This study assesses the impact of artisanal gold mining in the Ngoyla-Mintom Forest Massif (NMFM) on local livelihoods and the environment. The methodology for the research consisted in a literature review, visits to eight mining camps in the periphery of Mintom, interviews with 95 miners, focus group discussions with actors involved in activities related to gold mining, and stakeholder consultations. The results show that miners earn a minimum of XAF 80,000 (US$ 160) per month, which is about three times the average wage in Cameroon (XAF 28,216 or US$56) and as much as XAF 800,000 (US$ 1600) a month. Mining leads to the creation of many associated activities such as portering, catering and the intensification of hunting, collection of NTFPs, and fishing, among others. The most negative social impact of mining is associated with activities such as prostitution, which leads to the quick spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) including HIV/AIDS. Mining and its associated activities also have negative impacts on the environment such as destruction of fragile forest ecosystems especially swamps, diversion, sedimentation and pollution of small water ways, and soil destruction, although at a relatively small scale.

The economics of artisanal diamond mining from the Belgian government funded Egmont Artisanal Diamond Mining Project

Current dominant thinking and practice in the private and public sectors asserts that peoples' development needs are in conflict with, or mutually exclusive to, the need to conserve the biosphere on which we depend. Consequently, we are asked to either diminish development in the name of conservation or diminish conservation in the name of development. Efforts to identify complementary objectives, or mutually acceptable trade-offs and compromises indicate, however, that this does not always have to be the case. This first volume in the State of the Apes series draws attention to the evolving context within which great ape and gibbon habitats are increasingly interfacing with extractive industries. Intended for a broad range of policy makers, industry experts, decision makers, academics, researchers and NGOs, these publications aim to influence debate, practice and policy, seeking to reconcile ape conservation and welfare, and economic and social development, through objective and rigorous analysis.

Emerging Markets and Sovereign Risk provides case studies, commentary and analysis on the financial risk management and measurement in the context of frontier and developing counties from international experts covering three key areas of emerging market investments, the rating sovereign risk and managing sovereign risk.

Placing security studies in the context of contemporary discourses about the colonial comeback and posthumanism, this book postulates the notion of staticide which avers that the effacement of African state sovereignty is crucial for the security of the oncoming empire. Understood in the light of posthumanism, antihumanism, animism, postanthropocentrism and transhumanism; African human security has evidently been put on a recession course together with African state security. Much as African states are demonised as so failed, defective, corrupt, weak and rogue to require recolonisation; transhumanism also assumes that human bodies are so corrupt, imperfect, defective, failed, rogue and weak to require not only enhancements or augmentation but also to beckon recolonisation. Also, deemed to be ecologies, human bodies are set to be liberalised and democratised in the interest of nonhuman viruses, nanobots, microchips, bacteria, fungi and other pathogens living within the bodies. The book critically examines the security implications of theorising human bodies as ecologies for nonhuman entities. Reading staticide together with transhumanism, this book foresees transhumanist new eugenics that are accompanying the new empire in a supposedly Anthropocene world that serves to justify the sacrifice and disposability of some surplus humans living in the recesses and nether regions of the empire. Paying attention to the colonial comeback, the book urges African scholars not to mistake imperial transformation for decolonisation. The book is invaluable for scholars and activists in African studies, anthropology, decoloniality, sociology, politics, development studies, security studies, sociology and anthropology of science and technology studies, and environmental studies.