topic: Gold Mining

topic: Gold Mining

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Armed groups and junta profit as toxic mines devour southern Myanmar
- Since Myanmar’s 2021 coup, lead mining in the country’s southern Tanintharyi region has exploded, with the number of mining sites more than doubling as lawlessness enables rapid expansion.
- The environmental impact has been severe, with polluted rivers, dying crops, and communities losing access to clean water.
- Armed groups and junta officials profit from the boom by collecting bribes and taxes, turning mining into a revenue source across all control zones.
- Environmentalists warn that without immediate action and sustainable planning, the region’s ecosystems and natural resources may be permanently lost.

Ecuador communities resist Canada-backed gold mine in sacred highlands
- Indigenous and local communities in southern Ecuador are struggling to stop a Canadian gold-and-copper mining project that many community members say will largely impact the Quimsacocha páramo ecosystem while violating their rights to self-determination.
- Despite legal rulings to suspend mining operations, and referendums in which communities voted overwhelmingly against the mining project, critics say Dundee Precious Metals Inc. continues to initiate consultation with a limited number of people in favor of mining.
- According to its technical report, the Loma Large mining project approved by the Ecuadorian government will provide jobs for locals and ensure the protection of water sources and the environment. The company also says the environmental consultation process was completed, with local communities voting overall in favor of the development of the project.
- Although community leaders seek to uphold their rights defending their land and waters, they say plans to sign free-trade agreement between Canada and Ecuador is yet another blow to their hopes.

Still no trial over Argentina cyanide mine spill, 7 years after officials were charged
- In 2018, Argentina charged the former director of the country’s glacier research institute and three former environment secretaries with abuse of authority that allegedly led to a toxic cyanide spill at a gold mine in the country’s San Juan province.
- Seven years later, the four officials have not yet been tried and officials have not provided an explanation for the delay.
- Fellow scientists came to the director’s defense at the time, saying he followed international standards in his work and was being scapegoated even as the mine owner, Canadian company Barrick Gold, evaded responsibility.
- Meanwhile, affected community members still live with the effects of the spill that contaminated their water sources and affected biodiversity, livestock and agricultural production.

Tree rings reveal mercury pollution from illegal gold mining: Study

New research has found that some tropical trees in the Peruvian Amazon can be used to monitor mercury pollution from gold mining, offering an alternative to expensive air monitors. Roughly 16 million people worldwide engage in artisanal and small-scale gold mining, much of which is illegal due to environmental and human health concerns. In many […]
Global outcry as petitioners demand no mining expansion in orangutan habitat
- Nearly 200,000 people have signed a petition urging U.K. multinational Jardine Matheson to halt the expansion of the Martabe gold mine in Indonesia’s Batang Toru Forest, home to the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan.
- Agincourt Resources, a subsidiary of Jardine’s Astra International, plans to clear up to 583 hectares (1,441 acres) of forest for a new mining waste facility, which conservationists warn will push the Tapanuli orangutan closer to extinction and harm other protected species.
- Environmental groups accuse Jardines of misleading sustainability claims and the Indonesian government of failing to enforce conservation laws, despite awarding Agincourt a “green” compliance rating.
- Protesters have demanded Jardines adopt a “no deforestation, no peat, no exploitation” (NDPE) policy for its mining operations and provide clarity on conflicting deforestation figures and the compliance of its expansion plan with its approved permits.

Yanomami youth turn to drones to watch their Amazon territory
- In the Yanomami Indigenous Land, the largest in Brazil, leaders believe in their youths’ skills to maintain their ancestors’ legacy and safeguard the future of a sprawling territory covering almost the size of Portugal.
- Located in the Brazilian Amazon between the states of Roraima and Amazonas, the Indigenous territory faced a severe humanitarian and environmental crisis with the invasion of around 20,000 illegal miners in search of gold and cassiterite.
- Trained youths can now act as multipliers of drone monitoring and watch the land against new invasions.

Guinea greenlights gold mine in habitat of critically endangered chimpanzees

Image of a critically endangered western chimpanzee. Image by Christoph Wurbel via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

The government of Guinea has issued an environmental compliance certificate to an Australian company to go ahead with its plan to mine gold within an area that’s home to critically endangered western chimpanzees. In January, Guinea’s Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development accepted the environmental and social impact assessment that Predictive Discovery had commissioned […]
Chanel wanted ‘responsible’ gold. It turned to a protected area in Madagascar
- In 2019, French fashion house Chanel sought to obtain responsibly sourced gold from artisanal miners in Madagascar — who happened to operate inside a protected area that’s home to critically endangered lemurs and other wildlife.
- Under the initiative, which eventually fell through, Chanel partnered with Fanamby, the local NGO managing Loky Manambato Protected Area in northern Madagascar, to formalize the operations of some 1,000 miners.
- Fanamby has acknowledged that its tolerance for mining in the reserve’s buffer zone “is contrary to conservation,” but added “there is an arrangement” allowing this as long as the core area is left protected.
- Conservation experts say Chanel’s approach — exploiting the fact that many supposedly protected areas aren’t very strictly protected at all — highlights weaknesses in the current conservation paradigm that will only grow more apparent as governments seek to designate more protected areas.

Investigating the real price of Congo’s gold

Investigating the real price of Congo's gold

BAMEGOARD, Republic of Congo — In the Republic of Congo’s Sangha region, the expansion of mining activities within conservation areas undermines the objectives of carbon sequestration and biodiversity preservation efforts. In 2020, the government initiated the Sangha Likouala REDD+ program aiming to reduce deforestation and enhance carbon sequestration. Through this programme, the Congolese government claims […]
Mining dredges return to Amazon River’s main tributary, months after crackdown
- Five months after a major operation by federal forces, illegal mining dredges are back on the Madeira River in the Brazilian Amazon.
- The return of the floating structures shows the resilience of illegal gold mining in the Amazon, which destroys the riverbeds and contaminates the water with mercury.
- As the federal administration closes miners’ siege of Indigenous territories, the illegal miners are migrating to less-monitored areas, experts says.

What’s at stake for the environment in Ecuador’s upcoming election?
- Ecuador will hold presidential elections on Feb. 9, with incumbent center-right Daniel Noboa facing left-wing challenger Luisa González.
- Both candidates have prioritized security concerns and the economy over environmental issues like climate change, deforestation and water scarcity, but do have some policy proposals that could be promising.
- Noboa and González both promise to increase protections for forests, protected areas and Indigenous communities, but also plan to continue attracting foreign investment in mining, oil and gas, and other activities that threaten Ecuador’s vulnerable ecosystems.

As the gold rush surges in Nicaragua, Indigenous communities pay the price
- Nicaragua has experienced a boom in gold mining over the last few years, with concessions covering millions of hectares of land — often near protected areas and on Indigenous territory.
- The government doesn’t require environmental impact studies and pushes through consultations with local communities as quickly as one day, allowing mining projects to move forward at an unprecedented pace.
- Mining companies from China, Canada, the U.K. and Colombia often find loopholes that allow them to avoid international sanctions, according to one study.

El Salvador reverses landmark mining ban, setting up clash with activists
- Lawmakers in El Salvador recently voted to reintroduce industrial mining in the country, ending a 2017 landmark ban that has protected freshwater and public health.
- President Nayib Bukele has advocated for the return of mining despite the unpopularity of the industry in El Salvador, arguing that it will bring in billions of dollars and create thousands of jobs.
- The government will have at least 51% control over every mining project while also being in charge of oversight, causing concern from environmentalists that it will be hard to challenge projects that aren’t being carried out responsibly.

An underground gold war in Colombia is ‘a ticking ecological time bomb’
- In Colombia’s Buriticá municipality, a gold mine owned by Chinese company Zijin has become a hotspot of environmental damage, criminal activity and conflict.
- Zijin announced earlier this year that it had lost control of 60% of its mining operations to the illegal miners, who have taken over the mine’s tunnels or collapsed them.
- Illegal mining has expanded in and around the mine, with miners using mercury, explosives and heavy machinery to extract gold, contaminating ecosystems and threatening the geological stability of the area.
- The illegal miners flock here from around the country, and are associated with the Gaitanista Army of Colombia (EGC), also known as the Gulf Clan, Colombia’s largest criminal armed group.

Brazil’s illegal gold miners carve out new Amazon hotspots in conservation units
- President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s administration reduced the expansion of illegal gold mining in the Brazilian Amazon, but miners keep finding new sites.
- In 15 conservation units, illegal gold miners destroyed 330 hectares (815 acres) in only two months.
- According to experts, gold miners expelled from Indigenous territories may be migrating to conservation units.
- Alliances with narco mafias and the rise in gold prices are obstacles to fighting illegal mining.

Recycling gold can tackle illegal mining in the Amazon, but is no silver bullet
- Artisanal and small-scale gold mining in Brazil’s Tapajós River Basin emits 16 metric tons of CO2 per kilo of gold produced, and 2.5 metric tons of mercury annually, a study has found.
- Researchers suggest that recycling gold could dramatically reduce harmful emissions, along with other solutions such as formalizing mining, adopting clean technologies, and improving gold supply chain transparency.
- Economic dependence, mercury accessibility, and a demand for gold sustain small-scale gold mining, while enforcement risks pushing miners into ecologically sensitive areas.
- In November, Brazil launched a federal operation in the Tapajós Basin to expel illegal gold miners from the Munduruku Indigenous Territory, imposing millions of reais in fines to curb the damage caused by gold mining.

‘Trump is a disease’, says Yanomami shaman Davi Kopenawa
- In addition to being a shaman, Davi Kopenawa is a shaman and a political leader active in denouncing the gold miners who illegally invaded the Yanomami Indigenous Land, in the Brazilian Amazon.
- The Yanomami, who inhabit Brazil’s largest Indigenous Land, still face a humanitarian and health crisis, worsened by the invasion of 70,000 illegal miners. Increased under the Jair Bolsonaro government, the invasion brought diseases and contaminated rivers with mercury.
- In this interview, Kopenawa criticizes the environmental and social impacts of administrations led by politicians such as Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump.

Researchers find high levels of mercury in Amazon’s Madeira River water & fish
- In a groundbreaking expedition, researchers from Harvard and Amazonas State University began monitoring water quality and mercury contamination in the Amazon Basin’s largest tributary.
- The Madeira River Basin has been heavily impacted by human actions, such as hydropower plants, deforestation and illegal gold mining, which degrade its ecosystems.
- Initial results from Harvard reveal high levels of mercury in the Madeira, although still below the limit recommended by Brazil’s authorities.
- Predatory fish species showed mercury levels above the recommended limit, while scalefish traditionally consumed by riverine populations were below.

Illegal gold mining drives deforestation in DRC reserve home to ‘African unicorn’
- The Okapi Wildlife Reserve in the Democratic Republic of the Congo protects vast tracks of primary Congo Basin rainforest, and is a stronghold for endangered species including the iconic okapi (Okapia johnstoni) and African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis).
- The reserve is also the home to Indigenous Mbuti and Efe forest peoples, who depend on forest resources.
- Deforestation in the reserve remained high in 2023, and continued to spread this year, according to satellite data from the Global Forest Watch platform.
- Illegal artisanal and semi-industrial gold mining within the reserve is driving deforestation, poaching and environmental destruction.

Brazil sets a date to remove illegal miners from Munduruku land, more details await
- There’s a planned start date to remove illegal gold miners from the Munduruku Indigenous territory, where they have long decimated the Munduruku people’s health and the Amazon ecosystem with mercury contamination, prosecutors share with Mongabay.
- The date and removal operation remains confidential, with government sources gathering data on the areas most affected in the region. The government may share more information during a press briefing in early November, while some news sites suggest the operation will begin in a few days and involve the defense ministry.
- The Supreme Court and Indigenous peoples have called for the removal of the miners from the region for years, to little avail. Meanwhile, other sources say the government had to prioritize crises in other Indigenous lands like the Yanomami territory.
- According to a researcher, the expulsion of gold miners from another Munduruku territory, the Sawré Muybu Indigenous land, cannot begin until the president recognizes the territory.

Mining and logging threaten Bolivia’s newest protected area
- The Gran Manupare reserve was created in January 2024 in northern Bolivia’s Pando department, making it the newest protected area in the country.
- However, the reserve already faces threats from gold mining along the Madre de Dios River, which forms its northern border.
- Logging is another threat that experts warn could enter Gran Manupare, which holds highly sought-after mahogany trees.

At COP16, conservationists will be neighbors with the legacy of fortress conservation (commentary)
- This month, the U.N. biodiversity conference, COP16, will be held in Cali, Colombia, at the foothills of Los Farallones de Cali — a national park with a history of “fortress conservation” methods that have displaced local people.
- These methods have generated lasting tensions between state-sponsored conservation groups and the people who reside in and depend on their local environment.
- Illegal gold mining presents complex challenges for conservationists and officials, with even some of the most essential stakeholders in preserving the local environment of Los Farallones becoming involved in its destruction due to economic necessity.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

Ghana to repeal pro-mining legislation amid protests, but activists demand more

The Ghanaian government is set to repeal its controversial pro-mining legislation, following weeks of demonstrations against environmentally disastrous mining, including the threat of a nationwide labor strike. In November 2022, the government issued LI 2462, a directive allowing mining in forest reserves, including biodiversity hotspots. Mongabay previously reported on how LI 2462 threatened to exacerbate […]
In Ecuador, booming profits in small-scale gold mining reveal a tainted industry – investigation
- In 2023, three small gold mining companies in Ecuador exported $268 million in gold to the UAE and India, 20 times more than in 2022, an investigation by Mongabay and Codigo Vidrio has found.
- The amount of gold the companies claim to have processed is highly unrealistic, industry experts say, and checks on their concessions show no indication mining ever took place.
- More than 35% of Ecuador’s gold exports come from small-scale gold mining companies, but irregularities in their sourcing, permits and operations, as well as an ongoing crisis in authorities’ monitoring capacity, suggest that most of these players are trading gold from illegal sources.
- Our investigation shows mining regulators approved export permits mostly without on-site verification; and even the country’s mining registry was suspended in 2018, the agency in charge continued to approve hundreds of mining concessions.

Brazil cracks down on illegal gold mining, sparking anger in the Amazon

Brazil has ramped up efforts to quell illegal gold mining over the last two years. Police raids in the Brazilian Amazon’s gold capital have destroyed mining machinery, leaving miners angry and struggling to keep their operations running, Mongabay’s Fernanda Wenzel reports. Federal agents destroyed 150 backhoes and 600 dredgers used in illegal mining in 2023, […]
Permits granted for Colombia’s Alacrán mine amid pollution, deforestation concerns
- Canadian mining company Cordoba Minerals and the Chinese JCHX Mining Management Co. are getting closer to opening the Alacrán mine, located in Puerto Libertador, in Colombia’s Córdoba department, rich with gold, silver and copper.
- The area has been the site of artisanal, illegal and industrial mining for decades, resulting in deforestation and the pollution of local water bodies.
- Critics of Alacrán say the operation will only exacerbate problems in the area, and called on the government to hold mining companies accountable for harmful practices.

25-fold surge in malaria at Indonesia gold frontier raises deforestation questions
- Diagnoses of malaria in Pohuwato district on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi soared by more than an order of magnitude in 2023, a health department official told Mongabay Indonesia.
- The rise in the disease has been linked to deforestation in the district as well as its large trade in alluvial gold.
- Global incidences of malaria have declined markedly since the 1990s after the Gates Foundation and other donors poured money into prevention programs, but progress in eradicating the disease has slowed in recent years.

Wildcat miners: will cyanide displace mercury?
- Although wildcat miners might be expelled from Indigenous territories and areas with high levels of protection, unallocated public lands and waterways will remain exposed to their harmful practices, as well as unregulated mining operations on private landholdings.
- Formalization of the sector should be accompanied by migration from mercury-based extraction technologies to other chemical and physical technologies, alongside incentives for illegal miners to adopt those practices.
- Existing oil and gas fields will continue to operate over the medium-term, with new production wells and feeder pipelines being established on landscapes adjacent to existing production fields. At the same time resistance from Indigenous and local communities against extractive projects – including for extracting gas resources underneath the Amazon Basin – will likely continue.

Resilient and resourceful, Brazil’s illegal gold capital resists government crackdown
- Following regulatory changes and heavier enforcement of the gold trade, the Amazonian municipality of Itaituba, notorious as Brazil’s illegal gold capital, is struggling to deal with the new restrictions.
- Yet a series of raids and destruction of mining equipment hasn’t fazed the illegal miners, known as garimpeiros, who have simply picked themselves back up again and started working to resume their operations.
- The crackdown on illegal gold and its environmental destruction has outraged the garimpeiros, who accuse the government of preventing them from working in a region historically dedicated to gold extraction.

The future of extractive industries in the Pan Amazon
- In Brazil, Peru and Ecuador, reliance on extractive industries for local livelihoods and state revenue could indicate that mining will remain the dominant economic activity for decades to come or, perhaps, more.
- Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) requirements will also play an increasing role in the industry’s decision making and project approval, especially in the case of publicly-traded companies.
- As the application of free, prior and informed consultation concept evolves, it will also play a key role in deciding on the future of mining projects.

Nearly all Brazilian gold imported by EU is likely illegal, report says
- A new study concludes that nearly all of the gold imported into the European Union from Brazil comes from Amazonian areas with a high risk of illegality.
- That amounts to 1.5 metric tons of the precious metal in 2023, sourced from wildcat mines known as garimpos, which have a long history of illegality and opaqueness.
- The Brazilian government implemented a series of measures in 2023 to increase oversight of the gold trade, but experts say much of the trade continued underground.

Rio Tinto-linked mine still not fulfilling promises to Mongolian herders
- In 2017, nomadic herders in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert secured an agreement obliging one of the world’s largest copper-gold mines, Oyu Tolgoi, to make good on a list of 60 commitments, including compensation and improved access to land and water.
- Today, compliance researchers and herders say two-thirds of these commitments are complete and or in progress, but complain of slow progress with the remainder, including the all-important issue of access to clean water.
- Communities have also expressed concern over seepage of mining waste into the groundwater, and say the company, a subsidiary of multinational mining giant Rio Tinto, should be held accountable.
- The nomadic herding way of life is on the decline the area due to lack of progress on achieving these other commitments, herders tell Mongabay.

As Ghana pushes mining in forests, a cautionary tale from a fading forest
- A third of the Apamprama Forest Reserve, in Ghana’s gold-rich Ashanti region, has disappeared in little more than 20 years.
- Satellite data show that forest loss has accelerated since 2018, when mining company Heritage Imperial received permission to prospect for gold inside the reserve.
- Green campaigners cited Apamprama’s destruction in decrying a recent push by the Ghanaian government to encourage industrial mining, including inside forest reserves.
- In public statements, Heritage Imperial representatives said the company operates legally inside the reserve, but experts told Mongabay that legal permissions don’t protect forest ecosystems from the corrosive effects of mining.

