Minería artesanal y formalización: resultados territoriales del programa Oro Legal en Antioquia y Chocó

Abstract

Mining has been the main source and lifestyle to a lot of rural communities in Colombia since plenty generations ago, but the historical overview show us a reality where informality, illegality and lack of an effective state regulation to artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) continues as the trend in the territories. In 2015 Oro Legal begins working in the territories under USAID supervision, with the objective of closing the gaps associated with mining formalization, using an integral, strategic worksheet. After six years of execution, there is evidence of the program's impact in the communities in components such like formalization plans and legal assistance, reforestation, and reduction of mercury use and disposal. With the main goal of evaluate and bring this results up to a major geographical scale, this research study exposes an impact analysis for Oro Legal in a municipal level, and applying an econometric method of synthetic control, the research tested whether the treated municipalities presented a welfare increase in variable list in terms of economics, environment and security. The results obtained show that by 2019, there was no conclusive evidence of a meaningful impact at the municipal level which, in contrast with the truly meaningful impact at the community level, it makes oneself rethink today's interaction between the perceived in-field results in favor of the communities and the overall outcomes for an entire territorial entity. This comparison should allow to structure new research alternatives in behalf of planning and implementation of public policies that could respond to the mutating, adverse realities of Colombia's rural territories.