The Human Cost of Gold | National Geographic Magazine

Throughout civilization, gold has commanded more respect than any other substance. King Ferdinand of Spain said, “Get gold humanely if possible, but at all costs get gold.”

Because of its rarity, a glittering piece of gold jewelry is an expensive purchase. That’s nothing, however, compared to the price paid by those living in impoverished mining communities.

We are currently in the biggest gold rush in history. Because of the growing economies in India and China—especially India—the demand for gold is the highest it’s ever been.

Indians have more gold in jewelry alone than the US Treasury has in its vaults. Since the time of the spice route trade, India has consumed close to 50 percent of the annual output of gold—and the gold …

The Human Cost of Gold | National Geographic Magazine

Throughout civilization, gold has commanded more respect than any other substance. King Ferdinand of Spain said, “Get gold humanely if possible, but at all costs get gold.”

Because of its rarity, a glittering piece of gold jewelry is an expensive purchase. That’s nothing, however, compared to the price paid by those living in impoverished mining communities.

We are currently in the biggest gold rush in history. Because of the growing economies in India and China—especially India—the demand for gold is the highest it’s ever been.

Indians have more gold in jewelry alone than the US Treasury has in its vaults. Since the time of the spice route trade, India has consumed close to 50 percent of the annual output of gold—and the gold that goes into India stays there.

The easy gold has already been mined. Finding new gold usually involves ravaging pristine ecosystems and exploiting indigenous communities.

Gold is very rare. All of the gold in existence weighs 161,000 tons—the US Steel industry produces that much steel in just a few hours—and people have always horded it, even before Egyptians minted gold bars in 4,000 BC.  In all of history, the 161,000 tons of gold that have been mined, is barely enough to fill two Olympic pools. More than half has been extracted in the past 50 years.

Gold is unusually dense. A cubic foot weighs half a ton. Five percent of the world’s gold is stored at the New York Federal Reserve. This gold is too dense to ship easily so it is stored there for other countries.  The move of just a few feet between storage closets can shape the balance of financial power between nations.

Gold is extremely malleable. One ounce can be spread out over 100 square feet.

Gold is too soft and too scarce for most uses.  Almost ninety percent of it is used for adornment or money, and the remainder is used for industrial purposes. Gold also never disappears, and never oxidizes.

My best story about how gold never disappears is that I went to the worlds largest jewelry manufacturing facility in India – Rajesh Exports Limited – which is also the biggest exporter of gold in the world.  They are the only private company allowed to import gold into India.  They move 70-75 metric tons of products out of their factory every year.  A standard number for waste in their industry is 3 to 3.5 percent.  Their waste is only .3 percent.  There are over a thousand people working in a huge building that resembles a prison – 95 percent of them also live in company housing. They go to EXTREME efforts to not lose any gold. All gold facilities mop the floors and run the mop water through a recovery process. But Rajesh Exports takes this one step further. They require employees to live in company housing. The company housing sewage plant runs the workers waste through a recovery process – so if any of the workers ingest gold in any way, when they go to their company bathroom, it is recovered. This makes sense to me – tons of earth must be moved and washed— backbreaking labor that turns the land into a moonscape—to have a few glimmers of gold in your pockets. The ring on my finger means someone, with or without machinery, had to move and process 20 tons of material. The glittering luxury of gold, like the sparkle of a diamond, does not reflect the inhumane manner in which it was likely acquired.