Ghana hollows out forests and green protections to advance mining interests
- The Ghanaian government has significantly ramped up the approval of mining permits under legislation passed in late 2022, intensifying concerns about runaway environmental damage.
- The country is already the top gold producer in Africa, but much of the mining is done in forest reserves and other biodiverse ecosystems.
- The government has long cracked down on artisanal illegal gold miners, but activists say the real damage is being wrought by industrial operations, both legal and illegal.
- A debt default in 2022 has seen Ghana lean even more heavily on its gold to mitigate the crisis, prompting warnings that such a policy is neither economically nor environmentally sustainable.

A national park and its rangers in Bolivia endure persisting road construction, illegal mining
- Illegal mining continues in the headwaters of the Tuichi River in northwestern Bolivia, with miners encroaching into the strictly protected areas of the Madidi National Park.
- As part of a project backed by La Paz’s government, a road is being built through the middle of the protected area,.
- Madidi’s park rangers are living under constant strain. They are threatened and attacked by miners, and are unable to enter some parts of the protected area to carry out their duties.

The Andes are a key supplier of gold for the Amazon Basin
- In recent decades, gold mining in Peru is no longer only taking place in the Andean areas but also in the Amazon. There, illegal miners are increasingly exploiting the precious metal found in alluvial deposits.
- A similar situation can be observed in the Bolivian Yungas, very close to the Peruvian border in the Madre de Dios region. Despite operations against illegal mining, the activity persists.
- On the border of Ecuador and Peru, much of the area comprising the mineral-rich Cordillera del Condor has been set aside as a protected area or Indigenous territory, but there are still large areas open to mining, particularly in Ecuador where multinational corporate miners are investing in both copper and gold mines.

Can nations ever get artisanal gold mining right?
- For at least 16 million people worldwide, artisanal small-scale gold mining (ASGM) is a pillar of stability and opportunity, particularly in rural, impoverished communities. But the industry is responsible for a great deal of environmental damage, such as deforestation and contamination.
- Mining requires the use of harmful chemicals such as mercury, which pollutes air, soil and water, threatening biodiversity and human health.
- The U.N. Minamata Convention on Mercury, an international treaty to regulate and eradicate mercury use, came into force in 2017, but its success depends on effective implementation and enforcement by nation-states.
- Countries such as Ghana, which ratified the agreement in 2017, have laws to regulate the industry and safeguard the environment, but implementation has been weak, according to industry experts.

Mining gold in the greenstone belt of Panamazonia
- The Barama-Mazaruni volcanic and rocky area of Panamazonia has the privilege of being an area rich in gold, so the extraction of this mineral has been constant since the early twentieth century.
- The country most favored with these deposits is Venezuela, where state-owned mining companies and informal mining lead the way in their exploitation. In total, around 80 tons of gold are obtained each year.
- They are closely followed by Guyana and Suriname, with annual productions of between 40 and 20 tons. In these countries there are not only informal miners but also garimpeiros from Brazil, who exploit surface gold deposits. At the same time, in French Guyana there are open-pit mines operated by foreign companies.

Expanding the colonization of the Brazilian Amazon through gold mining
- Gold mining has played a significant role in the colonization of the Mato Grosso region of Brazil, starting with the bandeirantes in the 18th century and reignited by the garimpeiros in the 1970s.
- The gold rush continued in the placer mining camps called garimpos across the region, extending to other states including Rondônia, Amazonas, Roraima and Amapá, and several Indigenous lands have been encroached upon.
- With increased political influence over decades, the gold mines continued to persistently invade Indigenous territories, notably the Yanomami and the Macuxi, while several rivers have been polluted by mercury and cyanide from the extractive industry.

Activists ask for help combatting violence against Nicaragua’s Indigenous communities
- Indigenous communities on Nicaragua’s northern Caribbean coast continue to suffer threats, kidnappings, torture and unlawful arrests while defending communal territory from illegal settlements and mining.
- Residents say they’re worried about losing ancestral land as well as traditional farming, hunting and fishing practices as the forest is cleared and mines pollute local streams and rivers.
- This year, there have been 643 cases of violence against Indigenous peoples, including death threats, the burning of homes, unlawful arrests, kidnappings, torture and displacement, according to Indigenous rights groups that spoke at a Inter-American Commission on Human Rights panel this month.

Brazil’s wildcat mining is deeply rooted in its politics and thirst for minerals
- Brazil has had a long history of gold mining, going all the way back to the Portuguese empire. In the 1970s, as the country opened its forests for migration, many families headed for the recently discovered gold fields in Carajás, Tapajós, Roraima, Madre de Dios and the Guiana Coast and started exploring them, with support by governments.
- Wildcat miners or garimpeiros extract ‘free gold’ from secondary deposits using placer-mining technology. Gold-bearing mineral formations typically are classified as primary (hard-rock) or secondary (alluvial) deposits. In some regions, the success of the garimpeiros has attracted the interest of corporations, who know that alluvial gold is an indication of greater deposits being present.
- Garimpeiros have long been in conflict with Indigenous communities, who complain about their negative environmental impacts. But a renewed expansion of placer mining has also negatively impacted communities residing on agricultural landscapes.

Gold mining in the Amazon has doubled in area since 2018, AI tool shows
- An artificial intelligence tool trained to track gold mines through satellite imagery found that the deforestation linked to the activity doubled in the Amazon Rainforest from 2018 to 2023.
- Mines are widespread in the biome, affecting especially Brazil, Guyana, Suriname, Venezuela and Peru.
- The spread of gold mines followed a sharp increase in the price of the metal, which nearly doubled since 2018.
- In Brazil, the federal government has succeeded in reducing the rate at which illegal mining is expanding inside Indigenous territories, but still struggles to block its spread outright.

What’s at stake for the environment in Venezuela’s upcoming election?
- President Nicolás Maduro is running for a third consecutive term despite overwhelming opposition to his regime. This time, his opponent is González Urrutia, a former diplomat.
- Under Maduro, illegal mining has spread rapidly through the rainforest, while water shortages and the trafficking and flora and fauna have only gotten worse.
- While González Urrutia has promised to address illegal mining and other environmental issues, experts say there’s little chance he can win. The current government has already taken steps to guarantee Maduro’s victory, including disqualifying opposition candidates and uninviting outside electoral observers.

Minerals for agricultural use can already be found in Amazonia
- Many fertilizers that ensure the world’s food security are supported by minerals. For years, these compounds came from various countries and have recently been discovered in the Amazon.
- The large deposits were discovered as part of other infrastructure work in the Amazon.
- Potash, phosphorus and agricultural lime improve the performance of farmland, but are also generating new demands and criticism from indigenous communities as well as environmental activists.

Report reveals widespread use of smuggled mercury in Amazon gold mining
- Enforcement against illegal gold mines in the Brazilian Amazon ramped up in 2023, but the contamination from the mercury used in mining will likely be felt for generations to come.
- According to a report from Brazilian think tank the Escolhas Institute, up to 73% of all mercury used in Brazil’s gold mines is of unknown origin; the country’s environmental agency states practically all mines in Brazil use illegal mercury.
- Mercury affects primarily children, who may be born with severe disabilities and face learning difficulties for the rest of their lives.

Industrial minerals in the Pan Amazon
- The Brazilian Amazon hosts a huge mineral wealth, ranging from bauxite and cassiterite to tin, nobium, tantalum and coltan, providing raw materials for the steel industry, electronics, technology and medical sectors.
- This mineral abundance has also been enormously detrimental to ecosystems and Indigenous people across the region.
- Many of the mines that were once state-run are now managed by Canadian and Chinese transnational corporations. As global demand for rare earth elements increases, production in the mines will have to diversify.

Brasil, Venezuela and Peru: the geography of industrial metals
- Industrial metals ores occur across the Amazon basin; this article offers an overview of their geological origins in the region and their economic importance.
- In Brazil, in Carajás and Pará, large deposits are focused on iron ore production, which has grown by 50% in recent years. Copper is also being exploited and recently the expansion and diversification towards strategic metals necessary for the transition to renewable energies has begun.
- In Venezuela and Peru there are other similar examples of mines that provide mineral inputs for the manufacture of steel and iron.

As logging booms in Suriname, forest communities race to win land rights
- Despite its environmental track record, Suriname is still the only country in South America that hasn’t formally recognized the territorial rights of Indigenous and Maroon peoples.
- The Saamaka claim that a 2007 ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights should give them collective land rights, yet the government continues to grant forestry and mining concessions on their land.
- The Surinamese government has granted 447,000 hectares (1.1 million acres) of concessions on Saamaka land, or 32% of the territory, according to the International Land Coalition.
- In a letter to the president this month, Saamaka communities asked the government to stop granting land concessions and to officially demarcate their territory.

The most prominent mining companies in the Pan Amazon – a review
- Following on from the previous section, Killeen explains the particularities of the extractive industries in Brazil and Peru.
- In both countries, mining operations, despite being backed by large international companies, still face various difficulties ranging from social grievances to the effects of deforestation on their own business model.
- Communities accuse companies of not applying on the ground the ESG and sustainability principles in their strategies.

In Peru’s Madre de Dios, deforestation from mining brings huge economic losses
- Amazon Conservation’s Monitoring of the Amazon Project (MAAP) analyzed the environmental and economic impact of three local communities in the Madre Dios region of the Peruvian Amazon, where gold mining has torn apart the rainforest and created a public health crisis for residents.
- Results showed that across just three native communities, deforestation from mining and pollution caused a total economic loss of $593,786,943 only between August 2022 and 2023.
- The project was carried out using the Mining Impacts Calculator, a tool created by the Conservation Strategy Fund (CSF) to quantify the economic impact of environmental damage.

Solutions to avoid loss of environmental, social and governance investment
- ESG strategies pro-actively support the planet and societal well-being in order to maximize profits over the short and long term. The goal is to align a company’s strategies and operations with the growing demand for the sustainable production of goods and services.
- Critics on the left brand ESG investing as greenwashing, arguing that corporations view it through a public relations lens rather than as a true reform of business models.
- Supporters contend the emerging ESG schemes are different in both scope and scale from previous sustainability initiatives, where the power of consumers was dispersed via complex supply chains and political processes.
- A very large company may have a good ESG score overall, but a poorly conceived project in the Pan Amazon. Moreover, the global corporations that participate in ESG initiatives are not representative of the dozens of domestic mining companies that operate in the Pan Amazon.

In the Pan Amazon, environmental liabilities of old mining have become economic liabilities
- The ‘legacy’ of older mines translates into environmental liabilities, as failures can cause leakages of toxic sludge or fuel into river systems, rapidly spreading over tens of thousands of hectares and contaminating ecosystems.
- By changing name or owner, companies often manage to escape responsibility for those liabilities, as legally that entity initially owning polluting mines might not exist anymore.
- The inability to make a defunct corporation pay for remediation forces the state to assume the full cost of remediation. But tight budgets often allow contamination to persist without any remedial action.

In a village divided, farmers stall massive copper mine in Colombian Andes
- A group of farmers and villagers are resisting the construction of a large copper mine in Colombia’s tropical Andes, where agriculture is a key industry; they recently blocked the company from completing environmental impact studies required by the Colombian government.
- International gold mining giant AngloGold Ashanti has been working for more than a decade to obtain a license to extract nearly 1.4 million metric tons of copper from within the mountains surrounding the town of Jericó.
- The company has also integrated into the town, supporting social programs, youth activities and local businesses; residents are divided over the mine, and many view it as a welcome social and economic boost for Jericó.

Sustainability in the extractive industries is a paradox
- Adopting environmental management as a central component of the extractive business model has been a priority in the last two decades, which has made environmental impact assessments (EIA) critical for companies’ operations.
- The objective of an EIA is to identify, describe and quantify all potential impacts of an extractive company. It seeks to avoid, minimize, remediate and compensate for all environmental damage.
- When consultation processes are added and are properly executed, they can substantially improve a mine’s profitability by limiting environmental mitigation costs and avoiding conflicts with local and Indigenous communities.

Ecuador’s Los Lobos narcotrafficking gang muscles in on illegal gold mining
- For the last several years, one criminal gang has become increasingly involved in illegal gold mining in seven of Ecuador’s 24 provinces, according to intelligence reports seen by Mongabay and investigative news outlet Código Vidrio.
- Los Lobos, affiliated with Mexico’s notorious Jalisco New Generation cartel, have entered illegal gold mining areas, removing or extorting miners, and taken control of almost all stages of the mineral’s supply chain.
- The group has reached remote areas, including inside Podocarpus National Park, where reports show thousands of illegal miners are operating — part of what experts say is a criminal assault on Ecuador’s Amazon region that’s driving violent crime.
- Indigenous leaders say they’re increasingly afraid to speak up for fear of retaliation, while several local officials opposed to illegal mining have been attacked or even killed.

Global markets and their effects on resource exploitation in the Pan Amazon
- Extractive companies operate to maximize their profits as global demand is highly fluctuating. Prior to 2000, the prices of industrial minerals were at historical lows, but jumped through the next two decades as China began its infrastructure boom.
- As of January 2023, another commodity boom appears to be underway. In part, this is due to the war in Ukraine and the (as yet unknown) dimensions and duration of the sanctions regime imposed on Russia by the United States, the European Union and their allies in Asia-Pacific.
- As minerals required by the energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy are plentiful in the Pan Amazon, there will be significant economic pressure to develop those resources.
- Governments in the Pan Amazon are predisposed to support the mining and hydrocarbon industries because they are export-oriented and generate revenues for the state.

As miner quells protests in Ecuador, Canadian firms’ rights record faces scrutiny
- In March, violent clashes erupted between Ecuadorian security forces and campesino farmers over prospects for the revival of a mining project that has been rejected by protestors for at least 15 years.
- The company behind the project, Atico Mining, called in hundreds of police and paramilitary personnel to quell the protests, in what critics say is a disturbing pattern of Canadian resource companies running roughshod over human and environmental rights in other countries.
- Human rights advocacy groups and Indigenous organizations say the Canadian government, especially the embassy in Quito, has failed to safeguard human rights and environmental obligations despite its legal duties to do so.
- A spokesperson for the Canadian foreign ministry said the government expects Canadian companies operating abroad to abide by internationally respected guidelines on responsible business conduct — then cited guidelines that aren’t legally binding.

Is the extractive sector really favorable for the Pan Amazon’s economy?
- The Pan Amazon is an important source for several key industrial raw materials. Although financially, its minerals sector is minor within the world economy, the economy of Amazonian countries is highly dependent on extractive activities.
- Extractive industries in the region play a strategic role. Without them, Brazil would suffer a major economic disruption from mineral revenues, and the impact would be catastrophic for Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia.
- Most other countries in the Pan Amazon region return only a portion of royalties from revenues to local jurisdictions, while corporate income taxes go to the central government. However, despite criticism on lack of investment in Amazonian hinterlands, local governments continue to support extractive industries.
- None of the money from royalties is allocated to conservation, nor is any allocated to the remediation of the environmental impacts linked to its exploitation.

Indigenous Philippine village rejects gold mine, cites flawed consultation
- Itogon-Suyoc Resources Inc. (ISRI), one of the Philippines’ oldest mining firms, is seeking permission to mine gold from the mountains of Itogon, a municipality in the mineral-rich, majority Indigenous north of the country.
- Mining on Indigenous land requires a consultation process, and Itogon communities rejected the company’s application in 2022, citing concerns including water contamination and loss of access for traditional mining activities. The company applied for a new round of consultations in 2023, which resulted in an agreement to allow mining in the area.
- Elders from Dalicno, the village that will be most affected if the mining proceeds, say they weren’t informed about the 2023 consultations. The agreement has yet to receive final approval due to irregularities including a lack of photographs or attendance sheets to prove that community consultations actually took place.
- Proponents of the mine say those opposing it do so only out of self-interest, while ISRI says existing small-scale mining in the area is more environmentally degrading than the company’s planned operations.

The environmental mismanagement of enduring oil industry impacts in the Pan Amazon
- The history of extractivism in the Pan Amazon shows that environmental damage has been commonplace, only now there are new demands from the parent companies that influence all service providers involved.
- In this section, Killeen explains that any hydrocarbon project (whether oil or gas) entails a high risk of social conflict with the communities living next to exploration and exploitation areas.
- The governments of countries such as Ecuador, Peru, Colombia and Brazil must ensure that there is real environmental responsibility for the oil spills that are damaging ecosystems and the livelihoods of communities.

Protected areas bear the brunt as forest loss continues across Cambodia
- In 2023, Cambodia lost forest cover the size of the city of Los Angeles, or 121,000 hectares (300,000 acres), according to new data published by the University of Maryland.
- The majority of this loss occurred inside protected areas, with the beleaguered Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary recording the highest rate of forest loss in what was one of its worst years on record.
- A leading conservation activist says illegal logging inside protected areas is driven in part by demand for luxury timber exports, “but the authorities don’t seem to care about protecting these forests.”
- Despite the worrying trend highlighted by the data, the Cambodian government has set an ambitious target of increasing the country’s forest cover to 60% by 2050.

Brazil’s illegal gold trade takes a hammering, but persists underground
- Measures throughout 2023 to curb the illegal gold trade in Brazil led to a 20% drop in the country’s exports of the precious metal.
- In Itaituba, the hub of the Amazon illegal gold trade, taxes from gold sales fell by more than 90% in just the first quarter of this year.
- Experts attribute this drop to police raids on illegal mining operations and on requirements for sellers to issue electronic invoices.
- But they warn the illegal gold still persists, shifting to unofficial channels to evade the eye of regulators.

Illegal mining in the Pan Amazon: an ecological disaster for floodplains and local communities
- Floodplains are extraordinarily productive because they are the connection between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. They are socially and economically vital because tens of thousands of families depend on their natural resources for their livelihoods.
- However, placer mining – as Killeen explains in this section – generates catastrophic impacts when miners remove and turn over topsoil as they search for gold sediments. The most optimistic estimate is that 350,000 hectares of forest and wetlands have been lost in the Pan Amazon region as a result.
- Although visible on the banks of rivers and their headwaters, the damage caused by mercury is invisible when it comes to the health of miners, their families and communities. In reviewing 33 studies conducted in the Tapajós watershed, Killeen found that high levels of mercury were widespread.
- Remediation can be very costly economically and politically, as governments need to take measures against illegal mining and protect affected communities.

Mining in the Pan Amazon in pursuit of the world’s most precious metal
- Gold exploitation is usually carried out by large mining companies with dedicated subsidiaries. However, the exploration companies in charge of discovering the ore are usually small specialized companies.
- The environmental and social impacts of corporate gold mines are similar to those of other industrial polymetallic mines; they vary though according to the type of mining – underground or at the surface – and to the type of ecosystems they overlap.
- Illegal miners are the source of two of the most insidious environmental and social impacts associated with the extractive industries in the Pan Amazon: floodplain destruction and mercury pollution. About 20% of total annual gold production comes from illegal mining.

