All that glitters is not gold or platinum: Institutions and the use of mercury in mining in Chocó, Colombia

Through the artisanal and small-scale gold mining sector, Colombia has become the world's leading mercury polluter per capita. At the same time, the country's Pacific coast is one of the most biodiverse area on earth. This article aims to examine the institutions involved in the attempts to eliminate the use of mercury in artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) in the district of Chocó, Colombia, using a novel policy assessment method, that examines the behaviour of actors across the social system. To this end, and taking Law 1658 (the mercury law) as our basis, we used legal instruments to consult with, and question, the centralized and semi-centralized state organizations. We also included the relevant decentralized organizations and the main actor of the alluvial ASM of gold and platinum in our research, through interviews and observation. Conceptualizing institutions as social systems of explicit and tacit rules, our findings provide evidence of stagnation in the state organizations, and of the tendency to underestimate the importance of science, technology, and innovation in mercury elimination. Indeed, the current situation, in which tacit rules are perpetuated and reproduced, is a consequence of the state's inefficiency, allowing the continuation of illegal and underground economic activities by informal organizations and civil society. The article also makes some suggestions for a more positive future direction for Colombia in the context of the ratification of the Minamata Convention on Mercury and progress towards the formalization of the ASM sector.