The dynamics of the relations between society and environment exposes the success or the lack of effective actions of social sustainability. The continuous and complex relationship of the society (which includes public and private, economic, political and social institutions) and the natural systems reveals the human dimension as one of the key aspects of sustainability, given the different connections developed throughout the development of the social system (cultural, religious, economic, political, amongst others). The aim was to identify to what extent the environmental impacts, as reported in the literature, may constitute potential factors and sources of change, conflict or social impacts. To this, the paper follows the initial stages of Social Impact Assessment – SIA– (scoping and profiling) in context of mechanized and semi-mechanized gold mining of illegal character in the municipality Río Quito - Department of Chocó - Colombia, using literature review and document analysis, identifying the ecosystems that shelter the municipality and determining the effects of environmental impacts on ecosystem services affected thought causal - effects matrix. The Department of Chocó is characterized by its natural and ethnic wealth, with 90% of the territory composed by indigenous and afro-descendent communities, recognized by its collective and traditional territories where the artisanal mining is an ancestral practice. Oppositely, this region presents the highest poverty rates in the country in municipality Río Quito, according to official data. In current days, the presence of mechanized and semi-mechanized illegal gold mining is another concerning factor that causing impacts in local communities, in the modification of ecosystems and their services, which are the basis of traditional subsistence and compromise the well-being of these communities. The literature demonstrates a wide range of environmental impacts arising from the illegal mining of gold, such as Mercury pollution, which affects miners and communities through ingestion and inhalation pathways. The research concludes that this type of mining is a driver of changes in the biophysical and social contexts of the municipality of Río Quito, with repercussions on traditional activities, and those considered as part of the foundations of a society: food, access to water and income generation. Based on the outcomes, we suggest that SIA is a tool that exposes changes and impacts that affect the relationship between society-nature, as well as promoting the knowledge of socio-environmental contexts in the proposal of sustainable measures that respond to the realities of communities, increase their social acceptance and the probabilities of being more successful.
Keywords: Society-nature relations, mechanized and semi-mechanized illegal gold mining, Social Impact Assessment, environmental impacts, ecosystem service.