Amazon prosecutors get sharper impact tool to charge illegal gold dealers
- New research from the NGO Conservation Strategy fund, working with federal prosecutors in Brazil, has refined a tool that puts a dollar value on the socioenvironmental costs of illegal gold mining across vital ecosystems in the Amazon.
- Brazilian environmental investigators and prosecutors say the updated Mining Impacts Calculator is improving cases they’re bringing against the largest buyers of illegal gold in the country.
- Each kilogram of gold of artisanal mining causes damage valued at up to $389,200, more than twice the market value of gold, the new study found.
- Prosecutors in Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and other Amazonian countries are also adopting the new calculator, but with gold values soaring and official corruption entrenched, observers say that reducing illegal mining will remain a significant challenge.

The environmental and social liabilities of the extractive sector
- Many environmental advocates consistently oppose mining and hydrocarbon development because they believe that the Amazon should remain intact. A similar view is held by Indigenous peoples, who fear that their communities will be transformed by immigrants or altered by catastrophes that will damage their livelihoods.
- Despite numerous initiatives and significant investment in redesigning tailings storage facilities and improving risk management, the number of incidents classified as ‘serious’ or ‘very serious’ has increased over the last thirty years.
- Long-term liabilities created by mining must be remediated – as is the case of tailings storage facilities – or offset, for example, where habitat loss can be compensated by creating a protected area with similar biodiversity.

Mineral commodities: the wealth that generates most impacts in the Pan Amazon | Chapter 5 of “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon”
- Mongabay is publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
- The paradox of minerals is that thousands of families depend on their exploitation and the economic activities generated, but at the same time suffer the impacts on their ecosystems, livelihoods and health.
- According to Killeen, governments know that the promotion of mineral development generates an unfavorable balance of payments in the long term. Thus, the overall cost-benefit equation may require a different development strategy.
- In the meantime, people living in the surrounding of projects are often torn between the desire for employment (however temporary) and the fear of environmental impacts that persist for decades.

Norway pension fund breaks with U.K. conglomerate Jardines over endangered orangutan habitat
- Norway’s state pension fund, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, has cut ties with Jardine Matheson (Jardines) due to concerns that the conglomerate’s gold mining activities in Indonesia could damage the only known habitat of the world’s most threatened great ape, the Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis).
- The fund joins 29 financiers that have excluded Jardines and/or its subsidiaries from financing due to climate and environmental concerns, according to data from the Financial Exclusions Tracker.
- The Tapanuli orangutan was only first described in 2017, and its estimated population numbers fewer than 800 that survive in a tiny tract of forest; 95% of the ape’s historical habitat has been lost to hunting, conflict killing and agriculture.
- The Martabe mining concession in northern Sumatra lies in the portion of the orangutan’s habitat, the Batang Toru forest, with the largest orangutan population, where the probability of the species’ long-term survival is highest; the fund worried that further expansion of the mine would increase threats to the ape.

Indonesian gold mine expanding in ‘wrong direction’ into orangutan habitat
- A gold mine in the only known habitat of the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan is expanding, prompting alarm from activists and conservationists.
- The Martabe mine on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, run by a company associated with the U.K.’s Jardine Matheson Holdings, already cleared 100 hectares (about 250 acres) of forest from 2016 to 2020, and looks set to clear another 100 hectares.
- Advocacy group Mighty Earth says the expansion will impact an area recently established to help protect the orangutan and other threatened species.
- Jardines says an independent forestry and sustainability assessment concluded that the long-term impact of the planned exploration and development work was minimal.

Harmful mining continues in Nicaragua despite U.S. sanctions, new investigation shows
- The U.S. imposed sanctions against Nicaragua in 2022 but numerous mines are still operating like normal or even expanding, according to a new report from the Oakland Institute, a think tank dealing with social and environmental issues.
- Despite the sanctions, the U.S. was Nicaragua’s largest gold importer last year, bringing in around $465 million.
- Expanding mining concessions has resulted in pollution and human rights violations against Indigenous communities.

Bid to mitigate gold mine’s impact on orangutans hit by stonewalling, data secrecy
- An international conservation task force says a gold mine operator in Indonesia resisted its efforts to carry out an independent review of the project’s impact on Tapanuli orangutans, the world’s most threatened great ape species.
- The ARRC Task Force, which had been engaged by the Martabe gold mine in early 2022 to advise on minimizing its impacts on the critically endangered species, said the task force was expected to carry out a mere “tick box exercise.”
- U.K. conglomerate Jardine Matheson Holdings Ltd., which ultimately owns the mine, said the reason the engagement fell through was Indonesian legal restrictions on data sharing, which meant the ARRC couldn’t access the government-held data it needed.
- Part of the Martabe concession overlaps onto the Batang Toru Forest, the only home of the Tapanuli orangutan; advocacy group Mighty Earth says most of the deforestation detected recently in the concession occurred in orangutan habitat and carbon-rich landscapes.

Illegal gold mining threatens Indus River water and biodiversity in Pakistan (commentary)
- The Indus River in Pakistan is being extensively disturbed by unregulated mining of the river’s bed (‘placer mining’) for gold.
- Numerous operations employing an estimated 1,200 heavy machines dig daily into the riverbed and dump buckets of sediment and rocks into screening devices, destroying habitat and muddying the water flowing downstream.
- “It is crucial to the development for the region’s economy and environmental preservation efforts to regulate placer gold blocks along the Indus River,” a new op-ed argues.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Illegal gold mining devastates Peruvian Amazon river and communities
- Mongabay Latam traveled along 38 kilometers (24 miles) of Peru’s Cenepa River, near the border with Ecuador, where illegal mining dredges run around the clock in search of gold, hemming in seven Indigenous Awajún communities.
- The constant mining activity and presence of the miners has brought violence, crime and sexual exploitation to the Awajún communities and wrought widespread environmental destruction that shows no signs of slowing.
- Police and environmental defense leaders conducted raids in early October, but the lack of permanent enforcement in this part of the Amazon has allowed the dredging rafts to returned and once again churn up the river basin.

Mining company Belo Sun sues environmental defenders in intimidation tactic, NGOs say
- Canadian mining company Belo Sun has filed a lawsuit against community leaders and environmental rights defenders, including members of Amazon Watch and International Rivers, for their alleged support or involvement in the illegal occupation of company-owned land.
- A coalition of environmental lawyers and human rights activists say the lawsuit is an intimidation tactic part of a pattern the company uses to silence and weaken those who speak against its operations near the biodiverse Xingu River.
- Belo Sun denies persecuting or threatening environmental defenders and says it is only acting to preserve its rights, preserve the rights of the protesters and stop criminal activity.
- The lawyers of those accused have started to provide their defense in court and plan to present a complaint of the lawsuit to the Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the U.N.

Chinese gold miners ‘illegally’ tearing up Cambodian wildlife sanctuary
- An NGO report and complaints by villagers allege a Chinese company has been mining gold inside one of Cambodia’s largest protected areas years before it was license to do so.
- Late Cheng Mining Development was awarded an exploratory license in March 2020 spanning 15,100 hectares (37,300 acres) inside Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary, and an extraction license in September 2022.
- Local villagers say the company has likely been operating in the region since early 2019; villagers who spoke to Mongabay requested anonymity, citing fears of reprisals from the authorities.
- A report by the Bruno Manser Fonds and testimony from locals also allege the company’s mining activities risk contaminating waterways that villagers rely on.

Peru’s crackdown on illegal gold mining a success, but only briefly, study shows
- Peru’s state intervention against illegal gold mining in the Madre de Dios region succeeded in halting the activity for a couple of years, pushing miners into concessions allowing mining, according to recent research.
- Operation Mercury, which ran between 2019-2020, led to the abandonment of almost all targeted illegal mining sites in La Pampa, an area found in the buffer zone of a major national park.
- But while there’s been some forest regeneration in the affected areas since then, this has been undone by even higher rates of deforestation in the legal mining areas where the miners have moved into.
- Experts also say the effort has been unsustainable, as law enforcement in the area has waned and miners have started to come back, with the COVID-19 pandemic playing a major role in cutting enforcement budgets.

Smallholders and loggers push deeper into Sumatra’s largest park
- Kerinci Seblat National Park on the Indonesian island of Sumatra has lost more than 4% of its primary forest cover over the past 20 years, satellite data from Global Forest Watch show.
- Much of the deforestation is driven by nearby communities logging and farming, in particular potatoes, and possibly also illegal gold mining.
- The park hosts a diversity of wildlife like nowhere else — tigers, elephants, helmeted hornbills and barking deer, among others — but these are now threatened by loss of habitat and poaching.
- Kerinci Seblat was at one point a stronghold of the Sumatran rhino, but this critically endangered species has since gone extinct from the park.

Can blockchain clean up the gold industry in Brazil and across the globe?

Gold, whose value has spiked by more than 55% since the 2008 financial crisis, is notoriously difficult to trace. Once mined, it can follow a maze-like path to market, passing through intermediaries that mix and melt it with other sources, often erasing signatures of its origin in the process. The result? Illicit gold routinely slips […]
Lifted sanctions on gold, oil could slow conservation efforts in Venezuela
- Last month, the U.S. agreed to lift some sanctions on Venezuela’s oil and gas and gold, some of the country’s largest industries, but also its most environmentally hazardous.
- Eased restrictions could allow neighboring countries with illegal mining, such as Suriname, Brazil, Guyana and Colombia, to launder gold through Venezuela’s new legal channels.
- Spills from oil and gas fields may continue as before given the government’s disregard for infrastructure maintenance, such as fixing pipes and replacing worn-down tanks.

Tensions flare as Ecuador’s environment consultation process is put to the test
- In July, farmers in Las Naves, Ecuador, got into violent clashes with police while protesting a new environmental consultation process and a large-scale open-pit mine soon to begin operations in their canton.
- The environmental consultation is part of the new controversial Decree 754 passed in May by outgoing President Guillermo Lasso which may speed up environmental permits for infrastructure projects — including mining — as its oil economy flounders.
- This conflict highlights an important tension that lies at the heart of all extraction projects in Ecuador: the consultation process. Amid much dispute between environmental lawyers and the ministry on the legality of the decree, the Constitutional Court is stepping in to review it.
- Addressing tensions like these will be on the plate of Daniel Noboa, newly elected to become the next president, as he promises to revamp the country’s economy.

‘It’s a real mess’: Mining and deforestation threaten unparalleled DRC wildlife haven
- The Okapi Wildlife Reserve in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo protects unique biodiversity, including approximately one-fifth of the global okapi population, the country’s largest forest elephant and chimpanzee populations and 17 primate species, and it safeguards forest access for the Indigenous Mbuti and Efe peoples.
- Deforestation in the reserve is accelerating, according to data from Global Forest Watch.
- Artisanal and semi-industrial mining is a grave threat to the reserve, leading to deforestation and pollution of waterways, particularly in the south of the reserve along the Ituri River and the National Road 4.
- A disagreement over the boundaries of the reserve between park authorities and the mining cadastre complicates law enforcement and requires resolution at the ministerial level.

Muddied tropical rivers reveal magnitude of global gold mining boom: Study
- A new study reveals that 59,000 kilometers, or nearly 37,000 miles, of tropical rivers have been damaged by mining, based on 7 million measurements taken from satellite images spanning four decades.
- The new study reveals a runaway river mining boom starting in the mid-2000s, largely caused by a tremendous spike in gold prices since the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Since then, the price of gold — an element which accounts for 90% of river mining in the tropics — has only gone up.
- An estimated 5-7% of the world’s large tropical rivers are considered severely affected by sediment from river-mining activities, with 173 large rivers impacted in the global tropics.
- Up to a third of global freshwater fish species are found in tropical rivers. Mining, much of it illegal or informal, seriously impacts both human and natural communities in numerous ways. Sediment traps aquatic life in dense, cloudy, muddied water, with sunlight unable to reach plants and fish.

International community calls for release of El Salvador antimining activists
- Calls from the international community are growing for the release of five environmental activists fighting water pollution and mining in El Salvador who were arrested in January.
- A lack of evidence behind the allegation that they were involved in a civil war-era kidnapping and murder has raised questions from U.S. officials and the U.N. about the legitimacy of the charges.
- A group of 17 U.S. members of Congress is the latest to call for their release and a closer look at the steps the government is taking to renew a defunct mining sector.
- The five “water defenders” say there’s insufficient evidence in the case and that they’re protected from prosecution by a post-war reconciliation law.

No new mining operations on Yanomami land after raids and deaths
- The alerts of illegal mining in the Yanomami Indigenous Land have zeroed for the first time since 2020, according to satellite monitoring by the Brazilian Federal Police.
- Military operations continue in the region to drive out the last of the illegal miners and federal operations are also underway to remove criminal activity in the Karipuna and Munduruku Indigenous Territories.
- At least 15 people have been killed in the Yanomami land since April and evidence suggests one of South America’s most powerful mafias is operating in the region, putting the safety of federal agents and Indigenous people at risk.
- On June 14, the Brazilian Senate unanimously approved a set of solutions to tackle the Yanomami health disaster, which critics said focuses more on legalizing development in the region than on addressing the humanitarian crisis.

A powerful U.S. political family is behind a copper mine in the Colombian rainforest
- Two members of the Sununu family, a powerful U.S. Republican Party dynasty, are among the directors or shareholders of Libero Copper, a copper mine promoted in the Colombian Amazon. John H. Sununu, a powerful former governor of New Hampshire and former White House chief of staff to George Bush Sr. is one of its ultimate beneficial owners. His son Michael Sununu sits on the mining company’s board of directors.
- The government sees the mine as strategic to the clean energy transition by providing copper used in electric cars, solar panels and wind turbines. However, Libero’s two Sununus are known in the U.S. as skeptics of the scientific consensus that climate change is man-made, raising questions now that they are at the helm of a ‘green energy’ mining project in the midst of such a fragile and strategic biome as the Amazon rainforest.
- In order for Libero Copper’s project to become a reality, the company says it requires not only an exploitation license and an environmental permit from the Colombian government, but also that authorities lift the protected area status of part of the deposit. The reason is that one-fifth of the copper that the mining company seeks to extract is buried under a protected natural area known as a nationally protected forest reserve.
- The prospect of this mine is a cause of concern for the Indigenous communities in its area of influence, especially the Inga reservation of Condagua to the north and Kamentsá Biya of Sibundoy to the west, who fear disruption of critical waterways and the destruction of their territory.

Venezuela’s environmental crisis is getting worse. Here are seven things to know.
- A new report from the Venezuelan Observatory for Political Ecology (OEP) details the most pressing environmental issues facing Venezuela.
- They include oil spills, illegal mining, deforestation, tourism, poor waste management, water shortages and climate change.
- The Venezuelan government has done very little to address these problems, the report said, and has even turned a blind eye to them in order to improve the country’s economy.

Venezuela’s hidden runways bring both life and destruction to Indigenous lands
- At least 42 airstrips, mostly short dirt tracks found deep into the jungle, enable gold mining activities that undermine river and forest ecosystems in Southern Venezuela.
- Small aircraft, often fueled by car gasoline, get overloaded with supplies for remote communities. Pilots risk their lives to bring vital products such as food and medicine to Indigenous communities, but they also carry mining equipment and smuggled gold to and from these communities.
- The hidden runways have expanded and made large-scale gold mining activities possible in even the most remote parts of Venezuela’s forests.

Chemical spill in Nicaraguan reserve raises questions about industrial mining regulations
- Chemicals leaked from a processing plant run by Colombian mining company Hemco, which operates inside the Bosawás Biosphere Reserve and an autonomous region controlled by several Indigenous groups.
- Community leaders expressed their concern about pollution in the Kukalaya and Tungki rivers, where residents washing laundry reported itchiness after coming in contact with the water.
- Mining concessions have spread significantly over the last several years as the Nicaraguan government, facing increasing international sanctions, looks for new revenue sources. But weak environmental regulations have drawn criticism.

A Guatemalan town fights to bar gold mining and save its waters
- Over the last 25 years, local community members have repeatedly rejected a gold mining project on the border of Guatemala and El Salvador for lack of environmental compliance.
- The government of Guatemala has approved the extension of the Cerro Blanco project, which, under new ownership is planned to switch from underground to open-pit mining.
- Worried that mining is contaminating waters and affecting biodiversity, the community of Asunción Mita held a referendum last September, voting to reject the project, but it hasn’t yet obtained recognition from the state.
- While mining is on hold, awaiting a final verdict on the referendum, natural ecosystems and watercourses are bouncing back with life.

In a Bolivian protected area torn up for gold, focus is on limiting damage
- Artisanal gold mining by local cooperatives abounds in protected areas across Bolivia, in particular the Apolobamba highlands near the border with Peru.
- The mining boom here began in the late 1990s, and since then the cooperatives have continued to use mercury amalgamate the gold.
- There are worries over mercury contamination as well as the diversion of river flows away from wetlands to the mines.
- NGOs working with the cooperatives say the local miners are keen on making their operations more sustainable, but that the cost and lack of government support are hurdles to achieving this.

A frontline view of the fight against illegal mining in Yanomami territory
- In the Brazilian Amazon, Yanomami Indigenous people have been suffering a health crisis aggravated over recent years by the dismantling of Indigenous health care support services and the illegal mining invasion.
- Since the start of operations against miners in February, Brazil’s environmental inspectors have been setting fire to gear used to support illegal mining activities, both inside and outside the Indigenous territory.
- “The Yanomami land is one of the most difficult areas in the country in which to conduct our operations,” said one inspector who spoke to Agência Pública.

Gold miner faces global protests as it rekindles a mine with a violent legacy
- Three years after the Papua New Guinea government refused to renew its license, the Porgera gold mine is now on track to reopen.
- The mine will relaunch under joint ownership of the government and mine operator Barrick Gold.
- Activists in PNG have joined global protests against Barrick, saying the new agreement does not address a legacy of violence and environmental damage, and drawing parallels between Porgera and Barrick’s mines in Tanzania and Pakistan.

A mountain of gold: Mining titles threaten Indigenous lands in Guainía, Colombia
- A potential gold rush is awaiting in the surroundings of the Mavicure Hill and the Fluvial Star of Inírida, two of Colombia’s particular ecosystems. Authorities approved 13 proposals for mining concession contracts for extracting gold and gold concentrates.
- Mongabay Latam and Vorágine visited the Indigenous communities surrounding the Fluvial Star of Inírida. Their residents now live in a climate of uncertainty because of the promises of a better future based on mining. There is simultaneously ignorance and enthusiasm about the prospect of new jobs.
- Mining has not started yet in the area, and there is already division surrounding this issue in the Remanso Chorrobocón Indigenous Reserve. Some people view mining positively, but there are also complaints that the mining titles are being managed in the name of the Indigenous people, even though they have not been consulted.

