Issue Brief: Property Rights and Artisanal Mining

The first section of this issue brief reviews the largely under-recognized place of the artisanal and small-scale mining sector in national economies. Next, it describes briefly how artisanal and small-scale mining has been at the root of many resource conflicts in developing countries and primarily those in West and Central Africa. This is followed by a discussion of how the clarification of property rights contributes to the reduction of conflicts over mineral resources. By way of illustration, the Property Rights and Artisanal Diamond Development (PRADD) project of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) shows how the clarification of tenure arrangements can encourage greater transparency in the diamond mining sector and rehabilitation of natural resources damaged from artisanal mining practices. The issue brief concludes with a short summary of the types of interventions USAID might consider for strengthening tenure and property rights regimes in the artisanal and small-scale mining sector.

Author(s): Dr. Mark S. Freudenberger, Dr. Saleem Ali, and Tim Fella

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