In the Philippines municipality of Paracale, over half of the population is involved in artisanal and small-scale gold mining, either as workers, financiers, processors, or gold panners. Many operations use the toxic chemical mercury to extract their gold and use outdated equipment--but this site is home to a brand new mercury-free processing system thanks to the planetGOLD Philippines project. This upgraded facility eliminates harmful emissions of mercury while also supporting livelihoods by enabling miners to recover more gold than before when they were using mercury.
The Global Environment Facility (GEF) is a multilateral fund dedicated to confronting biodiversity loss, climate change, pollution, and strains on land and ocean health. Over the past three decades, the GEF has provided more than $22 billion in financing and mobilized another $120 billion for more than 5,000 national and regional projects.