Professional services abound for Amazon land grabbers seeking legitimacy
- How does public land in the Brazilian Amazon, including chunks of protected areas and Indigenous territories, end up under private ownership?
- This investigation unveils the network of realtors and engineers who take advantage of Brazil’s disjointed land registration system to launder stolen land.
- Experts say the CAR land registry in particular, which was meant to prevent environmental crimes, has instead made land grabbing easier than ever.
- This article was originally published in Portuguese by The Intercept Brasil and is part of the Ladrões de Floresta (Forest Thieves) project, which investigates the appropriation of public land inside the Amazon and is funded by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network.

‘Don’t buy Brazilian gold’: Q&A with Indigenous leader Júnior Hekurari Yanomami
- Júnior Hekurari Yanomami is a leader of the Yanomami people in Roraima state, Brazil, where he founded an organization to aid his people after working as a health worker.
- In a Mongabay interview, the Indigenous leader called for a boycott of Brazilian gold and said he hoped for efforts to find long-term solutions to keep illegal miners out of the Yanomami territory.
- In early March, Júnior led a campaign to raise international awareness about Amazonian gold by awarding wooden statuettes to Oscar nominees.

Power of traditional beliefs lies at the heart of an anti-mine campaign in PNG
- A newly published study published explores the important role that traditional Papua New Guinean beliefs play in an ongoing campaign against a copper and gold mine on a tributary of the Sepik River.
- Critics say the controversial mine project could potentially pollute one of the most biologically and culturally diverse places on Earth, while supporters point to potential development benefits.
- The Save the Sepik campaign against the mine harnesses traditional governance structures and beliefs, acknowledging the spirits of ancestors, the land and river, in a declaration that has become a rallying cry for the campaign.
- The campaign’s success so far — licenses haven’t been awarded for the mine project — is part of a growing global movement that acknowledges the close relationship some communities have with a sentient environment.

World’s newest great ape faces habitat loss, multiple threats: Will it survive?
- Scientists designated the Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis) as a new species in 2017, and it was immediately noted as being the rarest and most threatened great ape with fewer than 800 individuals in western Indonesia.
- The IUCN estimated the apes’ population fell by 83% in recent decades, and the species continues to face grave threats due to habitat loss, a gold mine, a hydroelectric plant and the expansion of croplands.
- While some conservation efforts offer hope, researchers say a coordinated plan is needed to ensure the species survives.

International mercury regulations fail to protect the environment, public health: study
- Mercury is one of the most concerning chemicals affecting public health and the environment. The chemical can enter local watersheds and poison flora and fauna, while leaving humans with memory loss, seizures, vomiting and lung damage, among other problems.
- A recent study found that data collection for mercury use is so inconsistent that it can’t be relied on for understanding trends in artisanal and small-scale mining.
- The UN Minamata Convention on Mercury, which went into effect in 2017, requires countries to collect data on mercury use but doesn’t say how that data should be collected, resulting in inconsistencies between countries.

Brazilian gold miners get free rein in Venezuela’s Indigenous lands
- In Southern Venezuela, Brazilian gold miners known as garimpeiros exploit Venezuelan Indigenous lands, leaving behind mass environmental destruction.
- Deforestation, sedimentation and contamination of water, soil and air are among the environmental consequences of garimpeiro-style mining.
- Skyrocketing gold prices and Venezuela’s political and economic crisis have fueled the gold rush in Venezuela; Brazilian garimpeiros and Venezuelans from the cities have flocked to the mines, where they face limited accountability as they dig for gold.
- There are ways to recover some of the nature degraded by gold mining, but this requires investments, the right expertise and careful planning. It’s not happening today.

Report sums up Bolsonaro’s destruction legacy and Amazon’s next critical steps
- A damning report confirms what many environmentalists already knew: that the destruction of nature in Brazil from 2019 to 2022 was a deliberate campaign of sabotage led by the government of the time.
- The report compiled four years of data to describe record levels of land invasions, illegal mining and Amazon deforestation under the administration of Jair Bolsonaro.
- Against this challenging scenario, experts have mostly praised President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s initial actions in his first 100 days, especially his efforts to address the health crisis in the Yanomami Indigenous Territory.
- However, key actions remain pending, they say, including the quashing of anti-environmental bills and an end to the plan to pave a controversial highway through the Amazon Rainforest.

‘Gold library’ helps Brazil crack down on Amazon’s illegal mining
- Launched in 2019, the Ouro Alvo program is creating a gold database with samples obtained from different parts of Brazil.
- The information is allowing the Federal Police to create a chemical fingerprint of each sample, which they can then use to cross-reference the origin of seized or suspicious gold.
- This strategy could be complemented with other methods, including physically tagging the gold and tracking transactions using blockchain.
- While technology can be a great ally to fight the illegal gold trade, experts say the country still needs stricter regulations governing the industry.

Element Africa: Gold in Ghana, oil in Nigeria, and fracking in South Africa
- One small-scale miner was killed and four injured as security forces moved to evict them from a concession held by Ghana’s Golden Star Resources.
- ExxonMobil’s plan to exit from onshore oil production in the Niger Delta is effectively an attempt to escape from its toxic legacy in the region, communities say.
- Plans to frack for gas in South Africa will have devastating environmental impacts and cannot form part of a just transition to cleaner energy sources, an advocacy group says.
- Element Africa is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin rounding up brief stories from the commodities industry in Africa.

In central Brazil, mining company ignores Quilombola concerns over gold project
- Canadian mining company Aura Minerals plans to establish a major gold extraction project in Brazil’s Tocantins state without hearing the Quilombola (slave descendant) community that will be affected by the operations, thus violating their right to free, prior and informed consultation.
- So far, the company has not been transparent toward the community and has not described the potential impacts.
- Meanwhile, Aura Minerals has seen its value rise nearly 700% on the Toronto Stock Exchange between 2019 and 2022 — the best performance among 3,500 listed companies.
- The Quilombola estimate that, in the event of an accident with the company’s dam, the Baião community would be instantly engulfed and would disappear completely, with no chance to react.

Can a new regional pact protect the Amazon from environmental crime? (commentary)
- Police, prosecutors, money-laundering experts and others convened last week in Brazil to tackle drug and environmental crimes like illegal mining and logging that are growing in scale across the Amazon.
- The group resolved to move law enforcement beyond occasional raids and periodic destruction of machinery used by organized crime syndicates and toward a concerted and pan-Amazonian push for local, regional and global cooperation on law enforcement.
- While acknowledging the increasing scale of these crimes, participants were optimistic: “We are living in a new moment to fight environmental crime and protect the Amazon,” said the newly appointed director for Amazon environmental crime with Brazil’s federal police, for example.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of Mongabay.

UN denounces new attacks on Indigenous people in Nicaragua’s largest reserve
- Groups believed to be connected to cattle ranching, logging and illegal mining launched several attacks in Indigenous communities living in the largest protected area in Nicaragua.
- Settlers are pushing into the Bosawás Biosphere Reserve and the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region to pursue illegal mining, logging and cattle ranching.
- At least six Indigenous people were killed and several injured in the most recent attack, forcing numerous families to relocate, despite an existing international mandate on the Nicaraguan government to protect them.

Brazil tackles illegal miners, but finds their mercury legacy harder to erase
- As the details of the humanitarian crisis in the Yanomami Indigenous Territory unfold amid action to remove illegal miners, mercury left by the rampant gold mining in the area will remain a lingering toxic legacy.
- A range of solutions is needed to support communities at risk, monitor the situation, assist in the remediation of forests, and prevent continued pollution, experts say.
- New technologies that can filter mercury are under development and testing, but are still far from being viable solutions at the scale that the problem inside the Amazon calls for.

Colombia, Ecuador announce alert system to protect Indigenous Awá from armed groups
- Colombia and Ecuador are implementing a system designed to alert about risks of violence against residents who live near the border, many of whom are Awá Indigenous people.
- Since last August, thousands of Awá have been forcibly displaced or suffered threats, intimidation, torture or forced recruitment by organized crime groups participating in drug trafficking and illegal mining.
- Many Awá live in extremely biodiverse areas that serve as corridors to other parts of the Amazon. But they’ve struggled to protect their ancestral land.

Struggles loom as Bolivia prepares new plan to clean up its mercury problem
- Bolivia’s failure to combat illegal gold mining led to international outcry last year, as deforestation and mercury pollution continued to run rampant.
- Earlier this month, the government announced two plans to formalize small-scale and illegal gold mining operations and introduce technology that could help replace mercury.
- However, some critics say the government has a bad track record for implementing sweeping industry regulations, which might look good on paper but fall flat in practice.
- Major road investments in mining areas could also increase illegal activity at the same time the government is implementing regulations, as it will be easier for heavy machinery to access rural areas.

Lula government scrambles to overcome Yanomami crisis, but hurdles remain
- Within weeks of taking office, the new Brazilian government began an emergency operation to provide health care assistance to Indigenous people in the Yanomami territory and remove the 20,000 illegal gold miners there who have sparked a humanitarian and environmental crisis.
- So far, over 6,200 Yanomami people have been treated and more than 100 health care personnel have been recruited. However, a lack of health care workers, deteriorating infrastructure and minimal support from the military is preventing access to communities most in need.
- As miners have begun to flee the area and environmental authorities seize and destroy their equipment, some Indigenous leaders say important progress is underway but more remains to be done.

‘Brought down by gold’: Communities and nature suffer amid Nigerian bonanza
- Commercial-scale gold miners are wreaking havoc in southwestern Nigeria’s Atorin-Ijesha region.
- Local officials largely condone these often illegal activities, while the federal authorities have been slow to crack down.
- Affected community members say the miners are destroying their crops, polluting their land, and contaminating their water sources with mercury and lead.
- The gold rush is profiting a small handful of local elites and their Chinese partners, at the expense of local communities and the environment.

Yanomami crisis sparks action against illegal gold in the Amazon
- Brazilian Attorney General Augusto Aras requested the Federal Supreme Court to overturn a law establishing the concept of “good faith” of gold buyers, which eases illegal gold laundering.
- Under the law, passed in 2013, the word of gold traders is enough to ensure that the mineral came from a legal mine, opening a route to the illegal gold extracted from protected areas and Indigenous territories, such as the Yanomami reserve.
- The Federal Police and the Public Ministry are investigating authorized gold trading companies, known as DTVMs, suspected of laundering the Amazon’s illegal gold.
- Indigenous federal deputy Célia Xakriabá is trying to speed up the vote of a new bill that establishes new rules for the gold trade in Brazil, including overriding the “good faith” concept.

Treacherous pits and lakes left in the wake of Cameroon’s abandoned mining sites
- Inactive mining sites in Cameroon are continuously abandoned without restoration by foreign companies, leaving behind huge pits in the ground that later form into artificial lakes which endanger local populations and damage ecosystems.
- In January, a 13-year-old boy drowned in one of these lakes near Yaoundé, left behind by the quarry company Transatlantique Cameroon Ltd, a subsidiary of the Chinese consortium Cameroon Meilan Construction Conglomerate (CMCC).
- In 2021 and 2022, the Cameroonian NGO Forests and Rural Development (FODER) identified more than 700 mining pits in Cameroon, including 139 which had become artificial lakes, claiming the lives of more than 200 people.
- Cameroonian legislation obligates mining companies to refill mining pits after their operations. Despite this, the law is not being adhered to or enforced.

Newly described DiCaprio’s snake and others threatened by mining in Ecuador and Panama
- Researchers have described five new species of snail-eating snakes from the upper Amazon Rainforest in Ecuador and Colombia and the Chocó-Darién forests of Panama.
- Three of the new species were named by actor Leonardo DiCaprio, conservationist Brian Sheth, and the NGO Nature and Culture International to raise awareness about the threats these snakes face due to mining and deforestation.
- Ecuador and Colombia saw an increase in illegal gold mining along rivers and streams during the COVID-19 pandemic, which may have affected populations of these fragile snakes and has led to conflict and division within communities.
- Snail-eating snakes are arboreal and depend on wet environments to survive, so deforestation and mining pollution, including illegal gold mining, affect both the snakes and the snails and slugs that they rely on for food.

‘Mercury is a complex problem’: Q&A with Colombian Mining Minister Irene Vélez Torres
- Illegal gold mining has long plagued Colombia’s ecosystems and communities, while small-scale miners have lamented the difficulties they face in formalizing their operations.
- Despite Colombia’s 2018 ban on the use of mercury in mining, the highly toxic metal continues to be widely used to extract gold.
- The new government of President Gustavo Petro has vowed to tackle the problem of illegal mining and mercury contamination, but the prevailing mining legislation is outdated and ineffective.
- Authorities are developing a new Mining Code that aims to be inclusive, help formalize artisanal and small-scale miners, and eliminate mercury from the industry.

For some Colombians, vows of mining reform are just a flash in the pan
- Afro-Colombian communities practicing mercury-free gold mining say a reform of the country’s mining industry is urgently needed, but aren’t convinced the new government can deliver.
- Gustavo Petro took office in 2022 as Colombia’s first-ever left-wing president, campaigning to end the use of mercury in mining and to formalize artisanal miners.
- Existing laws should in theory be sufficient to address both these issues, but enforcement remains sketchy, with many mining regions still in the control of criminal gangs and guerrilla groups.
- Colombia’s minister of mines, Irene Vélez, says the government is working to amend the laws, collaborate with local communities, and ensure the new Mining Code benefits all Colombians.

The $20m flip: The story of the largest land grab in the Brazilian Amazon
- This is the story of how three individual landowners engineered the single-largest instance of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.
- The clearing of 6,469 hectares (or 15,985 acres) of forest in the southern part of Pará state could earn them nearly $20 million in profit at current land prices.
- The case is emblematic of the spate of land grabs targeting unallocated public lands throughout the Amazon, where speculators clear and burn the vegetation, then sell the empty land for soy farms, or plant grass and sell it for cattle ranching.
- This article was originally published in Portuguese by The Intercept Brasil and is part of the Ladrões de Floresta (Forest Thieves) project, which investigates the appropriation of public land inside the Amazon and is funded by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network.

Mechanization of illegal gold mining threatens Ghana’s forests
- In Ghana, illegal miners known as galamseyers are carrying out an increasing share of the country’s gold production.
- In recent years, these miners have been sourcing machinery from China.
- The mechanization of gold mining is accelerating the destruction of forests and farms, as well as polluting waterways in northern and eastern Ghana.

Is El Salvador preparing to reverse its landmark mining ban?
- El Salvador banned all mining of metals in 2017, but environmentalists are concerned that the government is preparing to reverse the decision and bring in international investment.
- The government has created a new agency to oversee extractive industries and begun looking into international agreements that facilitate investment in precious metals.
- Five “water defenders,” who have spent decades speaking out contamination of water sources by mining projects, were arrested in January after mining officials visited their town of Santa Marta.

Illegal mines and “floating towns” on the Puré River leave uncontacted Indigenous peoples at risk
- The Yurí-Passé are at risk of coming into contact with illegal miners and drug traffickers, which violates their right and deliberate decision to live in isolation from the Western world.
- According to one study, mercury levels in the blood of communities living along the Caquetá river and its tributaries, such as the Puré River, are much higher than the average.
- Although the Puré River area is located in a protected area, mining activity has increased following a number of threats made against park rangers and an arson attack on a cabin belonging to Colombia’s Natural National Parks authority (PNN) by FARC dissidents. Despite military operations, mining activities continue, with dozens of dredgers thought to be operating on the river.

Element Africa: Lead poisoning, polluted rivers, and ‘calamitous’ mining regulation
- More than 100,000 Zambian women and children are filing a class action lawsuit against mining giant Anglo American for decades of lead poisoning at a mine they say it controlled.
- Illegal gold mining in Ghana is polluting rivers that local communities depend on for water for drinking, bathing and farming.
- A legal case against a village head who allegedly sold off the community’s mining license to a Chinese company has highlighted what analysts call the “confusing” state of mining regulation in Nigeria.
- Element Africa is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin rounding up brief stories from the extractives industry across Africa.

Indigenous communities threatened as deforestation rises in Nicaraguan reserves
- Nicaragua’s Bosawás and Indio Maíz biosphere reserves both experienced deforestation at the hands of illegal loggers, miners and cattle ranchers last year.
- Deforestation of the country’s largest primary forests has been a violent, ugly process for Indigenous communities, who were granted land titles and self-governance in the area in the 1980s but don’t have the resources to protect themselves.
- Indigenous leaders and environmental defenders believe the situation will only get worse moving into 2023, as gold mining accelerates and the government cracks down on opponents.

Illegal road found in Yanomami land accelerates destruction
- In December, Greenpeace and the Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA) discovered a 150-kilometer- (93-mile-) long illegal road, as well as four hydraulic excavators in the Yanomami Territory, in Brazil’s northern Amazon region.
- While small-scale illegal miners have been active in the area for the past 50 years, the road and the use of heavy machinery could make mining activities 10-15 times more destructive.
- Currently, about 20,000 illegal miners operate across the Yanomami Territory, causing violence, health issues and child malnutrition for the region’s 27,000 Yanomami inhabitants.
- Newly elected President Lula has issued several decrees to protect Indigenous lands and the environment, most recently declaring a state of emergency in the Yanomami Territory.

Yanomami health disaster prompts outrage as Lula vows to tackle crisis
- An average of three Indigenous Yanomami infants have died every week over the past four years in Brazil from diseases that are considered treatable, an investigation shows alongside shocking pictures.
- Experts say that decades-long invasions by illegal miners in the Yanomami Indigenous Territory and the dismantling of health care systems under the administration of Jair Bolsonaro have caused a spiral of malnutrition and disease within the Yanomami population.
- Official complaints from Indigenous rights advocates and allies from at least 2018 have been systematically ignored, leading to a worsening of the problems.
- Brazil’s new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has called the crisis a genocide and vowed to tackle the problem with a series of immediate and long-term action plans.

Dammed, now mined: Indigenous Brazilians fight for the Xingu River’s future
- Canadian mining company Belo Sun wants to build a huge gold mine in the Big Bend of the Xingu River in the Brazilian Amazon, but faces opposition from Indigenous communities.
- In addition to the environmental impacts, experts warn of the risk of the proposed tailings dam rupturing, which could flood the area with 9 million cubic meters (2.4 billion gallons) of toxic waste.
- The same region is already suffering the impacts of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam, which diverts up to 85% of the flow of the Xingu River, leading to a mass decline in fish that traditional riverside dwellers and Indigenous people rely on.
- The Belo Sun project was legally challenged last year, prompting supporters to harass and intimidate those who oppose the mine’s construction; tensions in the region remain high.

