Community without solidarity: mercury pollution from small-scale mining and Colombia's crisis of authority

Colombia is the highest per capita emitter of mercury pollution in the world. Ground-level concentrations of atmospheric mercury from small-scale mining in Antioquia, Colombia, are so high that experts fear an environmental health crisis worse than any caused by mercury since Minamata, Japan, in the mid-twentieth century. Gold mining is Colombia's fastest growing industry. While foreign direct investment in gold mining is projected to increase exponentially over this decade, small-scale mining is the major force in the gold sector, generating 50–70 percent of national gold production, 70 percent of which comes from Antioquia. Federal and departmental law calls for miners to curb public exposure to mercury by removing processing activities from urban environments, but the laws are not enforced. This paper examines the political and historical obstacles to enforcing these laws, and explores the dilemmas of solving acute environmental health crises in places where violence, social exclusion and state-failure have crippled institutional legitimacy and authority. The paper addresses uncertainty around whether environmental health and sustainable resource extraction can be vehicles for progressive processes, or if instead, the increased economic emphasis on mining is inseparable from the social and political afflictions that impede environmental policy enforcement.