ASM-PACE, a partnership between the World Wildlife Fund and Estelle Levin Limited to address the environmental impacts of artisanal and small scale mining (ASM) in some of the world’s most important ecosystems, recently featured an excellent blog by Terah de Jong, Chief or Party of USAID’s Property Rights and Artisanal Diamond Development (PRADD) project in the Central African Republic.
De Jong argues that holistic policies and programs – those that account for unique contexts and motivations and address underlying incentives – have the greatest chance of increasing productivity, reducing poverty, mitigating environmental impact, and preventing conflict in artisanal mining communities. The PRADD program has been instrumental in demonstrating the importance of incorporating economic development into ASM foreign assistance programs, an achievement that was highlighted by the adoption of the Washington Declaration at the latest plenary meeting of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme.
As we noted in an earlier commentary, USAID will continue and expand the PRADD program under an upcoming successor program, PRADD II