Deforestation ‘out of control’ in reserve in Brazil’s cattle capital
- Forest destruction has ravaged Triunfo do Xingu, a reserve earmarked for sustainable use that has nonetheless become one of the most deforested slices of the Brazilian Amazon.
- Fires burned swaths of the reserve in recent months and forest clearing has surged, with satellite images showing even the most remote remnants of old-growth rainforest were whittled away last year.
- Advocates say the forest is mainly giving way to cattle pasture, although illegal mining and land grabbing are gaining ground.
- The destruction, facilitated by lax environmental regulation, is placing pressure on nearby protected areas and undermining agroforestry efforts in Triunfo do Xingu, advocates say.

Venezuela’s Yapacana National Park suffering increasing mining deforestation: report
- Satellite imagery analyzed by NGO Amazon Conservation revealed that illegal mining operations in Yapacana National Park, located in the Venezuelan state of Amazonas, are clearing protected forest much faster than previously thought.
- Over 750 hectares (1,870 acres) of deforestation took place between 2021 and 2022 in the mining area of the park.
- Although law enforcement carried out raids in the area last December, many experts believe the problem will persist amid government complacency.

Weakening of agrarian reform program increases violence against settlers in Brazilian Amazon
- Residents of a landless workers’ settlement in Anapu, Pará state, in Brazil’s Amazon region, accuse the federal government of favoring large landowners, land-grabbers and corporations at the expense of poor and landless peasants.
- This year, the settlers have already suffered three attacks by landowners, with houses set on fire and a school destroyed.
- In 2021, Incra, the Brazilian federal agency responsible for addressing the country’s deep inequalities in rural land use and ownership, made an agreement with the mining company Belo Sun, which ceded 2,400 hectares (5,930 acres) of an area reserved for agrarian reform for gold exploration in exchange for equipment and a percentage of mining profits.
- In protest, landless peasants occupied one of the areas included in the agreement; since then, they have been threatened and intimidated by Belo Sun supporters and armed security guards hired by the mining company.

Element Africa: Deadly violence and massive graft at Tanzania and DRC mines
- Environmental concerns are mounting as the Nigerian National Petroleum Company begins drilling for oil in a new field in the north of the country.
- Video testimony has emerged about alleged police killings of five villagers near Canadian miner Barrick Gold’s mine in Tanzania.
- A local official has absconded with $14.5 million in mining royalties intended to fund community development in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Lualaba province.
- Element Africa is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin rounding up brief stories from the commodities industry in Africa.

In Brazil’s Amazon, land grabbers scramble to claim disputed Indigenous reserve
- The Apyterewa Indigenous Territory has been under federal protection since 2007, but in recent years has become one of the most deforested reserves in Brazil, as loggers, ranchers and miners have invaded and razed swaths of forest.
- As President Jair Bolsonaro prepares to leave office, land grabbers are rushing to “deforest while there is still time,” advocates say, with forest clearing in Apyterewa on track to hit new highs this year.
- The surge in invasions has aggravated a decades-long tussle for land between Indigenous people and settlers, who first started trickling into Apyterewa in the 1980s and have since built villages, schools and churches within the reserve.
- The Parakanã people say the outsiders, new and old, are polluting their water sources, depleting forest resources, and threatening their traditional way of life.

Top 10 notable Indigenous stories of 2022
- This year was a historic one for many Indigenous communities around the world that marked many ‘firsts’ with successful land rights rulings, both on the global and national level.
- As Indigenous rights, roles and contributions in biodiversity conservation gain more attention, underreported and critical issues impacting Indigenous peoples were thrust into the spotlight this year.
- To end this impactful year, Mongabay rounds up its 10 most notable Indigenous news stories of 2022.

Gold mining invades remote protected area in Ecuador
- Due to its isolation in far-northern Ecuador, Cofán Bermejo Ecological Reserve, much of which also functions as an Indigenous territory, has been comparatively spared from the oil-driven deforestation that has affected other nearby protected areas.
- However, satellite data and imagery show clearings proliferating along rivers that form the northern and southern borders of the reserve.
- Conservation organizations, scientists and residents of local communities say illegal gold mining is behind this wave of incursions.
- Legal mining may also be on the horizon in Cofán Bermejo, with several mining concessions within the reserve pending approval by authorities.

New criminal code rings alarms for environmental protection in Indonesia
- Indonesia has passed an overhauled criminal code that experts and activists say will weaken environmental protections and make it easier to persecute environmental defenders.
- Among the controversial provisions in the heavily criticized bill: an exemption from prosecution for companies that violate environmental laws; reduced punishment and the choice to pick a fine over a jail sentence for convicted violators; and a higher burden of proof for environmental crimes.
- It could also be used to prosecute environmental defenders who protest public works projects, on the pretext of insulting the president.
- The new code will not go into full effect until 2025, giving opponents time to challenge it at the Constitutional Court.

Indigenous youths lured by the illegal mines destroying their Amazon homeland
- An increasing number of young Indigenous people in Brazil’s Yanomami Indigenous Territory are leaving their communities behind and turning to illegal gold mining, lured by the promise of small fortunes and a new lifestyle.
- Work in the mining camps ranges from digging and removing tree roots to operating as boat pilots ferrying gold, supplies and miners to and from the camps; recruits receive nearly $1,000 per boat trip.
- The structures, traditions and health of Indigenous societies are torn apart by the proximity of the gold miners, and the outflow of the young generation further fuels this vicious cycle, say Indigenous leaders.
- Amid the COVID-19 pandemic and a lack of authorities monitoring the area, illegal mining in the region has increased drastically, with 20,000 miners now operating illegally in the territory.

About 72% of gold miners poisoned with mercury at artisanal mining sites in Cameroon
- A recent study reveals that 71.7% of miners at artisanal gold mining sites in Cameroon show mercury levels at concentrations above the limit recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO).
- Mercury use in artisanal mining has nevertheless been banned by the Cameroonian government since 2019 as hundreds of deaths occur yearly at mining sites.
- These fatalities result from gold mining’s uncontrolled development in Cameroon, where companies are continuously in conflict with communities and where national mining legislation has yet to come into force.

U.N. report calls for the ban of mercury trade and its use in gold mining
- Small-scale gold mining is the key driver of global mercury demand, according to a U.N. report on the highly toxic metal, with South America accounting for 39% of this demand.
- Hair samples taken from Indigenous communities in the Bolivian and Brazilian Amazonian regions showed mercury levels in excess of the safe limit prescribed by the World Health Organization.
- In Brazil specifically, mercury use has risen with the boom in illegal mining that has been largely overlooked — and in some cases even encouraged — by the government of President Jair Bolsonaro.

COP27: ‘Brazil is back’ to fight deforestation, Lula says, but hurdles await
- At COP27 this week Brazil president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva pledged “zero deforestation and degradation of biomes,” a goal to be achieved by 2030.
- Lula also plans to establish a Ministry of Indigenous People, and to end “all the exploration of Indigenous lands by miners, and… to prohibit timber cutters.” Activists said Lula has sent a “strong message” at the COP27 summit, a meeting which has so far seen little climate progress.
- The president-elect has also met with Norway and Germany about restarting the Amazon Fund, which helped finance efforts to keep the rainforest intact until it was frozen in 2019 due to the anti-environmental policies of President Jair Bolsonaro.
- Lula will likely have to pursue stricter forest enforcement through executive action, as he faces a congress with many members hostile to his Amazon protection promises.

Myanmar communities decry disempowerment as forest guardians since 2021 coup
- Within the shrinking civic space and violent aftermath of Myanmar’s February 2021 military coup, community-level efforts to safeguard Myanmar’s vast tracts of forest from development are buckling under the pressure of rampant resource extraction.
- Representatives of Indigenous peoples and local communities recently highlighted the challenges facing IPLCs in the country, many of whom have been displaced by conflict and estranged from their ancestral lands and forests.
- Environmental defenders and Indigenous rights activists are among those targeted for arrest and detention by military-backed groups.
- Activists are questioning how the world can seriously address global climate change when environmental defenders are actively being prevented from taking action.

Shady contracts, backdoor deals spur illegal gold mining in Bolivian Amazon
- In the northern regions of the department of La Paz, Bolivia, illegal gold mining has led to widespread deforestation and mercury pollution.
- The Bolivian Amazon, including protected areas like Madidi National Park, face a growing risk of environmental destruction in the years to come from this ever-expanding industry.
- Mongabay visited multiple illegal mine sites, interviewed the investors behind them, and reviewed their work contracts to better understand how the industry operates unchecked in secluded parts of the Amazon.
- The investigation found that miners take advantage of the government’s lack of resources and slow-moving bureaucracy to avoid accountability for the harm they do to the environment; they also rely on illegal, backdoor agreements with well-funded foreign investors to maximize production.

Guatemalans strongly reject mining project in local referendum
- Nearly 88% of participating residents voted against metallic mining in a municipal referendum in Asunción Mita, in southeastern Guatemala.
- Locals fear the Cerro Blanco gold mining project would pollute soil and water sources, affecting the health of residents and crops.
- There is also strong opposition in nearby El Salvador to the mine as it is located near a tributary of the Lempa River that provides water for millions of Salvadorans.
- Cerro Blanco owner Bluestone Resources, the Guatemalan Ministry of Energy and Mines and a local pro-mining group contest the legality of the referendum.

Activists welcome decision to revoke permit for controversial Philippine gold mine
- On Sept. 15, local officials in the southern Philippine municipality of Tampakan revoked the business permit for mining firm Sagittarius Mines, Inc. (SMI), which is seeking to develop a massive copper and gold mine in the area.
- Local officials cited alleged fraud and misrepresentation by the company, noting that it categorized itself as a mineral exploration manufacturer while an assessment found it to be operating as a general engineering contractor.
- The company also recently filed a court petition against the local government, which is seeking to collect 397 million pesos ($6.9 million) in accumulated taxes and surcharges. Local officials deny any link between the tax dispute and the permit revocation.
- Local activists have hailed the revocation of the permit as a victory in a decades-long campaign against the mine.

Pioneer agroforester Ermi, 73, rolls back the years in Indonesia’s Gorontalo
- Ermi Mauke, 73, has spent the past 40 years planting a mix of trees on the fringe of Bogani Nani Wartabone National Park in eastern Indonesia’s Gorontalo province.
- Small farmers here have produced palm sugar for centuries using traditional techniques, but their labor-intensive methods face challenges.
- Ermi’s self-taught agroforestry system yields varied food commodities that help meet her family’s daily needs while safeguarding the landscape.

Industrial mining’s tropical deforestation footprint spills beyond concessions
- Indonesia, Brazil, Suriname and Ghana account for 80% of all tropical deforestation linked directly to industrial mining, a new study has found.
- In two out of three tropical countries, large-scale mineral extraction leads to forest loss when effects over a wider area, beyond formal mining concessions, are considered.
- “We have to look beyond the mine fence,” Stefan Giljum, the lead author of the paper, said. “What is needed is a forest conservation plan for a whole region integrating all the activities that are going on.”
- It’s difficult to quantify forest destruction linked to the mining sector as a whole because both the indirect effects on surrounding areas and the impacts of artisanal mining are hard to pin down.

Can Two New Bills Reshape Indigenous Rights and Illegal Gold Mining in Suriname?
- Two bills currently before Suriname’s parliament aim to recognize the rights of the country’s Indigenous inhabitants and tackle the forest-poisoning mercury pollution associated with gold mining.
- But both bills face an uphill battle: Suriname has repeatedly refused to recognize Indigenous rights, making it one of the few Amazonian countries to do so, while gold mining is the backbone of the country’s economy.
- A key provision in one of the bills is the right to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC), which would make it illegal to open mining concessions on Indigenous land without the community’s consent.
- The other bill, on stopping the illegal mercury trade, threatens to ruffle the feathers of powerful individuals with links to the gold industry, including Suriname’s current vice president.

Chinese companies criticized for mercury pollution in Cameroon
- Civil society groups have raised the alarm over pollution of rivers in eastern and northern Cameroon by gold mining companies.
- The Centre for Environment and Development says two Chinese companies, Mencheng Mining and Zinquo Mining, are allowing significant amounts of mercury and cyanide to spill into watercourses in the East Region.
- Amalgamation, the process of using mercury to separate gold from the alluvial mud it’s found in here, is commonplace in Cameroon and elsewhere, despite the extreme toxicity of this chemical.
- CED says the run-off from gold-washing is putting the health of miners, including many young children, as well as local residents at risk.

In revising its criminal code, Indonesia risks unraveling environmental laws
- Indonesia’s plan to revise its outdated criminal code could lead to a systematic weakening of existing environmental laws, experts warn.
- The latest draft of the code contains provisions that would make it more difficult to prosecute environmental crimes, such as dumping toxic waste in rivers and setting forest fires, the experts say.
- They note also that it makes punishment more lenient and lets companies off the hook, while potentially making it easier to prosecute environmental defenders.
- The experts have called on the government and lawmakers to go back to the drawing board and ensure that environmental crimes are treated as the extraordinary crimes that they are.

Brazil miner sees Indigenous land as ripe for exploration if protections expire
- Mining company Oxycer has filed five applications to prospect for gold in the Piripkura Indigenous Territory, in anticipation of restrictions being lifted this October.
- The territory is home to two of the last three surviving Piripkura individuals, who live in voluntary isolation and already face threats from invasions of their territory by illegal loggers and cattle ranchers.
- Mining in Indigenous territories is currently illegal in Brazil, which is why the Federal Public Ministry is pursuing lawsuits to scupper mining requests being filed with the National Mining Agency (ANM).
- However, the ANM continues to accept and register these applications for what’s clearly an illegal activity, though it’s unclear if the agency has approved any of them yet.

Raids reveal how illegal gold from Indigenous lands gets laundered in Brazil
- Coordinated raids on mining company Gana Gold have revealed how gold mined illegally in Indigenous territories and other protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon makes its way into the legitimate trade.
- The company only has a permit to prospect, but is alleged to have doctored other licenses and sourced gold from illegal mines, before laundering it into the legitimate supply chain.
- The raids also uncovered strong links between drug traffickers and illegal miners, who were found to use the same trafficking routes to get their respective illicit commodities out of the forest and into the rest of the world.
- Experts say that given that the vast majority of Brazilian gold is exported, there’s an onus on overseas buyers to establish chain of custody controls to ensure they’re not buying illegally mined gold.

A 13-year fight against gold mining in Colombian community marches on
- The Embera Karambá Indigenous community in Quinchía, Colombia, near Medellin, has been resisting large-scale gold mining activities in their region for 13 years.
- The Miraflores mining company began holding meetings with the Embera Karambá community as part of the prior consultation process in 2015; six years after it started exploration activities in the area.
- The governor of the community and a member of the Indigenous Guard have received anonymous death threats and unidentified people surveilling their homes. Since 2019, the Indigenous governor has been receiving protection from the National Protection Unit of the Colombian national government.
- According to the mining company’s communications director, the mining company is making every effort to reach an agreement with the community and guarantee their right to prior consultation. However, consultation should not be used as a tool for opposition, he says.

Fighting extractive industries in Ecuador: Q&A with Indigenous rights activist María Espinosa
- Human rights defender Lina María Espinosa has been an outspoken critic of Ecuador’s push for increased mining and oil development. But her work has also made her a target of death threats.
- This year, national protests by Indigenous communities pushed the government to revoke a decree that would have expanded oil investment. It also announced major reforms to the country’s mining plan.
- But Espinosa and members of CONAIE (the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador) say the government needs to do more. This month, they’ll sit down with government officials to negotiate future policies.

‘The water is brown’: Community in Guyana rings the alarm over unsustainable mining near river
- Medium-scale mining operations occurring in a tiny riverine community in northwestern Guyana have led to deforestation and discoloration in vital waterways after tailings ponds spilled waste into creeks and a river.
- The conflict between locals and miners began after Guyanese regulators issued mining permits on land that was already titled to the Carib Indigenous community — without consulting the village council. After regulators tried to walk back on these issued permits, the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) dismissed the case.
- The CCJ and subsequent rulings are being used to prevent locals from traversing on their titled lands. Community members are not able to receive royalties and mine at the site, a practice they have done sustainably for generations.
- Vickram Bharrat, the country’s minister of natural resources, says the government must comply with the CCJ ruling but intends to investigate threats by the miners to the lives of community members as they attempt to find a workable solution.

Organized crime drives violence and deforestation in the Amazon, study shows
- Increasing rates of both deforestation and violence in the Brazilian Amazon are being driven by sprawling national and transnational criminal networks, a study shows.
- Experts say criminal organizations engaged in activities ranging from illegal logging to drug trafficking often threaten and attack environmentalists, Indigenous people, and enforcement agents who attempt to stop them.
- In 2020, the Brazilian Amazon had the highest murder rate in Brazil, at 29.6 homicides per 100,000 habitants, compared to the national average of 23.9, with the highest rates corresponding to municipalities suffering the most deforestation.
- Experts say the current government’s systematic dismantling of environmental protections and enforcement agencies has emboldened these criminal organizations, which have now become “well connected, well established and very strong.”

Peru’s Amazon rainforest is threatened by an ecosystem of environment crime (commentary)
- While Brazil attracts more attention, deforestation is also substantial in the Peruvian Amazon, where forest clearing is on the rise.
- Carolina Andrade and Robert Muggah of Igarapé Institute, a Brazil-based think tank, write that “the scale and breadth of the assault” currently underway in Peru’s rainforest is “unprecedented”. They chalk up much of the damage to “resource pirates”.
- But while challenging, the situation isn’t without hope, argue Andrade and Muggah. “Resource pirates can be confronted,” they write. “Fostering closer cooperation between the many-layered and often competing oversight institutions could help focus government policy and action.”
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Swiss pledge to stop illegal gold imports from Brazil Indigenous reserves
- Switzerland imported 24.5 tonnes of gold in 2021, at least a fifth of which came from Brazilian Amazon states. Evidence indicates most of it is mined illegally on Indigenous lands. Illicit mining operations have resulted in major Amazon deforestation, widespread mercury poisoning and soaring violence.
- With the Brazilian government of Jair Bolsonaro unresponsive to the escalating crisis, an independent delegation of Indigenous people along with others travelled to Switzerland in May to plead with major gold refiners to end the importation of illicit Brazilian gold.
- This week, the refiners published a statement pledging to remove illegal gold mined within Brazilian Indigenous reserves from their supply chains. If the initiative is fully followed, experts say it could be a game changer that could undermine the, until now, lucrative illegal gold trade.
- Canada, the world’s biggest importer of gold from the Brazilian Amazon, has made no such agreement.

Mining company destroys Indigenous cemetery during expansion in Honduras
- Indigenous residents living near the San Andres mine in western Honduras were devastated to learn that a centuries-old cemetery was dug up in the middle of the night, making it nearly impossible for some families to find their loved ones.
- The mass exhumations come after nearly a decade of community-level and legal battles between the Maya Chortí and Minerales de Occidente (Minosa), a subsidiary of Toronto-listed mining company Aura Minerals.
- The controversy highlights the fact that the national government hasn’t yet upheld its promise to close open-pit mining concessions.

