Responsible gold blog

ASGM is characterized by low capital intensity and high labor intensity, and it accounts for approximately 20% of global gold supply and supports some 20 million occupations. ASGM is a critical livelihood across rural communities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, yet about 85% of it operates outside formal regulatory frameworks, making it vulnerable to exploitation by criminal gangs and liable to cause environmental degradation. As the gold price has increased significantly over the last few years, this has become even more of a pressing issue.

Here at the World Gold Council, we are working to ensure gold, which has been an integral part of financial systems for hundreds of years, continues to have an important role in the future.

The gold industry is going through a period of significant change, including the important steps that are being taken by gold miners to disclose the refineries to which they send their gold.

The commitment to uploading core provenance data onto the Gold Bar Integrity platform will support the integrity of the gold supply chain. This will not only help anybody who is looking to purchase this gold to have confidence that they can do so in line with their responsible sourcing commitments, but also underpin the creation of digitalised gold products, a new area of growth and innovation that we at the WGC are very excited about.

The first such event, in 2022, was significant in not only signalling the closer, more co-operative relationship between our two organisations that has developed over recent years, but also the wider move to greater collaboration across the whole gold supply chain.