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Illegal Gold Miners Ruin Landscape | Prestea, Ghana, Africa
Fevered by hopes of striking it rich, illegal miners claw sacks of “money stone” –gold ore- from the Pra River in Ghana. Their toll feeds the world’s hunger for gold, and leaves a ruined landscape in its wake.
In another part of Indonesia – the province of Kalimantan, an investigation by the Indonesian government’s National Human Rights Commission in 2001 substantiated claims that Indonesian military and company security had forcibly evicted local small-scale miners and torched villages from 1989 to 1992 to make way for UK- and Australia-based Rio Tinto’s PT Kelian gold mine.  Local miners were never compensated for loss of livelihood, while the 440 families who were physically displaced to make way for the mine received only minimal compensation for their losses. The forced relocation, physical attacks, and loss of livelihoods that can be associated with the land expropriations are all serious human rights violations.
Weighing Gold for Pokeknocker Gold Miners | Guyana
Desiree Pillay weighs gold and tries to run a remote outpost in Menzies Landing, Guyana all alone because her husband (on wall photo) shot and killed a man in a dispute over gold and is in prison. Today, eight years later, she sees more tourists than gold diggers. Nearby Kaieteur National Park has been expanded, pushing miners out.
Indonesian Illegal Gold Miners Hazards | Borneo
Central Kalimantan Artisanal Gold Mining | Indonesian farmers turn their hoes to mining, illegally digging for gold on a torn up riverbank in Borneo. For the chance to make five dollars a day, thousands have left their fields to join Indonesia’s gold rush.
East Java has high unemployment and there are many migrant workers on Kalimantan (Borneo) from Java who came initially to do artisanal timberwork.  The government stomped out the little timber guys in favor of two big companies so they could control (read “profit from”) the industry.  So all the artisanal timber workers switched to gold.  Miners test in the 1000-ppm plus range for mercury (normal is 170 to 300). Eastern Java is severely overcrowded and the government has an official transmigration program over to Kalimantan.  In Eastern Java they can earn about 100RP a day hoeing the fields. Here they can earn upwards of 30,000-60,000RP ($3-$6) a day. So it is worth it to them to camp in this area, having only the water (full of mercury) from the amalgam ponds to bathe and drink.
Illegal Gold Miners Crawl Like Ants on Riverbank | Ghana, Africa
AngloGold is the world’s most valuable mining company, but they will not let these artisanal miners into their tailings piles.  They brought in the military to run them off and when the military leaves the artisanal miners will return.
Auspicious Gold Buying Day | Akshaya Tritiya | Chennai, India
The lure of gold dominates a Chennai street in September, just before India’s wedding season, when jewelry sales soar. India is the top gold consumer, its citizens buying as much for investment as adornment.
In India jewelry is valued by weight and purity and then “making charges” are added on.  But making charges are very low… 3 to 4 percent in many cases. The real surge comes from the country’s burgeoning middle class, which has tripled in size over the past 20 years, to 300 million people.
Gold Miner Brushes Teeth in Pond Laced With Mercury | Indonesia
Miners test in the 1000-ppm plus range for mercury (normal is 170 to 300).  They earn about $5USD a day.  Eastern Java is severely overcrowded and the government. has an official transmigration program over to Kalimantan.  In Eastern Java they can earn about 100RP a day hoeing the fields. Here they can earn upwards of 30,000-60,000RP ($3-$6) a day. So it is worth it to them to camp in this area, having only the water from the amalgam ponds to bathe and drink.
Gold Bars at the Federal Reserve Vault | New York, USA
The door at the vault to the NY Fed says: “Gold is Irresistible.”
At recent prices, one 28-pound gold bar held by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is worth more than a half million dollars. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York—one of twelve regional capital reserve banks in the system—is located in the heart of the financial district in downtown Manhattan. Moving gold bars just a few feet from one storage closet to another can shape the balance of financial power between nations.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York holds FIVE percent of the world’s 161,000 tons of gold. That means they must have over 8,000 tons.
Mile-Wide Batu Hijau Gold Mine Creates Problems | Indonesia
Mile-wide Batu Hijau, a copper and gold mine, generates profits and problems on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa. Opened in 2000 by U.S.-based Newmont Mining Corporation, the huge mine employs 8,000 Indonesians. But the massive amounts of waste rock have buried rain forest. Operators expect gold to run out in about 20 years.
Indians Pan for Gold in Streets Full of Garbage | Chennai, India
In Chennai, India, Dilli Bai (at right) joins other sweepers who pan for flecks from neighborhood jewelry workshops, prospecting at dawn, before official trash collectors arrive. Bai collects about a gram a week from the dust of the city streets. Wherever there is gold, people will seek it.
The owner of Nathella Jewelry told us about these women near his wholesale outlet who swept the dust on the streets outside where the gold smiths work in order to find gold.  I couldn’t really believe I was photographing women panning for gold in streets full of garbage. I guess why this happens is that India treats gold as a commodity and sells it for the value of the gold plus “making charges.”  Because the artisans work for so little, they can keep the making charges around 15 percent.  People are paid very little and do the work in their homes in these ghetto areas.  The women sweep the streets in the morning, bent over in a way that you know they’ve spent a good deal of their lives in this position. Then they pan for the gold, hoping to get about a gram a week.  It was amazing to see the glitter in their little pans, such a small amount that it was too difficult to photograph. They have to do it early because the government street sweepers get there around 9am.
