COVID-19 is not only a global public health emergency, it has become a foreign economic crisis. Recent World Bank estimates imply that COVID-19 is very likely to cause the first increase in global poverty since 1998, pushing it to 71 to one. hundreds of millions of people in extreme poverty. In emerging countries, the COVID-19 crisis is having a rapid and amplified effect on the most deficient and vulnerable regions. The other 40 million people working in artisanal and small-scale mining (ASGM) around the world are particularly vulnerable due to their sometimes poor physical care, poor running conditions, increased incidence of respiratory illnesses, and exposure to vulnerable equipment in a limited government environment.
In April 2020, EGPS funded a systematic knowledge-gathering exercise on how COVID-19 has affected ASGM communities. The team worked with 17 partners in 22 countries and published the effects on the Delve platform. The effects of the studies revealed higher and encouraging levels of COVID-19 fitness awareness in remote mining communities and revealed that miners were confident that in times of need, they would have sufficient access to physical support. However, an overwhelming number of miners are facing a lack of food. Confidence due to the inflation of raw material charges and the reduction of the source of revenue as a result of the temporary closure of mines, the decrease in mineral prices, and disruptions in the gold industry chains of ASGM products/materials.
Effects informed the design of a specific COVID-19 emergency reaction center under the EGPS. The emergency response was officially launched in June with an initial investment of one million Swiss francs from the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO). since then, it has secured $4. 8 million in investments from Belgium and Germany. The latest investment led to the second call for proposals.
The emergency response responds to ASGM vulnerabilities and provides short-term assistance to a diversity of international, regional, national and local organizations involved in artisanal mining. The diversity of interventions envisaged through the emergency response includes, but is limited to, activities that:
This emergency response builds on the World Bank’s paintings to promote the formalization of long-term commitment to ASGM and government policy reforms in countries such as Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria. It utilizes the full diversity of EGPS capabilities, responding to crises as they spread in rural and ASW-vulnerable areas.