Colombia: In Colombia, Legal Mining Proves a Win-Win for Environment, Traditional Communities

Sep 25, 2021 | Dimitri Selibas, Mongabay
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In Colombia’s Chocó department, renowned by environmentalists for its abundant biodiversity, Afro-Colombian communities collect gold from rivers as part of an ancestral way of life. As a mark of this type of mining’s low environmental impact and its cultural importance for both Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities, Colombia’s 1991 Constitution sets a legislative foundation for special provisions for artisanal, non-mechanical mining to take place in territories governed by these ethnic communities.