Indonesia’s Sangihe islanders score legal victory over mining company
- Residents of Sangihe Island in Indonesia have won a lawsuit against a Canadian-backed company planning to mine gold on their island.
- In its ruling, the court in the city of Manado declared the environmental permit issued to miner PT Tambang Mas Sangihe (TMS) and ordered the local government to revoke it.
- The judges found that the permit was issued without following the proper procedures, and that the environmental impact analysis was inadequate.
- The victory comes a month after another court, in Jakarta, rejected a separate lawsuit by the villagers seeking to have TMS’s mining contract revoked; the court said the case was outside its jurisdiction.

Miners, drug traffickers and loggers: Is Costa Rica’s Corcovado National Park on the verge of collapse?
- Extreme polarization about what’s going on in Costa Rica’s Corcovado National Park has led to accusations of corruption, negligence, media manipulation, fights for control of the area’s management, and who does and doesn’t receive funds from international donors.
- The park suffers from artisanal gold mining, hunting, logging and drug trafficking, but officials, scientists and NGOs have very different views on how badly these things are impacting the health of the park.
- Some researchers say the populations of species like the jaguar and white-lipped peccary are on the decline, while others are optimistic about population trends and believe the park is healthy.
- Dwindling staff and budget for basic resources like food and gasoline have made it difficult to adhere to the park’s protection plan, and there’s little consensus, even on very basic things, about what the future holds for the park.

For Ecuador’s A’i Cofán leaders, Goldman Prize validates Indigenous struggle
- Alexandra Narváez and Alex Lucitante, young leaders from the A’i Cofán community of Sinangoe in Ecaudor, led a movement to protect their people’s ancestral territory from gold mining.
- In recognition of their struggle, they were awarded the 2022 Goldman Environmental Prize, widely known as the “Green Nobel.”
- The A’i Cofán community of Sinangoe forced the Ecuadoran state to revoke 52 gold mining concessions that threatened their territory and were awarded without the prior consultation stipulated in the country’s Constitution.

Proposed copper and gold mine threatens the world’s ‘second Amazon’ in PNG
- A proposed copper and gold mine threatens the biologically and culturally diverse Sepik River Basin in western Papua New Guinea, according to community leaders and conservationists.
- They’ve raised concerns about the impact that potentially toxic waste from the mine would have on the region’s forests and waterways, which are critical to sustaining human, animal and plant life in this region.
- Proponents of the mine say it would bring jobs, infrastructure and development to the region’s communities.
- Today, a renewed campaign to list the Sepik River Basin as a UNESCO World Heritage Site is gaining momentum and would permanently keep projects like the mine at bay, say organizers of the movement.

Illegal mining threatens one of the last forest links between the Andes and Ecuador’s Amazon
- Legal and illegal mining is destroying Alto Nangaritza, one of the last well-preserved forest links between the Andes and Ecuadorian Amazon.
- After the construction of roads connecting remote Indigenous communities to the broader provincial network, miners quickly moved into the resource-rich region with illegal materials and pollutants to dredge rivers and extract gold.
- Monitoring environmental damage and mining is difficult and rare due to the high level of conflict preventing authorities and environmental watchdogs from entering the area, says the ministry of the environment.
- Some Indigenous Shuar people who live in the upper region of the Nangaritza River have also started to extract gold in order to increase their income.

At 30, Brazil’s Yanomami reserve is beset by mining, malaria and mercury
- When the Yanomami Indigenous Territory, the world’s biggest, was designated 30 years ago, the Brazilian army cleared out the illegal gold miners operating there.
- Today, miners are back in force, encouraged by the anti-Indigenous and anti-environment rhetoric of President Jair Bolsonaro, who has vowed to open up the reserves to mining.
- The illegal activity has destroyed forests and contaminated rivers with mercury and has also brought with it violence, disease and death for the 27,000 Yanomami living in the heart of the Amazon.
- As it marks the 30th anniversary of its establishment, the Yanomami reserve faces of the prospect of losing up to a third of its area to mining — a very real prospect if a key Bolsonaro bill clears Congress.

Suspension of Chinese miner for pollution in DRC points to wider problem
- The Democratic Republic of Congo’s environment minister recently suspended the operations of a Chinese company for polluting a major tributary of the Congo River in Tshopo province.
- Xiang Jiang Mining is accused of polluting the Aruwimi River, mining for gold without first conducting an environmental impact assessment, and failing to secure work permits for its foreign employees.
- In nearby South Kivu province, six other mining companies were suspended for similar offenses last year, pointing to a worrying pattern of companies ignoring mining and environmental regulations.

Open-pit mining ban lifted in Philippine province, clearing way for copper project
- Located in the southern Philippine province of South Cotabato, the Tampakan project is touted as the largest undeveloped copper-gold minefield in Southeast Asia and among the biggest of its kind in the world.
- Since the 1990s, the mine has faced stiff resistance from civil society, the church, and some traditional landowners.
- In December 2021, officials in Manila overturned a nationwide ban on open-pit mining, leaving a provincial ban in South Cotabato as the last major obstacle facing the mine. That ban was overturned on May 16.
- Local activists have vowed to continue fighting the mining project, and called on the provincial governor to veto the decision.

Illegal mining footprint swells nearly 500% inside Brazil Indigenous territories
- Illegal mining inside Indigenous territories and conservation units in Brazil increased in area by 495% and 301% respectively between 2010 and 2020, a new report shows.
- The worst-affected Indigenous territories were the Kayapó, Munduruku and Yanomami reserves, with a combined area of nearly 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres) occupied by illegal miners.
- The trend is driven by the increase in international prices of gold, tin and manganese — the metals typically mined inside the reserves — as well as lax enforcement and lack of economic alternatives.
- While mining inside Indigenous territories and conservation units is banned under Brazil’s Constitution, the current government is pushing for legislation that would allow it.

Thai gold mine blamed for sickening local villagers is set to reopen
- The Chatree mining complex, owned by a subsidiary of Australia’s Kingsgate Consolidated Ltd., began operations in 2001 and was closed by Thailand’s ruling junta in 2017.
- Villagers say the environment and their health has suffered as a result of the operations; mass blood tests found that the majority of children and adults tested exhibited elevated levels of heavy metals, including arsenic, manganese and cyanide.
- The mining company denies allegations that its operations have caused health problems, and in 2017 sued the Thai government for shutting down the mine, seeking “very substantial damages.”
- In January 2022, the government gave permission for the mine to reopen.

Court setback doesn’t sway Indonesian villagers fighting a mining firm
- Residents of remote Sangihe Island in Indonesia will mount an appeal after their lawsuit against a company planning to mine gold on their island was thrown out by a court on a technicality.
- Their case centered on concerns that the operations of PT Tambang Mas Sangihe (TMS), linked to Canada-based Baru Gold Corp., would cause widespread destruction on their island home.
- They alleged in their lawsuit that there were several administrative violations that should have nullified the contract issued to TMS by the government, but the court said the matter was out of its jurisdiction.
- The same court issued a similar dismissal in a previous case involving a coal-mining company, but an appeal by the plaintiffs in that instance led to the company’s permit being revoked; given that precedent, the Sangihe islanders say they still have a fighting chance.

New report pieces together toll of environmental damage in Venezuela in 2021
- A report from the Political Ecology Observatory of Venezuela (OEP) lays out the worst environmental conflicts that the South American country faced in 2021.
- Among them are oil spills, deforestation, mining, and a lack of clean water in areas with degraded watersheds.
- The report notes the continuing difficulty of tracking environmental parameters in Venezuela, due to the lack of transparency by government at all levels.
- Regardless, it notes that last year’s events contributed to numerous public health crises.

Brazil’s ecosystem of crime in the Amazon (commentary)
- Drawing on records between 2016 and 2021, the Igarapé Institute recently documented 369 federal police operations in the nine states of Brazil’s Legal Amazon, categorizing the type of illegal activities involved.
- The research found that illicit activities, from drug trafficking to illegal timber extraction, often occur in tandem: “Such complex interactions point to the transnational dimensions of organized crime, raising tricky questions about cross border cooperation, which is still a work in progress.”
- The Igarapé Institute’s Laura Waisbich, Melina Risso, and Ilona Szabo review the findings and what they mean for efforts to address deforestation in Earth’s largest rainforest.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Honduras bans open-pit mining, citing environmental and public health concerns
- The government of Honduras is no longer granting environmental permits for open-pit mining projects due to the deforestation and pollution they cause.
- Honduras has a poor human rights track record when it comes to mining, with numerous environmental defenders having been arrested or killed in the past decade in connection with their opposition to mines.
- It is unclear when the ban will go into effect or how existing open-pit mining projects will be affected.

‘I am pro-mining’: Indigenous opposition to Philippine mine project falters
- A planned $5.9 billion copper and gold mine in the southern Philippines has faced opposition since reserves were first confirmed in the 1990s, with more than two dozen people killed since then in conflicts relating to the project.
- Most affected by the conflict are the Indigenous Blaan; the planned mine project stretches across the ancestral lands of five tribal councils, and will require the eviction of around 5,000 people
- For decades, clans and even families have been split over their opposition or support for the mining company, which has promised to support education, health, livelihood and development projects in affected communities.
- With the national government in Manila pushing pro-mining policies to jump-start the pandemic-hit economy, and as pressure mounts within families and communities, some of the mine’s staunchest opponents are reconsidering their stance.

In a biodiversity haven, mining drives highest ever recorded levels of mercury
- A recent study has found that forests in the southwestern Peruvian Amazon collect mercury from the atmosphere that’s used in artisanal small-scale gold mining in the Madre de Dios region.
- The study’s authors found “the highest ever recorded” levels of mercury from the “throughfall” that ends up on the forest floor when the leaves fall or rain washes the mercury from their surfaces.
- Mercury is highly toxic, causing neurological and reproductive problems in humans and other animals.
- Organizations are looking at different ways to reduce or even eliminate the use of mercury, which miners use to bind the flecks of gold found in the region’s riverine silt.

Refuge of endangered ‘African unicorn’ threatened by mining, poaching, deforestation
- Okapi Wildlife Reserve in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) shelters some 470 mammal and bird species, including up to 20% of the world’s remaining endangered okapi (Okapia johnstoni), which are related to giraffes.
- While Okapi Wildlife Reserve has escaped much of the environmental destruction affecting surrounding areas, satellite data show deforestation has been increasing in the reserve in recent years.
- Satellite imagery shows the expansion of what appear to be gold mines in the latter half of 2021.
- Conservationists say illegal mining is attracting more people to the reserve, which in turn increases poaching and deforestation.

More coffee, less gold: Sumatra farmers alarmed over revival of mine project
- A recent stock exchange filing indicates that a gold mining project in Sumatra’s Gayo Highlands may soon be revived after being stalled due to popular opposition.
- The Linge Abong concession also overlaps onto the Leuser Ecosystem, the largest remaining swath of intact rainforest in Sumatra, and home to critically endangered tigers, orangutans, rhinos and elephants.
- Farming communities here who grow the world-renowned Aceh Gayo coffee, and who would be directly affected by the mine, have called on the authorities to shut down the project for good.
- “A lot of people live and prosper from Gayo coffee. Don’t let the lives they’ve built off of coffee farming be destroyed just for the sake of gold mining,” said a village head.

Brazil’s Amazon gold mining to be “stimulated” by Bolsonaro’s decree (commentary)
- Brazil’s notoriously anti-environmental president has issued a decree instituting a program to stimulate “artisanal” gold mining. This mining is not really done by the small-scale individual prospectors that the name implies, but rather as part of operations backed by wealthy entrepreneurs, including politicians and organized crime.
- This gold mining, known as “garimpagem,” is often done by illegally invading Indigenous lands and is one of the greatest sources of impact on Amazonian Indigenous peoples. A bill submitted to the National Congress by President Bolsonaro would open Indigenous lands to this activity, and hundreds of requests for mining licenses in these areas have been submitted to the National Mining Agency by garimpeiro cooperatives in anticipation of these areas becoming available to legal mining.
- Despite the new decree describing itself as having a “view to sustainable development,” the severe environmental and social impacts of garimpagem, as well as the inherent unsustainability of mining, make a mockery of this claim.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Mexico’s top court cancels mining concessions near Indigenous communities
- Two controversial mining concessions on Indigenous land were canceled after Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled that residents were not consulted.
- The municipality of Ixtacamaxtitlán, located in the state of Puebla in central Mexico, has around 7 million ounces of gold and 1.4 billion ounces of silver that a Canadian firm wanted to extract.
- While the case is a major win for the Tecoltemi community, the ruling didn’t set a new precedent for understanding Mexico’s mining law, suggesting that similar issues could arise in other Indigenous communities near mining concessions.

Amazon to Alps: Swiss gold imports from Brazil tread a legal minefield
- The Brazilian Amazon is experiencing a new and potentially catastrophic gold rush driven by increased international demand for the precious metal.
- Over the past year, an estimated $1.2 billion worth of gold has been exported from Brazil to Switzerland, making it the second-largest export market for the country’s gold, after Canada. About a fifth of this gold comes from the Amazon, according to official figures.
- The scale of Brazil’s gold exports to Switzerland has raised concerns among environmental and transparency advocates that a significant quantity of illicit gold from the Amazon may be entering global supply chains.

Brazil’s illegal gold rush is fueling corruption, violent crime and deforestation
- Once the epicenter of the global trade in gold, illegal mining is once again surging across the Amazon.
- Its extraction and trade is not only fueling corruption, money laundering and criminal violence – it is accelerating deforestation in the world’s largest tropical forest, says Robert Muggah, co-founder of the Igarapé Institute.
- Muggah details a range of challenges facing efforts to rein in the gold mining sector. He says political leadership is critical to make progress on the issue: “Absent political will from the top, however, Brazil’s gold chain will continue to resemble the wild west.”

Philippine groups slam ‘cruel Christmas gift’ as open-pit mining ban is lifted
- On Dec. 23, Philippine Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu issued an order overturning a 2017 ban on open-pit mining.
- This follows an April 2021 decision by President Rodrigo Duterte to lift a 2012 moratorium on new mining agreements.
- The move has been welcomed by the mining industry, but slammed by environment and Indigenous rights groups as “a cruel Christmas gift” and “another blow against an already gasping state of our Philippine environment.”

Secrecy shrouds new gold mining deal in Guyana’s Marudi mountains
- A gold mining deal between the government of Guyana and a group of small-scale miners has stirred up controversy as it permits mining on a mountain range that sustains river ecosystems that Indigenous Wapichan communities depend on.
- According to Wapichan leaders, who learned of the deal in a Facebook post, the government violated their right to free, prior and informed consent by issuing the permit without proper consultation and ignoring cases of prior environmental destruction from gold mining.
- Guyana’s Ministry of Natural Resources says at least four consultations were held with Wapichan communities before the agreement was signed.
- The terms of the agreement have not been made public, leaving Indigenous leaders and the deputy speaker of the National Assembly pointing to possible political motives behind the mining deal.

U.K. conglomerate Jardines ‘caught red-handed’ clearing orangutan habitat in Sumatra
- A U.K. conglomerate’s Indonesian subsidiary is deforesting the only known habitat of the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan, despite promising to stop doing so, satellite imagery indicates.
- Since April this year, PT Agincourt Resources has cleared 13 hectares (32 acres) of rainforest in Sumatra for its Martabe gold mine, on top of the 100 hectares (247 acres) deforested since 2016.
- Agincourt is a subsidiary of Astra International, Indonesia’s biggest conglomerate, which in turn is a subsidiary of London-listed Jardine Matheson; the latter in 2019 agreed not to expand farther into Tapanuli orangutan habitat following a campaign by the NGO Mighty Earth.
- But the latest satellite imagery shows it has been “caught red-handed,” said Mighty Earth, which also noted that customers of Astra International’s palm oil subsidiary, including Unilever and Hershey’s, were also calling for a group-wide no-deforestation commitment.

Illegal mining threatens Indigenous land at foot of Philippines’ tallest peak
- A declared protected area, Mount Apo on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao is a major ecotourism site, with much of the protected area overlapping with Indigenous land.
- The area also has rich mineral reserves, but tribal leaders say they have rejected requests to mine their land because of the adverse effects on the ecosystem and watershed their people depend on.
- In late 2020, an illegal gold mine on tribal land within the protected area was closed down after unpaid mine workers tipped off the authorities.

Struggle endures for Philippine community pitted against gold miner
- Australian-Canadian mining firm OceanaGold was recently granted a renewal of its permit to mine gold and copper in the northern Philippines.
- The mine has faced years of opposition from area residents, mostly Indigenous people, who say it has scarred their land and threatens the water systems they depend on.
- In 2019, when the company’s previous mining permit expired, protesters mounted barricades to block activity at the mine.
- This year, restrictions put in place to curb the spread of COVID-19 have hampered their ability to organize.

Bolsonaro evades genocide blame amid Indigenous deaths by invaders, COVID-19
- A Senate inquiry has opted not to call for genocide charges against President Jair Bolsonaro over his failure to sufficiently protect Brazil’s Indigenous population from the COVID-19 pandemic and the escalating illegal invasions of their reserves.
- The final report nevertheless accuses Bolsonaro of crimes against humanity, saying he took advantage of the pandemic to harm traditional communities.
- The Senate’s backtrack on the genocide call comes a week after two Indigenous children in the Yanomami reserve were killed in an accident involving illegal mining machinery.
- The Yanomami, like other Indigenous reserves across Brazil, has faced a rising influx of invaders under Bolsonaro’s watch, which prosecutors attribute in part to the president’s anti-Indigenous rhetoric and support for illegal mining inside these territories.

$200 million in gold extracted in Amazon mine through illegal licenses
- Gana Gold generated R$ 1.1 billion (US$ 200 million) in revenue using illegally-obtained environmental licenses in Brazil, equivalent to 3 tons of gold extracted.
- By the company’s own reckoning, its operations should be producing annual revenues of around R$ 30 million ($6 million) if operating within licensing limits.
- Located inside a conservation area, the company has extracted 32 times more gold than the projected estimate it made to the regulating agency.
- An embargo has been placed on Gana Gold along with R$ 10 million (US$ 2 million) in fines following reports of illegal activity.

In Guinea, an illegal $6b gold ‘bonanza’ threatens endangered chimpanzees
- Earlier this year, Australia’s Predictive Discovery announced that it had found more than $6 billion in “bonanza”-grade gold deposits in eastern Guinea.
- A Mongabay investigation has found that the company’s exploration is taking place inside the boundaries of Haut Niger National Park, in violation of the law establishing the park.
- The park is home to an estimated 500 western chimpanzees, one of the highest concentrations of the critically endangered primate in West Africa.

