Climate Change, Conflict, and Resource Extraction: Analyses of Nigerian Artisanal Mining Communities and Ominous Global Trends

BACKGROUND: The 2010 lead poisoning outbreak that claimed the lives of more than 400 children in artisanal gold mining villages in Zamfara, Nigeria is the tragic result of high gold prices, a geologic anomaly, and processing of ores in residential areas. Today, these villages face a growing crisis related to conflict and climate change. While the situation in Zamfara is unparalleled in many ways, the interactions between climate change, conflict, and mining consistently overlap a global scale. The scope of this analysis extends beyond the Nigerian crisis. OBJECTIVES: Understanding the complexities of challenges faced in Zamfara provides insight into how these issues impact vulnerable communities globally, and which strategies should be considered to solve this wicked problem. METHODS: Analysis of the relationships between climate change, conflict, and mining in Zamfara and globally via literature review and examination of current events in the Sahel region. FINDINGS: Supporting healthy artisanal mining communities, as was prioritized in Zamfara, must be a focus of environmental, health, and mineral management policies. This includes the consideration of multiple environmental health challenges, the protection of vulnerable groups, government-supported formalization programs, and meaningful involvement of local leadership in developing, implementing, and sustaining intervention strategies to enshrine ASM as a poverty reduction, climate change adaptation strategy. CONCLUSIONS: Rapidly rising metal prices and demand will continue to fuel environmental health crises associated with mining. Given Africa’s growing role in the global mineral economy and the massive number of subsistence communities who will continue to be impacted by climate change, strategies that support responsible artisanal mining are both a necessity for preventing future health crises and an opportunity for promoting regional stability and peace.