India Wedding | Bride in Gold | Chikmagalur, India
80 percent of weddings in India are still arranged and most involve a dowry. There are 10 million weddings in India every year. Adding to the pressure: more than 47 million Indians girls from age 15 to 29 have not yet married. The piece in her hair is 2KG and over 100 years old.  The workmanship places its value at around $500,000 USD.  Total wealth hanging off this bride is about $700,000.  There were times when it was painful for her to keep her head straight. The thread in her sari is 24K gold thread as well.
Artisanal Gold Smiths Sweat Shop | Kolkata (Calcutta), India
These guys make, at best, about 3-400 $USD per month. They live in the workplace. The clothes hanging above them are their clothes, their closet as it were.  At night they move the worktables aside and sleep on the floor in the same small space they work in. These guys are all very kind to each other; they are from the same village. They take turns going out for food, for tea. They take care of each other and they need each other. When one of them goes back to the village, he carries the money from all of them. When he comes back he brings things for everyone else from all of their families.
The goldsmiths are given 102.6 grams of gold and are expected to return 100 grams of jewelry. The average waste for 100 grams is 1.3 grams.  So the owner of the factory tells them he wants a 20-gram piece of jewelry and they have to figure out how to make it that weight and keep to the design they are given.
Arranged Marriage | Gold Wedding | Chikmagalur, India
Checking her hair in a mirror before getting married Nagavi waits to be married. This is an arranged marriage between two coffee plantation owner families 5 hours from Bangalore in Chikmagalur, India.  The girl’s family approached the wealthier coffee plantation family and was accepted.  She is wearing the wedding jewelry of her extended family.
India Wedding | Bride in Half Million Dollar Outfit
Wearing her fortune, from gold threads in her sari to a priceless heirloom headpiece, Nagavi sits with family on her wedding day in India. Gold trappings advertise the value she’ll bring to the union.
Scrapping Gold From Old Belgian Mines | DR Congo
Most Africans in the Congo work where the Belgians already explored.  Congolese try to eke little bits of gold from the old mine tunnels and cracks in the earth left by the Belgians. Belgians moved very quickly into their colony with heavy machinery to extract gold to finance the war effort during WWII. I found this guy a couple of KM down an old shaft holding a flashlight in his mouth and knocking two rocks together to try and find gold.
Auspicious Gold Buying Day | Akshaya Tritiya | Chennai, India
Akshaya Tritiya is one of the four most auspicious days of the year for Hindus. The word Akshaya, a Sanskrit word, literally means one that never diminishes,
Joyalukkas Jewelry Store is one of the largest in the world and all Indians that can afford it buy gold on Akshaya Tritiya, the auspicious day for purchasing gold. Gold is an important part of the Hindu scriptures, the basis for Akshaya Tritiya.  But everyone in India also buys gold because the rural banking system was not good and taxation was high. The real surge comes from the country’s burgeoning middle class, which has tripled in size over the past 20 years, to 300 million people, but not in sophistication in terms of investments.
Artisanal Gold Smith Sweat Shop | Kolkata (Calcutta), India
Sweating out profit, (some very young) goldsmiths work in a small-room factory in Kolkata, India. Given 102.6 grams for a 100-gram order, the collective keeps whatever is not used in the jewelry-making process.
Untouchables Pan for Gold in Dusty Streets | Chennai, India
Young untouchables sleep in the street of Chennai before panning for gold in the dust outside the goldsmiths’ shops. Children are involved in all aspects of gold mining around the world. In small-scale mines, searching for gold is a family affair. Of the world’s 12 to 15 million artisanal gold miners, an estimated 30 percent are women and children.
Human Flood From Albertine Rift Seeking Gold | Ituri, Congo
A human flood chokes the mud-slick remnants of a highway, the main vein for commerce through the Ituri. Rough and rutted during dry weather, the roads are nearly impassable in the wet season. But rain can’t stop the toleka traders, who push goods hundreds of miles by bicycle to resupply the newly minted gold mines in the area.
Pygmies Cut Down Their Own Forest For Gold | Ituri, Congo
As the human flood comes over the Albertine Rift from Uganda to find gold, Pygmies are employed to cut down their own forest for gardens, housing facilities for gold miners and support facilities for gold mines.
Cinqante | Belgian Gold Mine | Ituri, DR Congo
Villagers in the war-weary Ituri region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo scrape for gold in a shaft dug decades ago by a Belgian company. Until recently, armed groups controlled Ituri’s rich mines, using gold to buy weapons.
Quarantesept | Belgian Gold Mine | Ituri, DR Congo
Villagers in the war-weary Ituri region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo scrape for gold in a shaft dug decades ago by a Belgian company. Until recently, armed groups controlled Ituri’s rich mines, using gold to buy weapons.
Quarantesept, Cinqante | Gold Mines | Ituri, DR Congo
Security Guard in DR Congo Mine – Quarantesept and Cinqante are gold mining towns just outside the Ituri forest reserve in DR Congo named for their distance from the town center. There are gold mines all over on the western border of the Ituri and hundreds of people from DR Congo and Uganda come to work at the small-scale mines. Then the miner’s families move in and create gardens, so all of a sudden this area of jungle isn’t that formidable to develop.  DR Congo government is just a loose amalgam of warlords and those warlords are only interested in stripping resources from the country.  The worst warlords are in the areas that have gold.  Three million have died for reasons tied to the various conflicts over the years.
