Workshop on “Developing a national overview of the Artisanal and Small Scale Gold Mining sector for NAP project in Asian region”

The UN Environment Global Mercury Partnership is undertaking activities to enhance national information exchange, capacity building and knowledge generation to facilitate the development of the UN Environment implemented National Action Plans(NAPs) for Artisanal and Small Scale Gold Mining (ASGM) . This is referred to as the NAP Global Component. As part of these activities, the regional workshop on “Developing a national overview of the Artisanal and Small Scale Gold Mining sector for NAP project” took place for the Asian countries working with UN Environment on their NAPs. The workshop consisted of two parts: classroom workshop held in Jakarta from 27-28 November 2017, and  field training held in North Sulawesi, Indonesia from 29-30 November 2017.

The classroom workshop introduced comprehensive and scalable methodologies on how to generate a national overview of the ASGM sector for NAP, including baseline estimates of mercury use, practices employed at the mining sites, environmental and health impacts, and key socio-economic aspects of the sector. The classroom workshop provided an opportunity for regional cooperation between countries and executing agencies developing NAPs. The classroom workshop was followed by the field training, during which one selected national participant from each participating country received a hands-on experience with field data collection and analysis. The field training was conducted by the Artisanal Gold Council.