Tanzanian gold miners ten times more likely to die from road injuries, study finds
- Miners were 10 times more likely to die of traffic-related injuries than people who did not work in mining, a study that looked at Tanzania’s two biggest gold mines found.
- Africa has a third of the global stock of metals and minerals and hosts around 700 active large-scale mining sites, with more in the pipeline as the world’s appetite for these resources grows.
- Of the 186 people of working age who died in five wards around the two mines in a year, about half were miners, reflecting the higher risks miners faced, especially men.
- The study authors say that interventions should be designed to prevent road injuries in the wider community, not just at the mine sites, and the definition of safety in mining areas needs to be broader.

Fate of Malaysian forests stripped of protection points to conservation stakes
- In the seven years since Jemaluang and Tenggaroh were struck from Malaysia’s list of permanent forest reserves, the two forests in Johor state have experienced large-scale deforestation.
- The clearance is reportedly happening on land privately owned by the sultan of Johor, the head of the state, calling into question the effectiveness of the Central Forest Spine (CFS) Master Plan, a nationwide conservation initiative the two reserves had originally been part of.
- The CFS Master Plan is currently being revised, with experts seeing the review as a chance to change what has been a largely toothless program, beset by conflicts of interest between federal and state authorities.
- As the revision nears completion, Jemaluang and Tenggaroh highlight how much has been lost, but also what’s at stake for Malaysia’s forests, wildlife and residents.

Environmental defenders in Nicaragua denounce government crackdown as elections loom
- Indigenous communities in northeastern Nicaragua continue to suffer from violent attacks by land invaders looking to exploit the area for cattle ranching and gold mining.
- Environmental defenders are increasingly struggling to denounce the violence as President Daniel Ortega targets government critics ahead of elections scheduled for November.
- Many advocates of the Mayangna and Miskito communities have received threats from the government or felt pressure to shut down their organizations.

In Colombia, legal mining proves a win-win for environment, traditional communities
- As a marker of its cultural importance and low environmental impact, artisanal gold mining is permitted under Colombia’s 1991 Constitution in Afro-Colombian and Indigenous territories.
- But without formalization, a process that puts the same administrative burdens on small-scale miners as on multinational mining corporations, these miners cannot receive a fair price for the gold they sell.
- Illegal armed groups use criminal mining to fund their activities, often violating fundamental rights in the process.
- Swiss and U.S. international cooperation projects in Colombia have successfully shown how formalization of small-scale miners can protect the environment and produce legal gold, improving the incomes of the miners and boosting revenues for the state.

Rich countries may be buying illegal gold that’s driving Amazon destruction
- Nearly a third of Brazil’s gold production in 2019 and 2020 was potentially illegal or outright illegal, a new report shows.
- The findings suggest that institutional buyers in rich countries — Canada, the U.K. and Switzerland bought 72% of Brazil’s gold exports — are contributing to the violence, deforestation and pollution associated with illegal mining.
- The report used satellite imagery to show how illegal gold mined in Indigenous reserves was laundered by being reported as having come from legitimate mining concessions; the value of this illegal gold in 2019 and 2020 exceeded $229 million, the report calculates.
- Prosecutors have filed two lawsuits based on the findings: One seeks the suspension of financial institutions identified as buyers of illegal gold in northern Pará state, while the second aims to suspend all permits to mine, sell and export gold from the southwest region of Pará.

Illegal mining in Colombia’s Amazon threatens Indigenous communities
- In June 2021, Indigenous communities observed boats carrying out illegal gold mining in the Caquetá River in the Colombian Amazon.
- Satellite images showed as many as 19 boats that month on the Puré River, one of the Caquetá’s tributaries.
- Research shows mercury contamination from gold mining has contaminated Indigenous communities in the Caquetá River Basin.
- Researchers and Indigenous advocates warn the influx of miners into the remote Colombian Amazon may compromise the health and well-being of uncontacted peoples who depend on isolation for their way of life.

333 people rescued from slavery in Brazil mines since 2008, exclusive report shows
- A breakthrough report has mapped out all the raids carried out to rescue people working in slave-labor conditions in mines across Brazil since 2008.
- A total of 333 workers were rescued in 31 raids; Pará, in the Amazon, is the state with the most raids.
- Gold mines were the most common among the mines raided; in recent years their owners have expanded their criminal networks and tried to evade inspection.
- Bureaucracy and a waning pool of inspectors has hampered efforts to ramp up the frequency of raids, officials say.

Brazil prosecutors seek ban on all gold mining in hard-hit Amazonian region
- Gold mining activities may be suspended in the southwest of Pará state, in the Brazilian Amazon, if authorities fail to implement measures to increase control and traceability over the country’s gold mining industry.
- That’s the main request of a lawsuit filed this week by the Federal Public Ministry based on a new study pointing to the municipalities of southwest Pará as being responsible for 85% of cases of gold laundering in Brazil in 2019 and 2020.
- The study, by researchers from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), also concluded that almost 30% of the 174 metric tons of gold sold in Brazil in the last two years was associated with some kind of irregularity, amounting to 9.1 billion reais ($1.8 billion) of potentially illegal gold — a value more than three times the Ministry of Environment’s 2020 budget.
- Experts say Brazilian law leaves the door open to gold laundering, by permitting miners to self-declare the origin of their gold and not requiring any verification; the process remains manual, with no electronic invoices to control the gold trade in the country.

Global demand for manganese puts Kayapó Indigenous land under pressure
- InfoAmazonia’s Amazônia Minada project has found an unusual rise in demand to mine for manganese last year in Brazil, one of the world’s top producers of the metal.
- Previously, only 1% of mining bids on Indigenous lands were for manganese; in 2020, it was with 15% of all requests, second only to gold.
- Some of the richest manganese deposits in the world are in southeast Pará state, overlapping with the territories of the Kayapó Indigenous people, which have been targeted the most by mining applications in general.
- Demand from Asia, particularly China, has increased the price of manganese, driving illegal mining; 300,000 tons of the ore were seized last year in Brazil, including from a company bidding to mine on Indigenous land.

Activists take Indonesia’s mining law to court, but don’t expect much
- Activists have filed suit to revoke what they say are problematic articles from a controversial mining law that has been criticized as pandering to mining companies at the expense of the environment and local communities.
- Among the stipulations the plaintiffs are seeking to have annulled are the centralization of the mining authority with the national government rather than local authorities; and criminal charges for disruptive protests against mining activity.
- Another controversial issue in the law is guaranteed contract renewals for coal miners, along with bigger concessions and reduced environmental obligations.
- The plaintiffs say they’re not optimistic about the court approving their lawsuit, citing the government’s recent gifting of civilian honors, longer terms and an extended retirement age for the six Constitutional Court justices hearing the case.

Mining exposes Indigenous women in Latin America to high mercury levels
- A study carried out by the International Pollutant Elimination Network (IPEN) and the Biodiversity Research Institute (BRI) analyzed the levels of mercury in the bodies of 163 Indigenous women of childbearing age.
- The study authors found considerably high levels of mercury in women from two Indigenous groups in Bolivia who base their diet mainly on fish they obtain from rivers near gold mines.
- According to the researchers, mercury in the mother’s body can put their health and that of their fetuses at risk.
- Communities evaluated in Brazil and Venezuela also had mercury in their bodies; in Colombia, Indigenous groups without nearby gold mining and with non-fish-based diets had the lowest levels of mercury.

Exhibition showcases Claudia Andujar’s half-century fight for the Yanomami
- Swiss-born Claudia Andujar fled Europe as a child at the end of World War II, and spent much of her later life in Brazil, becoming a celebrated photographer.
- In her adopted homeland, she found a strong affinity with the Yanomami Indigenous people, for whom she was an advocate for the establishment of their own territory — something that came to pass in 1992 as Brazil prepared to host the Rio Earth Summit.
- Now aged 90, Andujar remains deeply concerned for the people with whom she says she “totally identified,” noting that the present threat of illegal mining in Indigenous territories is doing far more harm than the government-driven road projects of the 1970s.
- Andujar’s years of work and life with the Yanomami are now chronicled in a major photo exhibition at London’s Barbican Centre through Aug. 29.

Calls for independent probe after anti-mine Indonesian official dies
- Helmud Hontong, deputy head of the Sangihe Islands district in Indonesia’s North Sulawesi province, who was a staunch opponent of a planned gold mine in the district, died under mysterious circumstances on a commercial flight last week.
- Human rights and environmental activists have called for an independent investigation into Hontong’s sudden death, saying it might be connected to his stance against the concession that covers nearly three-fifths of the district’s land area.
- Hontong’s death is the latest in a disturbing pattern of environmental defenders dying under suspicious circumstances in Indonesia.
- Environmentalists say they’re worried that the mining activity will lead to ecological destruction in Sangihe and exacerbate any potential damage from an earthquake in this seismically active region.

Illegal miners block Indigenous leaders headed to protests in Brazil’s capital
- Illegal gold miners slashed the tires of a bus and threatened to set it on fire in a bid to block leaders in the Munduruku Indigenous Reserve from traveling to Brazil’s capital to attend planned protests this week, Indigenous groups and authorities say.
- Indigenous leaders had to be escorted by police as they tried to reach the capital and take part in protests against invasions of their lands and violence against their people, advocates say.
- The attacks come weeks after miners fired shots and set houses ablaze in the Munduruku reserve, fueling worries about more violence against Indigenous people after federal authorities retreated from the area.
- Federal prosecutors and Indigenous groups have called for firmer measures against the illegal miners and permanent protection for the Munduruku Indigenous people.

What’s the cost of illegal mining in Brazil’s Amazon? A new tool calculates it
- The launch of a gold mining impacts calculator this week — a joint project of the Federal Public Ministry and the Conservation Strategy Fund — marks a big step forward in combating illegal mining in the Brazilian Amazon, experts and government agents say.
- The new tool was able to estimate damages of $431 million caused by illegal mining in 2020 on the Yanomami Indigenous Reserve, where local leaders have reported several attacks in the past month by miners, following an influx of mining activities since 2019.
- Since 2019, Brazil has exported $11 billion in gold, with Switzerland, Canada and the United Kingdom as the top importers; last year alone, these three countries imported $3.5 billion of the precious metal from Brazil.
- Improving traceability is another important step to cracking down on the environmentally devasting illegal gold market, says Sérgio Leitão, an expert in the fight against illegal mining in Brazil.

In less than a generation, legal mining in Colombia deforested over 120,000 hectares
- A study by researchers in Colombia found that forest clearing by legal mining operations has increased sharply in recent years.
- The study shows that just 1% of the 8,600 legal mining concessions in the country account for 60% of the deforestation associated with the sector.
- The authors say that if mining titles continue to be granted at current rates, Colombia could lose 400,000 hectares (990,000 acres) of forest from legal mining alone over the next two decades.

Deforestation intensifies in northern DRC protected areas
- Satellite data from the University of Maryland are showing recent spikes in deforestation activity in the northern portion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
- Forest loss appears to be affecting protected areas, including Okapi Wildlife Reserve and Bili-Uéré.
- Major drivers of deforestation in the DRC include logging, charcoal production, agriculture and informal mining, which sources say are aided by government inaction.

Illegal miners fire shots, burn homes in Munduruku Indigenous Reserve
- Illegal gold miners set fire to homes of several Indigenous leaders in the Munduruku Indigenous Reserve in the Brazilian Amazon this week, before attempting to destroy police equipment used to expel outsiders, authorities and activists say.
- Indigenous groups say the attack was in retaliation to police operations aimed at expelling illegal gold miners from the Munduruku reserve, which is supposed to be under federal protection.
- The Munduruku people have been battling invasions for decades but miners have grown bolder amid expectations that the federal government may legalize wildcat mining on Indigenous lands; police forces withdrew from the region following the attacks, leaving Indigenous people vulnerable to further violence, federal prosecutors say.
- The attacks in the Munduruku reserve follow a wave of violence in the Yanomami reserve, where 700 hectares (1,730 acres) of land have been degradaded since January, according to a recent aerial survey, setting the stage for a new record for deforestation in the reserve.

New clearing of forest in protected area in Brazil linked to mining
- An expansive clearing of primary forest has been detected in Tapajós Environmental Protection Area in the Brazilian Amazon, possibly driven by illegal mining activities.
- Satellite imagery from Planet confirms that the deforestation, which covers around 1,250 hectares (3,090 acres), or an area the size of a large international airport, occurred between January and February of this year.
- Mining activity is the suspected driver of this forest loss, as the cleared area surrounds a long-standing feature resembling an airstrip and partially overlaps a proposed gold mining concession.
- Several bills are pending in both Brazil’s houses of Congress that would, if approved, create loopholes for mining on Indigenous territories and grant amnesties to land grabbers.

The political economy of the Pan-Amazon (book excerpt)
- Tim Killeen provides an update on the state of the Amazon in his new book “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon Wilderness – Success and Failure in the Fight to save an Ecosystem of Critical Importance to the Planet.”
- The book provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the Amazon’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models vying for space within the regional economy.
- Mongabay will publish excerpts from the Killeen’s book, which will be released by The White Horse Press in serial format over the course of the next year. In this first installment, we provide a section from Chapter One: The State of The Amazon.
- This post is an except from a book. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Brazilian Cerrado savanna: Wildcat miners descend on Indigenous reserve
- The Raposa Serra do Sol Indigenous reserve in Brazil’s Roraima state covers 1.75 million hectares (4.32 million acres) along the nation’s border with Venezuela and Guyana. It is home to 26,705 Indigenous people.
- The territory has been under pressure from invaders for decades, even after being demarcated in 2005. But illegal incursions are reaching a new peak now, with an estimated 2,000 to 5,000 gold miners operating in the reserve.
- Incendiary speeches by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro have emboldened the miners, say experts, while attempts to crackdown on wildcat mining in the Yanomami Territory in the Amazon rainforest may have pushed illegal miners operating there into the Cerrado savanna where most of Raposa Serra do Sol is located.
- The illicit miners are causing deforestation and contamination of the Cotinga River and other waterways with sediment and toxic mining waste, including mercury used to process gold. They’re also putting Indigenous people at risk from Covid-19, violence, and social ills including alcohol abuse and prostitution.

‘Complete turnaround’: Philippines’ Duterte lifts ban on new mining permits
- President Rodrigo Duterte has lifted a ban on issuing licenses for new mining operations in the Philippines, marking an about-face from a previous anti-mining stance that saw him ban open-pit mining in 2017 and close or suspend 26 mining operations for environmental violations.
- The government says the industry, which contributed 0.76% to the country’s GDP in 2020, is important in resuscitating an economy bogged down by the COVID-19 pandemic, by generating revenue and jobs and contributing to Duterte’s flagship infrastructure program.
- Duterte’s pivot in favor of mining goes back to 2019, when the government allowed the operation of suspended mining firms and pushed for the rehabilitation of government-owned mines, particularly nickel mines, to cater to Chinese demand for nickel.
- The mining sector was the deadliest in the world for environmental and land defenders in 2019, according to Global Witness; the Philippines has the most mining-related killings that year, and activists warn the new order could further endanger defenders as well as open key biodiversity areas to mining.

Nearly half the Amazon’s intact forest on Indigenous-held lands: Report
- A new report from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and the Fund for the Development of the Indigenous Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean (FILAC) draws on more than 300 studies from the last two decades to demonstrate the protection that Indigenous societies provide for forests in Latin America and the Caribbean.
- According to the team’s research, about 45% of the intact forests in the Amazon Basin are in Indigenous territories.
- The forests occupied by Indigenous communities in the region hold more carbon than all of the forests in either Indonesia or the Democratic Republic of Congo, home to the next two biggest swaths of tropical forest after Brazil.
- The report’s authors say investing in securing land rights for Indigenous communities is a cheap and effective way to address climate change, while also helping these communities recover from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Brazil’s isolated tribes in the crosshairs of miners targeting Indigenous lands
- The Amazônia Minada reporting project has revealed 1,265 pending requests to mine in Indigenous territories in Brazil, including restricted lands that are home to isolated tribes.
- Brazil’s federal agency for Indigenous affairs, Funai, holds 114 reports of isolated tribes, of which 43 are within Indigenous lands targeted by mining.
- In addition to the spread of diseases such as COVID-19 and malaria, mining activity poses health threats from the mercury used in gold extraction, which contaminates rivers and fish.
- Indigenous groups have filed a lawsuit with Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court against the government, demanding protection for isolated Indigenous peoples.

The Kalunga digitally map traditional lands to save Cerrado way of life
- The Kalunga represents a grouping of 39 traditional quilombola communities — the descendants of runaway slaves — living on a territory covering 262,000 hectares (647,000 acres) in Goiás state in central Brazil, within the Cerrado savanna biome.
- This territory has been under heavy assault by illegal invaders, including small-scale wildcat gold miners, and large-scale mining operations, as well as land grabbers who have destroyed native vegetation to grow soy and other agribusiness crops.
- To defend their lands, the Kalunga received a grant from the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF), supported by Agence Française de Développement, Conservation International, EU, the Global Environment Facility, Japan and the World Bank. With their funding, the Kalunga georeferenced the territory, pinpointing homes, crops, soils, 879 springs, and vital natural resources.
- In February 2020, the U.N. Environment Programme and World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) recognized the Kalunga Historical and Cultural Heritage Site as the first TICCA (Territories and Areas Conserved by Indigenous and Local Communities) in Brazil, making it what UNEP-WCMC calls a “Territory for Life.”

Indigenous groups blast Amazon state’s plan to legalize wildcat mining
- Brazilian legislators in the Amazon state of Roraima have passed a bill legalizing garimpo wildcat mining on state lands without studies. Amendments would also legalize the use of toxic mercury in gold processing, and greatly expand the legal size of mining claims.
- Indigenous groups say the law was passed without adequate consultation, and will invite gold miner invasions of Indigenous reserves in the state, including that of the Yanomami, the largest reserve in Brazil. Since the election of President Jair Bolsonaro more than 20,000 illegal miners have been reported on Yanomami lands.
- Wildcat mining is already legal in some Brazilian Amazon states. Based on that experience, experts say that legalization in Roraima will enable fraud, with gold illegally mined in Indigenous reserves “laundered” to become “legal” gold, and illicit “conflict gold” trafficked from neighboring Venezuela laundered in Roraima.
- The Roraima garimpo mining bill now awaits the state governor’s signature.

Environmental assassinations bad for business, new research shows
- After years of research, economics experts say they can prove that financial markets respond swiftly and definitively when multinationals are publicly named in connection with the assassination of an environmental defender.
- The researchers analyzed 354 assassinations over two decades connected to mining and extractive minerals projects around the world, noting particularly significant violent action in the Philippines and Peru.
- Once a company is named, the data show that within 10 days the markets respond, hitting the company with a median loss in market capitalization of more than $100 million.