The mountains of gold in Bunia are eroded thru the Ituri River watershed and deposited throughout the region.The worst war lords are along this area in the Albertine Rift where the gold can be extracted.
4 million have died trying to get away from conflict that is ultimately about resources.
The door at the vault to the NY Fed says: “Gold is Irresistible.”
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York holds FIVE percent of the world’s 161,000 tons of gold. That means they must have over 8,000 tons.
At recent prices, one 28-pound gold bar held by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is worth more than a half million dollars. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York—one of twelve regional capital reserve banks in the system—is located in the heart of the financial district in downtown Manhattan. Moving gold bars just a few feet from one storage closet to another can shape the balance of financial power between nations.
Gold Fever Destroys Forests | Ituri, DR Congo
Small time gold prospecting goes on in any small opening of the forest – just off the newly carved roads. Gold fever is contagious in northeastern Congo, where the metal finances local warlords. Would-be prospectors need only old truck parts to get into the business: Wheel rims become mortars and drive shafts are used as pestles. Rocks are smashed and washed by hand in search of yellow flecks.
The mountains of gold in Bunia are eroded thru the Ituri River watershed and deposited throughout the region.The worst war lords are along this area in the Albertine Rift where the gold can be extracted.
4 million have died trying to get away from conflict that is ultimately about resources.
Illegal mining – 25 percent of the world’s gold | Child Labor | Ghana
Manpower at an improvised mine in Ghana includes a 13-year-old boy put to work sluicing for gold. Large mining firms control just 4 percent of Ghana’s territory, but a land grab by those firms evicted thousands of villagers from their homes, forcing many to survive by poaching gold. Illegal mining produces 25 percent of the world’s gold.
These Galamsay (illegal) miners in village of Dunkwa is where this 13-year-old child has to stand on a submerged log in water washing out mine tailings to sift gold.
Helicopter Takes $7M Worth of Gold Bars | Ghana, Africa
Newmont Ghana is a two-year-old gold mine that pulls out about 500,000 ounces a year. The helicopter came in for the gold and local police did not show up to guard the transfer, so local guards had to be used. They shipped out 14 bars with an average weight of 22KG, worth about $7 million USD.
Gold Miner in Ruined Landscape Earns 5USD a Day | Borneo
Miners test in the 1000-ppm plus range for mercury (normal is 170 to 300).  They earn about $5USD a day.  Eastern Java is severely overcrowded and the government. has an official transmigration program over to Kalimantan.  In Eastern Java they can earn about 100RP a day hoeing the fields. Here they can earn upwards of 30,000-60,000RP ($3-$6) a day. So it is worth it to them to camp in this area, having only the water from the amalgam ponds to bathe and drink.
In another part of Indonesia – the province of Kalimantan, an investigation by the Indonesian government’s National Human Rights Commission in 2001 substantiated claims that Indonesian military and company security had forcibly evicted local small-scale miners and torched villages from 1989 to 1992 to make way for UK- and Australia-based Rio Tinto’s PT Kelian gold mine.  Local miners were never compensated for loss of livelihood, while the 440 families who were physically displaced to make way for the mine received only minimal compensation for their losses. The forced relocation, physical attacks, and loss of livelihoods that can be associated with the land expropriations are all serious human rights violations.
Ruined Rivers From Gold Mining | Guyana, South America
The rivers outside one of Guyana’s little gold outposts have all turned a chalky color – choked with earth from the dredging operations for gold. This village now only has one small clean water source left.
Gold Miners Exposed to Toxic Vapors | Borneo, Indonesia
After it’s coating of mercury is burned off, a gram of gold may fetch $25 for an Indonesian miner, while extracting a potentially heavy cost to his health. Using mercury to separate gold from rock, millions of small-scale miners worldwide inhale toxic vapors during the refining process, exposing them to neurological and genetic damage. Waste mercury in liquid form enters river sediments and vegetation, poisoning local food chains.
Gold Miners Handle Mercury | Borneo, Indonesia
Miners handle mercury in the amalgam pond that has the only clear water in the entire area – this same pond is used by women to wash clothes and bathe children. The miners will use mercury and then bathe and brush their teeth with the same water.
Illegal Gold Miners in Moonscape | Prestea, Ghana, Africa
Big guys vs. the little guys – AngloGold is the world’s most valuable mining company, worth over $30 billion in 2003. These artisanal miners are mining the banks of the Pra River near Prestea, Ghana, because Anglo Gold has gotten the government to bring in the military to beat the crap out of them because they were mining the tailings piles around the big industrial mines.  So they have backed off to this riverbank.  But there is no moderation in enforcement, and when the military leaves, they will go back.
Injured Gold Miner Shot by Military | Ghana, Africa
Anthony Raidoo was shot when he trespassed on Ashanti Gold property. AG had cut off a short path to the village farms and had given them a car to go the long way around, but the car only lasted a few weeks. There was unrest, the military was called in and the protest involved walking on the shorter path. The military fired into the protest and Anthony was unlucky. His wound still has not healed after a year and 2 months.