Illegal mining in Amazon rainforest

has become an 'epidemic'

Campaigners release map showing scale of pollution and damage to
environment caused by small-scale miners

Dom Phillips in Rio de Janiero, Monday 10th December 2018, The Guardian

Link to Guardian report: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/10/illegal-

mining-in-brazils-rainforests-has-become-an-epidemic

Link to map: https://mineria.amazoniasocioambiental.org

Link to story map (in English): https://especial1.herokuapp.com/story

The Munduruku indigenous lands in Para state

in Brazil’s Amazon basin, where illegal mines
have been discovered.

Photograph: Vinicius Mendonca/AP

An epidemic of illegal artisanal mining across the Amazon rainforest has been revealed in an
unprecedented new map, pinpointing 2,312 sites in 245 areas across six Amazon countries.

Called garimpo in Brazil, artisanal mining for gold and other minerals in
Amazon forests and rivers has been a problem for decades and is usually illegal. It is also
highly polluting: clearings are cut into forests, mining ponds carved into the earth, and
mercury used in extraction is dumped in rivers, poisoning fish stocks and water supplies.
But its spread has never been shown before.

“It has a big impact seeing it all together,” said Alicia Rolla, adjunct coordinator at the
Amazon Socio-environmental, Geo-referenced Information Project, or RAISG, which
produced the map. “This illegal activity causes as many social as environment problems and
we hope there can be coordinated actions from the countries impacted to prohibit it.”

Its publication comes weeks before Brazil’s far-right president-elect, Jair Bolsonaro, takes
office on 1 January. Last year Bolsonaro said he practised artisanal gold mining during his
holidays in the 1980s and he has won support from garimpeiros (artisanal miners) with
promises to help them work with “dignity and security”. He also wants to legalise mining on
protected indigenous reserves where it is currently banned.
The map was produced by a network of non-government, environmental groups in six
Amazon countries – FAN in Bolivia, Gaia in Colombia, IBC in Peru, Ecociência in Ecuador,
Provita and Wataniba in Venezuela, and Imazon and the Socioenvironmental Institute (ISA)
in Brazil. It also includes information where available on what was being mined and when,
citing sources that vary from government registers to satellite imagery.

In 37 cases, the groups say illegal artisanal mining took place in protected indigenous
reserves, 18 of which were in Brazil. Another 78 reserves showed garimpo taking place
along their limits and borders – 64 of them in Peru – and 55 nature reserves also had illegal
mining.

An accompanying “story map” in English has maps, videos and interviews, detailing cases,
such as the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve in Puerto Luz in Peru, where indigenous people
said they had been forced into artisanal mining because the devastation it wrought in their
region left no other options to survive.

The mercury used in gold extraction is affecting indigenous and local populations who live
or work near mine sites, it said. In Venezuela – which has the highest number of mining
sites – and Colombia, illegal mining often happens in areas where irregular armed groups
operate.

Nilo D’Avila, campaigns director at Greenpeace Brasil, said the map confirmed his own
research showing garimpo is increasing in the Amazon.

“There is a garimpo epidemic in Brazil,” he said. “We are talking about impact on
biodiversity and forests, we are talking about the use of mercury, we are talking about
stealing riches from indigenous people and from Brazil.”

Carlos Young, a professor of economics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and a
specialist in environmental economics connected to illegal deforestation and the trade in
drugs and arms, said garimpo camps can bring in alcohol and prostitution, causing negative
impacts on forest communities.

“It is also a map of crime, of the drug trade, of prostitution. There are diverse nuances of this
crime, of this illegality, that demands integrated governance,” he said. The map also shows
how prevalent garimpo is in border regions, he noted, adding that Bolsonaro’s plans to
neuter environmental agencies will encourage it more.

“If I want to guarantee national sovereignty I need more inspections and control and not
the contrary,” he said.

The map also shows how close many illegal sites are to legal mining concessions. That came
as no surprise to Laura Sauls, a PhD candidate at the geography school at Clark University
in Massachusetts, and one of a group of international scientists behind another report that
showed how legal mining and associated infrastructure works increasingly threaten forest
cover and community rights by enabling “population movements and agricultural expansion
further into the forest”. In some cases, she said, garimpo comes too. “I would expect there
to be illegal mining in areas where there is a large mine,” she said.