Mining is not something that most people associate with Costa Rica. The country is portrayed as a land of volcanoes, rainforests, captivating wildlife and paradise coastlines. Costa Rica is also a well-known and applauded environmental model in terms of its law and regulations protecting country’s biodiversity and ecosystems. As it turns out, the geology of the country is equally fascinating including the gold deposits – mainly in form of epithermal gold mineralization in quartz veins – located along the large ore belt extending in the NW–SE direction parallel to the Cordillera de Tilarán, in the Guanacaste region northwest part of the country. The history of gold mining in Costa Rica is relatively recent, dating back to the 19th century (the above mural painting at the bus station of the Abangares, depicts the onset of the gold mining in the region in the 19th century). Due to past accidents in large-scale gold mining, a reform of the Mining Code was adopted in 2010 declaring Costa Rica a country free of open pit metals mining. However, the country allows underground mining for subsistence artisanal and small-scale miners who are organized into cooperatives and comply with necessary regulations.
Artisanal gold mining in Costa Rica is mainly practiced in the areas of Abangares, Guanacaste, where it is regarded as the cultural and historical backbone of the community existence. The estimated number of miners in Abangares includes approximately 2000 people. Recognizing the importance of the sector for the community and need to improve its operations in terms of mercury pollution, in 2019 Costa Rica embarked on the development of a Minamata National Action Plan (NAP) to reduce and when feasible eliminate mercury use its artisanal and small scale gold mining (ASGM) sector. The NAP is implemented by UNEP and funded by the GEF.
The information collected during the NAP project established that 3 out of 4 worst practices, as outlined by the Minamata Convention, i.e. whole ore amalgamation, use of cyanide with tailings containing mercury and burning of amalgam in residential areas, are still practiced in Abangares, putting miners and their communities at risk of mercury exposure. Average use of mercury in the zone was estimated at 34 tonnes per year. To address the environmental, legal, social and health challenges of ASGM in Costa Rica, the country proposes comprehensive strategies under its NAP, among other to enhance formalization approaches, improve access to health facilities, and improve mining practices, By implmenting the strategies Costa Rica commits to reduce mercury use from ASGM by 50% by 2028 and eliminate it completely by 2030.
The UNEP Global Mercury Partnership has been providing technical support to the NAP Costa Rica project by providing capacity budling, facilitating peer reviews and supporting regional information exchange. In November 2022, the Costa Rica NAP project organized a regional lessons-learned workshop with participation of representatives from Peru, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Honduras. The aim of the workshop was to exchange national experiences related to the development and implementation of NAP projects and other ASGM interventions in the region. The participants visited the ASGM processing site in Abangares to learn firsthand about the ASGM practices in Costa Rica and took part in consultations with miners’ representatives during which they shared successful case studies on mercury free technologies, from their respective countries. The participants expressed appreciation for the possibility to build new regional partnerships and underlined that the follow-up regional collaboration, in particular in terms of ASGM mercury free technologies as well as reducing mercury trade, is of great importance to accelerate the transition to more responsible and cleaner ASGM operations that at the same time protect human health and minimize impacts on our planet’s biodiversity.
