The chapter discusses challenges of artisanal mining (AM), a nature-based livelihood strategy, in promoting sustainable agricultural practices. It highlights how AM competes for biodiversity and ecosystem services and causes environmental damage and a shift from traditional sustainable agricultural practices land-use tenure to uncontrolled itinerant AM. Methodologically, the chapter reviewed secondary systematic-literature review (SLR) of articles articulating the use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) techniques. These include facilitated mediation, negotiation, and arbitration that yield land-use zoning agreements (conciliation) to attain synergy and market convergencies. It recommends transforming negative-synergy and implementing zoning strategies that prevent land-use conflicts, conserve biodiversity, and extricate competing AM from communal farming to attain sustainability. The resultant, unbridled development would protect ecosystem-service producing biodiversity, converge AM-agricultural markets and sustainably, leading to sustainable agricultural growth and conservation.
Top2. Background Of The Study
Individual and community access and use of natural resources in rural communities is under an ever-demanding global trends more focused on extraction and economic gains among competing livelihoods (Shackleton, 2020). People derive livelihood benefits from agriculture, livestock, and natural resources in ecosystems governed by a number of ecological (e.g., drought, floods, exhausted soils) and social factors (e.g., legislation, privatization, over-exploitation) factors (Moyo, Ncube & Mamhute, 2021; Shackleton, 2020; Agrawal and Ostrom, 2001; Chimhowu and Woodhouse, 2006). Losing access can render such communities vulnerable and have a negative impact on their resilience and general well-being (Shackleton, 2020).
Mining has negative impacts on rural farming communities and their means of subsistence worldwide, contributing to social-ecological change and conflict (Harlow, Hurley, Fox, Vargas-Guerra & Gibson, 2019; Bebbington, Bebbington, Bury, Lingan, Muñoz & Scurrah, 2018; Mtero, 2017; Andrews, 2018; Issah and Umejesi, 2018; Mnwana and Bowman, 2018; Kitula, 2006; Hilson, 2002). This is one factor influencing land-access and people's capacity to use natural resources. Across the world, rural farming communities depend on access to land and natural resources it offers for their subsistence. Livelihoods of millions of people are dependent on crop and cattle production, and the exploitation of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) on communal lands (de Sherbinin, VanWey, McSweeney, Aggarwal, Barbieri, Henry & Walker, 2020; Mishra & Mishra, 2017; Shackleton & Luckert, 2015; Scoones, 1998). Thus, destroying these puts their livelihoods at risk, compelling those affected to defend their turf, even violently