Gold impacts our lives in ways we normally do not think about but really should consider more; it is omnipresent and omnipotent. It is a geostrategic asset with expansive applications, from technology and banking to jewellery. In geopolitical uncertainty, gold demand soars. It stabilises national monetary systems, providing currency protection, inflation hedging and economic insurance as a safe-haven asset (Bernstein, 2012).
Nevertheless, gold is in a state of crisis. Abundant media and regulatory investigations in rapid succession have stripped it of its lustre and exposed a dark side: forensically unpacking its connection to human rights violations, environmental destruction and macroeconomic instability. Many gold-rich nations have struggled to benefit from the extraction of their reserves (Le Billon, 2001; UN Security Council, 2024; UNODC, 2023). It is a narrative that speaks to the heart of sovereignty, providing an impetus for minerals governance. As the race for securing critical minerals speeds up, supranational and national-level regulations are converging with multiple overlapping industry-led and variform governance frameworks, leading to problems of harmonisation.
Supply chain due diligence is experiencing exceptional scrutiny while world conflict gold flows are estimated to be 20-25%. Despite the semantics of sustainability and responsible sourcing, this conflict and illicitly-sourced gold openly flows into legitimate supply chains at multiple points. (GITOC, 2022; SWISSAID, 2025). The consequences of not interrogating this system of harmonisation failures has broader implications for effective and mutually prosperous global minerals governance.
How, then, do ‘responsible’ governance frameworks conceived for gold mining and sourcing are actually legitimise harm?