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Community Monitoring in Mining: Turning Local Evidence into Action

 

Testing springs adjacent to a river near a mining site. Photo credit: Beth Hoagland

 

Community monitoring is a powerful tool for challenging unequal access to information and lack of transparency in the mining sector. Mining operators often collect extensive information about the projected and actual environmental conditions around their mines, but frontline communities and sometimes even government regulators have limited access to this information. Even when there is some transparency into the environmental impacts of mines, communities may—understandably—not trust company- generated data. When communities observe and document their surroundings and the impacts of mining themselves, they begin to close this information gap and assert their rights. Community monitoring in mining facilitates organizing, engaging regulators and companies, and strengthening accountability for a more just mining sector.

On August 20, 2026, more than 150 justice advocates from around the world participated in a virtual learning opportunity on community monitoring in mining hosted by Namati, the Grassroots Justice Network, and the Global Justice Clinic at NYU School of Law. The call featured experts with direct experience engaging in community monitoring in mining. The speakers’ experiences across diverse contexts generated a number of key insights:

1. Communities must come together to collectively decide what information is important to monitor.
In Haiti, communities under mining permits decided to carry out a baseline study of water quality and accessibility before mining began so they could use the information to later hold companies accountable for water contamination and other violations, if needed. Their decision to conduct the baseline study was grounded in their understanding of the likely impacts of gold mining on water and their recognition that “water is life.” In Guyana, the South Rupununi District Council’s Indigenous monitoring program is guided by the Wapichan Peoples’ documentation of their cultural and natural resources and their collective territorial management plan, which identifies what must be protected in Wapichan territory and the biggest external threats they face.

2. Community observations can become key monitoring questions.
Communities’ observations and concerns must be translated into clear questions that can be answered through monitoring data; for example, Is a specific waterway near a mine contaminated? Several panelists spoke about how their work was enhanced through collaboration with outside experts such as hydrologists. However, they also stressed that scientific knowledge and complex tools are not necessary for monitoring: Communities’ own knowledge and observations are themselves powerful data. As Kwabina Ibrahim of Advocates for Community Alternatives underscored while drawing on community monitoring around the Simandou project in Guinea, the key to credibility is transparency and consistency, not complexity. Local knowledge, repeatable observations, transparency about the limits of what the data establishes, and clear records create a strong evidence base.

3. Community monitoring has wider benefits.
Community monitoring can support change in a number of ways. In Haiti, the baseline study supported broader community organizing around the right to water, including engaging the country’s water authority and NGOs to improve borehole wells in the community. Community monitoring also can generate data that contributes to global movement- building and systemic reform, as in the development of the Safety First: Guidelines for Responsible Tailings Management, which was directly informed by community members living in the shadows of tailings dams around the world.

Community monitoring has arguably never been more important than it is today, as high gold prices and the need for critical minerals to power the global energy transition push more and more communities onto the frontlines of mining’s environmental impacts. Above all, the main message of the learning event for communities was: Begin from where you are, and know that you are not alone.

Catch Up on the Conversation

If you missed a portion of the call or would like to share it with your network, you can access the recordings by clicking these links: Burmese recording, English recording, French recording, and Spanish recording.

Stay Connected

Here are a few ways to learn more and get involved in work on this topic through the Grassroots Justice Network:

September 8, 2026 | Sienna Merope-Synge, Interim Co-Director, Global Justice Clinic at NYU School of Law
Advocacy & Systemic Change, Community Land Protection, Environment, Land & Natural Resources
Region: > Global
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