Conflicts Between Artisanal Miners and the Government in Mongolia

In autumn 2013, Mongolians witnessed gun shootings and an attempt to blast bomb near the Parliament House, motivated by the Civil Environmental Movement of Mongolia. The country’s basic economic revenue comes from mining sector and since the democratic transition; the country started using the mineral resources with the ratification of ‘Gold Program” in 1994.

As a result, the number of artisanal miners who exploit gold in abandoned areas has increased extensively and they have been one of the main factors to the environmental degradation as they operate out of law. Those 65,000-100,000 people, so-called “micro miners” have been working and living without any legal coordination and official registration for the last decade. The Government made an effort on dissolving those illegal and environmentally hazardous groups in 2005, but it led to extremely acute conflict between the tow sides. Remarkably, no comprehensive survey was conducted on this newly generated community in Mongolian society.

Accordingly, a research was carried out for determining forms and consequences of conflicts between the artisanal miners and the Government on example of cases in Mongolia. The fundamental conflict theory and approaches were applied in this paper. As a result, the main conflicting parties in artisanal mining were identified as local authorities and the root cause for long term dispute was defined as having no mediation and facilitation in the process. Eventually, the conflicts resulted to unsustainability in artisanal miners’ activities, more risks in safety issues and many people were injured during their rudimentary operation.

The research, carried out deep study on essence of the artisanal miners and process of their institutionalization, has been recognized as significant project which will contribute to effective natural resource management and resolution methods on conflicts over natural resources.