Victoire Girard

Abstract:

The livelihoods of 130 to 270 million people depend on artisanal mining. Artisanal mining is a labor-intensive, often informal and sometimes illegal extractive activity. We levy research in geology, and two sources of exogenous time variation, to build the first proxy of artisanal gold mining in Africa — the main form of artisanal mining. We first document the impact of a change in the potential value of artisanal mining. We establish that the historical increase in the gold price accounts for 8% of deforestation continent-wide, 28% in gold areas. In parallel, artisanal gold mining increases local economic wealth, but these economic impacts are of smaller magnitude. Second, we turn to weather shocks. Artisanal mining may provide an alternative livelihood when a weather shock jeopardizes agricultural output. We confirm the heterogeneous effects of adverse weather : compared to the average area, deforestation is magnified in gold-suitable areas, while losses in night-light emissions are compensated for.