Community-Building and Green Gold Certification.

More than 13 million people worldwide survive on artisanal small-scale mining (ASM). ASM has a very weak track record in terms of various developmental problems such as poverty, health, black markets, struggles for the rights to natural resources and degradation of the environment with impacts on communities. The operation of an artisanal mine is most often seen as an activity for survival. This paper focuses on the experience of Oro Verde, a process of green certification in artisanal mining in the Chocó region of Colombia, during the period 2000-2008. This experience has contributed to addressing a number of local economic, social and environmental issues, and its achievements have earned several global sustainability-related awards. This paper examines processes of community-building for the sake of organisational coordination, protection and management of natural resources. It identifies lessons such as transformation of practices and of connections between organisations in the process of developing a certification programme in an ASM context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]