Mercury-free gold mining takes hold in Northern Philippines

The new executive order also limited areas open to small scale mining (called Minahang Bayan or People’s Small Scale Mining Areas), and to the dismay of many small-scale miners, it upheld the mining law that (in their view) favors large-scale mining.  EO 79 also pushes for putting provincial or city mining regulatory bodies into operation, bodies that many small scale miners perceive as biased toward large scale mining interests.  The summit reinforced the lesson that the problem of mercury use in small scale mining cannot be solved in isolation from the broader issues touching the legitimacy of the small scale mining sector overall.
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/skeane/mercury-free_gold_mining_takes.html