goals of reconciling conflicts between the environmental, social and economic SDGs. • Achieving environmental and economic SDGs tends to be mutually exclusive for marginalised communities in poor countries. • A public value approach to formalising ASM will ease the complexity of achieving economic and environmental SDGs in tandem. • Public sector thinking and governance must align with the factors driving individuals into the small-scale mining sector. • Legitimacy outcomes of collaborative governance will be critical to achieving conflicting environmental and economic SDGs. • Women in ASM must be empowered to champion environmental causes alongside their economic activities.