Ouro e Cidadania
2003–2004 · UNESCO Montevideo · UFPA/NAEA · Small-Scale Gold Mining · Capacity Building · Amazonia
Gold Mining · Knowledge & Decision-Making · Environmental Practices · Organizational Capacity · Local Development
Project Overview
Ouro e Cidadania was a pilot project developed at the Universidade Federal do Pará (UFPA) through the Núcleo de Altos Estudos Amazônicos (NAEA) within a UNESCO Montevideo initiative concerned with the contribution of small-scale mining to overcoming poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean. I served as Project Coordinator.
The project addressed a practical problem confronting artisanal and small-scale gold mining in Amazonia: how miners and their organizations could improve decisions about mineral extraction while responding to declining deposits, production costs, environmental impacts and changing economic conditions.
Rather than approaching these challenges through a single technical intervention, Ouro e Cidadania connected different forms of knowledge concerning geological assessment, production costs, environmental impacts and organizational capacity. The objective was to strengthen the capacity of miners and their organizations to evaluate mining activities and their economic, environmental and organizational consequences.
The project was conceived in cooperation with organizations representing small-scale miners in two Amazonian mining regions: COOGAL — Cooperativa dos Garimpeiros do Lourenço, in Amapá, and AMOT — Associação dos Mineradores de Ouro do Tapajós, in Pará.
Research & Intervention Context
Ouro e Cidadania emerged from longer-term research on transformations in Amazonian small-scale gold mining.
The project proposal identified changing conditions in the sector following the expansion of Amazonian garimpo during the 1980s. Easily accessible deposits had become increasingly difficult to find in established mining regions, while changing economic conditions and rising production costs placed additional pressure on mining operations.
Under these conditions, the project connected two problems. The first concerned decision-making within mining itself: better geological information and knowledge of production costs could help miners assess deposits and the economic viability of extraction before committing substantial resources.
The second concerned the wider problem of local development in mining-dependent areas. Where mineral deposits were becoming less productive, the question was not only how to improve extraction but also how mining communities and organizations could respond to changing economic conditions and consider alternative development possibilities.
The Pilot Intervention
The principal intervention took place in the Lourenço mining region in Amapá in cooperation with COOGAL and in the Tapajós region with AMOT.
Activities conducted in March 2004 combined classroom teaching, practical fieldwork and work with miners, the cooperative and other local participants. The intervention brought together four interconnected areas:
- geological knowledge and prospecting;
- cost accounting and economic assessment;
- environmental impacts and environmental recovery;
- organizational and management capacity.
The project was therefore not limited to transferring technical knowledge. Its different components were intended to provide information and practical instruments that miners and their organizations could use when making decisions about mineral extraction and its consequences.
Knowledge for Mining Decisions
Geological knowledge was used to improve prospecting and the assessment of mineral deposits before substantial resources were committed to extraction. Training combined theoretical knowledge with practical field activities concerning sampling, geological observation and the estimation of deposits.
Cost accounting provided instruments for recording expenditures, distinguishing different categories of costs, monitoring production and sales, and assessing the economic results of mining activities. The training material developed for the project translated accounting concepts into the everyday productive conditions of Amazonian garimpo, including expenditures for fuel, equipment, food, mercury and other inputs, as well as depreciation, production, gold sales and inventories.
Environmental knowledge addressed environmental impacts associated with extraction and processing, including erosion, sedimentation and contamination involving mercury and cyanide. Training also considered environmental indicators, mitigation and possibilities for recovering degraded mining areas.
Together, these components reflected the project's central intervention logic: different forms of specialized knowledge were translated into practical instruments intended to improve decisions within small-scale mining.
Organizations & Capacity Building
Ouro e Cidadania worked through organizations of small-scale miners rather than addressing miners exclusively as individuals. COOGAL in Lourenço and AMOT in the Tapajós were conceived as organizational partners through which knowledge and practices could potentially be reproduced and adapted.
This organizational dimension was particularly explicit in the work developed with AMOT. In addition to geological, accounting and environmental training, the intervention architecture included basic management training and a strategic-planning process for the miners' association. The latter was intended to identify organizational weaknesses and develop the association's mission, objectives, activities and future projects.
The cooperation also envisaged continuing exchange between the project coordination and AMOT, with activities responding to demands articulated by miners through their organization.
My Role
I served as Project Coordinator of Ouro e Cidadania at UFPA/NAEA. In addition to overall coordination, I developed and taught the project's cost-accounting component, adapting basic accounting instruments to the economic and productive conditions of small-scale gold mining.
Within the intervention architecture developed with AMOT, I was also responsible for proposed basic-management training and for facilitating a strategic-planning process for the miners' association. These AMOT activities are documented as planned components; their completion has not been verified.
Project Output
Introduction to Cost Accounting for Small-Scale Gold Miners
Ouro e Cidadania — Introdução à contabilidade de custo para garimpeiros
A training manual developed specifically for small-scale miners, translating basic accounting concepts into the economic and productive conditions of Amazonian garimpo.
The material provided practical instruments for recording and classifying expenditures, monitoring purchases and cash flow, calculating depreciation, recording production and gold sales, managing inventories and calculating the economic result of mining activities.
The manual represents the principal independently documented project output currently identified. It should be understood as a training and knowledge-transfer output rather than an academic publication.
Contribution to My Research Trajectory
Ouro e Cidadania was a relatively small pilot project, but it represents a distinctive moment in the development of my research on Amazonian mining.
Earlier research had concentrated particularly on the economic organization of garimpo, labour relations, technological change and the connections between gold mining and wider economic transformations. Ouro e Cidadania introduced a more explicitly intervention-oriented question:
How can knowledge strengthen the capacity of actors and organizations to make decisions under the economic, technical and environmental uncertainties of small-scale mining?
The project approached this problem by connecting geological assessment, economic calculation, environmental knowledge and organizational capacity. In retrospect, this anticipated questions that later became important in my research on formalization, resource governance and responsible mineral extraction.
The organizational dimension was particularly significant. The project did not address miners only as individuals but worked through a cooperative and envisaged cooperation with a miners' association. This directed attention toward the capacity of organizations to mediate between specialized knowledge and practical decisions.
From the perspective of my current research, Ouro e Cidadania is therefore relevant as an early empirical example of how specialized knowledge becomes consequential only when it can be connected to decisions, organizations and particular regional conditions.
Related Research
GOMIAM — Gold Mining in the Amazon →
International comparative research on small-scale gold mining, formalization, conflict, legal arrangements and resource governance.
Formal and Informal Practices of Natural Resource Use and Management in the Amazon →
Comparative research on resource access, formal and informal institutions, small-scale mining and natural-resource governance.
Mining & Extractive Transformations →
Research on artisanal and industrial mining, resource governance, responsible extraction and regional transformation.
Regional Development in World Society →
The current theoretical programme examining how heterogeneous world-societal processes become selectively connected and consequential within historically evolving regional configurations.