How the pandemic impacted rainforests in 2020: a year in review
- 2020 was supposed to be a make-or-break year for tropical forests. It was the year when global leaders were scheduled to come together to assess the past decade’s progress and set the climate and biodiversity agendas for the next decade. These included emissions reductions targets, government procurement policies and corporate zero-deforestation commitments, and goals to set aside protected areas and restore degraded lands.
- COVID-19 upended everything: Nowhere — not even tropical rainforests — escaped the effects of the global pandemic. Conservation was particularly hard in tropical countries.
- 2019’s worst trends for forests mostly continued through the pandemic including widespread forest fires, rising commodity prices, increasing repression and violence against environmental defenders, and new laws and policies in Brazil and Indonesia that undermine forest conservation.
- We don’t yet have numbers on the degree to which the pandemic affected deforestation, because it generally takes several months to process that data. That being said, there are reasons to suspect that 2020’s forest loss will again be substantial.

New innovations to clean up the impacts of mining
- We bring you two stories that illustrate some of the innovative new ways conservationists are attempting to address the impacts of mining on this episode of the Mongabay Newscast.
- Dr. Manuela Callari, a Mongabay contributing writer who recently wrote about Australia's tens of thousands of abandoned and shuttered mines, discusses novel solutions to restoring native habitat destroyed by mining, and how the industry is finally beginning to work with local and aboriginal communities in creating mine closure plans.
- And Bjorn Bergman, an analyst with the NGO SkyTruth, discusses Project Inambari, an open mapping platform that utilizes satellite radar imagery to detect the impacts of small-scale, illegal mining in the Amazon rainforest.
- Project Inambari was named one of the winners of the Artisanal Mining Challenge, a global competition that recently awarded $750,000 in prizes for innovative solutions.

Historical analysis: The Amazon’s mineral wealth — curse or blessing?
- Mining of gold and other precious metals in the Amazon fueled the Spanish and Portuguese colonial empires, while bringing misery and death to unknown hundreds of thousands of Indigenous people and African slaves, forced to work the mines.
- Modern industrial mining came to the Brazilian Amazon in the late 1940s as transnational firms began digging up and processing manganese, iron, bauxite, zinc, and other ores. Like the earlier iterations of mining, transnational firms, investors, and nations profited hugely, while local people saw little benefit.
- Brazil offered massive subsidies and tax incentives to attract transnational mining companies, and built giant public works projects, including mega-dams, transmission lines, and roads to provide energy and other services to the mines. Though the government offered little to disrupted traditional communities.
- All this came with extraordinary socio-environmental costs, as Brazilian Amazon deforestation soared, land and waterways were polluted, and Indigenous and riverine peoples were deprived of their traditional ways of life and lands, and suffered major public health repercussions. This mining trend continues today.

The Amazon’s Yanomami utterly abandoned by Brazilian authorities: Report
- A new report highlights the escalating existential crisis among the 30,000 Indigenous people living in the Yanomami Territory, covering 9,664,975 hectares (37,317 square miles) in northern Brazil. Data shows that the Yanomami reserve is in the top ten areas now most prone to illegal deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.
- The report accuses Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazilian government of abandoning the Yanomami to the invasion of their territory by tens-of-thousands of illegal miners. While the administration has launched sporadic operations to stop these incursions, the miners return as soon as police leave the reserve.
- Bolsonaro is also accused of having done little to combat COVID-19 or provide basic healthcare. As a result, pandemic case numbers have grown by 250% in the last three months, now possibly infecting 10,000 Yanomami and Ye’kwana, about a third of the reserve’s entire population, with deaths recorded among adults and children.
- “Children, young people and the generations to come deserve to live healthy lives in their forest home. Their futures should not be cut off by the actions of a genocidal administration,” says the report compiled by the Yanomami and Ye’kwana and a network of academics. Brazil’s Health Ministry denied the charge of negligence.

Brazil sees record number of bids to mine illegally on Indigenous lands
- An exclusive investigation shows Brazil’s mining regulator continues to entertain requests to mine in Indigenous territories, which is prohibited under the country’s Constitution.
- There have been 145 such applications filed this year, the highest number in 24 years, spurred by President Jair Bolsonaro’s anti-Indigenous rhetoric and a bill now before Congress that would permit mining on Indigenous lands.
- Prosecutors and judges say that by maintaining these unconstitutional mining applications on file and not immediately rejecting them, the mining regulator is granting them a semblance of legitimacy.
- Mining represents a real threat to the Brazilian Amazon, where the protected status of Indigenous territories is the main reason the forests they contain remain standing.

Years after defeating a giant gold mine, activists in Colombia still fear for their lives
- Residents of the municipality of Cajamarca in eastern Colombia said “no” to what would have been the second-largest open-pit gold mine in the world.
- Now they are afraid that the government will not respect their decision.
- Leaders who promoted the popular referendum that banned large-scale mining in the municipality continue to be threatened. Some of their colleagues have been killed.

Madagascar shuts down ‘illegal’ gold mine but activists remain in legal limbo
- Earlier this month, Madagascar’s government suspended a controversial gold-mining operation in Vohilava commune in the country’s southeast.
- The project, a dredging operation in the Isaka River that allegedly uses mercury to separate gold from ore, has caused notable damage to the river, local economy, and public health, prompting near-unanimous local opposition.
- A demonstration in September against the mine prompted a visit by officials that led to the mine’s suspension.
- However, prosecutors are investigating six people for involvement in the demonstration, including one who was previously jailed as a result of his opposition to the mining project.

Philippine court upholds open-pit mining ban in Mindanao
- A court has upheld a ban on open-pit mining in the Philippine province of South Cotabato, home to the largest known untapped deposits of copper and gold in Southeast Asia.
- The ruling is the latest setback for Sagittarius Mines, Inc. (SMI), which holds the mining permit, coming on the heels of the municipality where the deposits are located scrapping its development permit in August.
- Supporters of SMI lodged a petition in January 2019 seeking an injunction against the mining ban that has been in place since 2010.
- But the court ruled the ban is consistent with prevailing laws and regulations, including the Philippine Constitution, in a decision widely hailed by environmental, religious and Indigenous rights advocates.

Mining covers more than 20% of Indigenous territory in the Amazon
- A new report from the World Resources Institute and the Amazon Geo-Referenced Socio-Environmental Information Network reveals that mining has impacted more than 20% of the Amazon’s Indigenous territory.
- The analysis shows that deforestation rates are as much as three times higher on Indigenous lands with mining compared to those without.
- The study’s authors suggest that improved law enforcement, greater investment in Indigenous communities and stricter environmental protections are necessary to combat the surge of mining in the Amazon.

Land grab, logging, mining threaten biodiversity haven of Woodlark Island
- Woodlark Island lies off the coast of Papua New Guinea and is home to dozens of unique species and a more than 2,000-year-old human culture.
- A recent court ruling has seen the land rights granted to Woodlark islanders in 2016 revoked and returned to an agricultural company that in 2007 planned to transform 70% of the island into oil palm plantations.
- Meanwhile, the status of an application submitted to the PNG Forest Authority by a logging company to clear 40% of the island under the guise of an agricultural project remains unknown, despite an ongoing petition signed by more than 184,00 people.
- A mining company has also started expanding infrastructure and clearing forest in preparation for a long-planned open-pit gold mine, but has faced backlash from villagers unhappy with the replacement housing offered as part of a relocation project to make way for the mine. The company also intends to dispose of mining waste via a controversial pipeline into a nearby bay.

Mercury from gold mining contaminates Amazon communities’ staple fish
- The four species of fish most commonly consumed by Indigenous and riverine people in the Brazilian state of Amapá contain the highest concentrations of mercury.
- In some species, researchers found levels of mercury four times in excess of World Health Organization recommendations.
- The mercury comes from gold-mining activity, where it’s used to separate gold from ore before being burned off and washed into the rivers.
- The health impacts of mercury contamination are well-documented, and include damage to the central nervous system, potentially resulting in learning disabilities for children and tremors and difficulty walking for adults.

Officials quash plan, for now, to develop Philippines’ biggest copper mine
- The Philippine municipality of Tampakan has canceled an agreement with Sagittarius Mines, Inc. to develop a $5.9 billion copper and gold mine on the island of Mindanao.
- Municipal councilors criticized the “lopsided” nature of the deal that they said had not been periodically reviewed as required and had sold the community short.
- The Tampakan project has faced opposition since mineral reserves were discovered there in the ’90s, with pushback coming from various levels of government, Indigenous communities, the Catholic church, environmentalists, and even communist rebels.
- An Indigenous group that has taken up arms against the project has warned of more bloodshed should the project go ahead on their ancestral lands.

Amazon gold mining wipes out rainforest regeneration for years: Study
- New research looking at Amazon artisanal gold mining in Guyana has found that the destroyed Amazon forest at mining sites shows no sign of recovery three to four years after a mine pit and tailings pond are abandoned, likely largely due to soil nutrient depletion.
- In addition, mercury contamination at the sites drops after a mine is abandoned; mercury is used to process gold. Mercury being a chemical element, it does not break down but can bioaccumulate, so its onsite disappearance means the toxin is possibly leaching into local waters, entering fish, and poisoning riverine people who eat them.
- The solution would be the proper restoration of mine sites, especially the proper filling in of mine holes and tailing ponds imitating replacement by natural topsoil. Better regulations, much bigger fines and other penalties, along with enforcement of mining laws would also help seriously curb the problem, say researchers.
- But so long as the price of gold continues topping $1,700 an ounce (as it did during the 2008 U.S. housing crisis), or $2,000 an ounce (its current price during the still escalating COVID-19 pandemic), it seems likely that there is little that can curb the enthusiasm of poor and wealthy prospectors alike for digging up the Amazon.

Goldminers overrun Amazon indigenous lands as COVID-19 surges
- Reports filed by NGOs including the Socioenvironmental Institute (ISA) and Greenpeace Brazil say that a major invasion of indigenous reserves and conservation units is underway, prompted by miners well backed with expensive equipment supplied by wealthy elites.
- Miners are emboldened, say the NGOs, by the inflammatory anti-indigenous and anti-environmental rhetoric of the Jair Bolsonaro administration which has sent a clear signal so far, that it has no major plans of stopping the invasions or penalizing the perpetrators.
- Through June of this year, deforestation by mining within conserved areas represented 67.9% of total tree loss in Legal Amazonia. From January to June, illegal mining destroyed 2,230 hectares (5,510 acres) of forest inside conservation units (UCs) and 1,016 hectares (2,510 acres) inside indigenous territories (TIs).
- The miners’ onslaught also poses a serious COVID-19 threat. The virus has so far infected at least 14,647 indigenous people and caused 269 deaths on indigenous lands. Meanwhile, Bolsonaro is pressing for passage of legislation authorizing mining on indigenous lands; presently the bill is stalled in the house of deputies.

Philippine court rejects OceanaGold’s bid to keep mining on expired permit
- The Philippine Court of Appeals has dismissed a bid by a Canadian-Australian mining company to allow it to continue operating after its mining permit expired last year.
- OceanaGold Philippines Inc. (OGPI) was challenging a provincial directive encouraging residents to block the operations of the mining giant after the June 20, 2019 expiration.
- The company cites a letter from the national government’s mining bureau that it claims allows it to continue operating its Didipio gold and copper mine pending its application for a permit renewal.
- But the appellate court upheld a regional court’s ruling, saying that there’s no Philippine law that lets the company continue mining beyond the expiry of its permit or during the renewal application process.

Brazilian court orders 20,000 gold miners removed from Yanomami Park
- The Yanomami Park covers 37,000 square miles in the Brazilian Amazon on the Venezuelan border; it is inhabited by 27,000 Yanomami. Soaring gold prices have resulted in a massive ongoing invasion of the indigenous territory by gold miners who are well supported with monetary backing, heavy equipment and aircraft.
- On 3 July, a federal judge issued an emergency ruling ordering the Jair Bolsonaro administration to come up with an immediate plan to stop the spread of the pandemic to Yanomami Park, a plan which must include the removal of all 20,000 invading miners within ten days. Brazil’s Vice President pledges to back the plan.
- That eviction must stay in effect until the danger to the Yanomami of the pandemic passes. There have so far been five Yanomami deaths due to the disease and 168 confirmed cases. More are expected.
- The invasion has also resulted in violent clashes between miners and indigenous people. In mid-June two Yanomami were killed in a conflict, evoking fears of a replay of retaliatory violence that occurred in the 1990s. In response to the current crisis, the Yanomami have launched their “Miners Out, Covid Out” campaign.

Discovery of fish never recorded in the Amazon shows richness of Brazil’s Calha Norte
- Brazilian scientists have identified six fish species never before seen in the Amazon in Calha Norte, in the state of Pará, one of the best-preserved and least studied parts of the rainforest.
- Calha Norte lies north of the Amazon River, along the border with Guyana and Suriname, where those species were previously thought to be endemic, and 80% of its area is protected within conservation areas and Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian territories.
- Even though it is remote and hard to reach, illegal hunting, mining and deforestation are already placing local biodiversity at risk.
- These threats have made research even more urgent, with scientists warning the risk is that species will disappear before they are ever described.

Gold priced at $1,700 per ounce brings new gold rush to Brazilian Amazon
- Global instability brought on by the Coronavirus and the meltdown of the world economy has sent gold prices soaring to US$1,700 per ounce, their highest value in 10 years. That surge has triggered a new, intensified gold rush in the Brazilian Amazon as entrepreneurs invest in expensive equipment and cheap labor.
- While some Amazon gold mining is legally permitted, much isn’t. The lucrative, unpoliced industry is causing deforestation, river destruction, mercury contamination (the element used in gold ore processing), and an invasion by hundreds of thousands of miners who could spread COVID-19 to the region.
- Despite being an illegal activity, large gold mining dredges operate openly in Porto Velho, the capital of Rondônia state. Our Mongabay reporting team followed the daily lives of a dredge-owning entrepreneur and his crew of garimpeiros as they searched for the precious metal in the waters of the Madeira River.

Offensive against the Amazon: An incontrollable pandemic (commentary)
- The acceleration of Amazonian deforestation and environmental degradation — powered by the Bolsonaro government’s successive blows to environmental protection policies — is directly related to the precarious state of public healthcare in the region, amplifying the lethality of diseases like Covid-19.
- This commentary is being published at a time when Brazil is suffering from the worst deforestation in a decade, and is second only to the United States in the number of Covid-19 cases (515,000 in Brazil today) and fourth in the world regarding the number of Coronavirus deaths (topping 29,000).
- The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

Canadian company positions for mining ban lift in Argentine province
- Yamana Gold, a Canadian mining company, has partnered with a real estate and investment firm in Argentina to handle “all environmental, social, and governance” issues associated with a potential gold mining project in the province of Chubut.
- Mining has been banned in Chubut since 2003, primarily as a result of local protests that have continued through early 2020.
- The COVID-19 pandemic has restricted the movement of Argentina’s citizens, but activists say the moves by Yamana and government leaders toward a reopening of the project are taking advantage of the crisis.

The mining map: Who’s eyeing the gold on Brazil’s indigenous lands?
- Miners have their eyes on reserves that have been officially demarcated for 15 years and are inhabited by isolated indigenous peoples.
- Applications to mine on indigenous lands in the Amazon have increased by 91% under the Bolsonaro administration.
- The majority of applications to mine on indigenous lands are for areas in Pará, Mato Grosso, and Roraima.
- Among the applicants are mining giant Anglo American, small-scale cooperatives whose members are embroiled in a range of environmental violations, and even a São Paulo-based architect.

Decades-old mine in Bougainville exacts devastating human toll: Report
- A new report by the Human Rights Law Centre in Australia details the continuing devastation wrought by a copper and gold mine that closed more than 30 years ago in the Papua New Guinean territory of Bougainville.
- The 17-year-long operation of the mine generated more than a billion metric tons of mining waste, which continues to seep into the region’s water sources, fouling drinking water supplies and causing disease.
- The British-Australian mining company Rio Tinto divested from its majority stake in the local operating company in 2016 and says that the governments of Bougainville and Papua New Guinea, now the majority shareholders, are best placed to address the problems.
- The Human Rights Law Centre and other groups contend that Rio Tinto has the ultimate responsibility to facilitate and finance the cleanup.

Land conflicts escalate with spread of COVID-19 in Indonesia
- Companies embroiled in land disputes with rural communities in Indonesia appear to be using the lull in oversight during the COVID-19 outbreak to strengthen their claims, activists say.
- Since the first confirmed cases of the disease were reported in the country on March 2, two local land defenders have been killed and four arrested in connection with land disputes in Sumatra and Borneo.
- The national human rights commission has called on companies, including palm oil and mining firms, to cease their activities during this public health emergency.

Gold mining threatens indigenous forests in the Brazilian Amazon
- MAAP, a program of the organization Amazon Conservation, has documented more than 102 square kilometers (40 square miles) of mining-linked deforestation in the indigenous reserves of Kayapó, Munduruku and Yanomami in Brazil. Mongabay had exclusive access to the report prior to its release.
- Though mining is still illegal in indigenous reserves under Brazilian law, President Jair Bolsonaro has introduced a bill awaiting a vote in Congress that would to allow mining, oil and gas extraction and other uses of these lands.
- Human rights groups like Survival International hold Bolsonaro and his policies responsible for the loss of forest, as well as mercury pollution, societal disruption and the introduction of diseases such as malaria and potentially COVID-19 that result from mining.
- The groups say Bolsonaro’s rhetoric, in favor of developing the Amazon, has emboldened would-be miners.

Standoff over Philippines’ Didipio mines escalates despite COVID-19 lockdown
- Since July last year, local communities in the province of Nueva Vizcaya have blocked the entry of fuel tankers and service vehicles to the Didipio gold and copper site.
- But President Rodrigo Duterte’s office issued a letter authorizing OceanaGold Philippines Inc (OGPI), the company that handles the mining operation, to be allowed to truck in 63,000 liters (16,600 gallons) of fuel for generators to run water pumps in the underground mines.
- A hundred police personnel assisted the entry of the vehicles to the mining site on April 6, even as the region remains locked down by the COVID-19 pandemic, with all domestic land, sea and air travel banned.

Peru uncovers organized crime network laundering illegally mined gold
- A massive operation involving more than a thousand law enforcement officers in five regions has led to the arrests of 18 people accused of belonging to a criminal network called Los Topos, or The Moles, laundering illegally mined gold.
- Four of those under investigation are listed in the mining formalization registry,with their documents used to legitimize the transport of large quantities of gold.
- The Peruvian Ministry of Energy and Mines says those who abuse their mining formalization status will be removed from the registry.
- But law enforcers investigating the network say the government’s repeated extension of the deadline for miners to register allows opportunity for more such abuses of the system.

Qualified success: What’s next for Peru’s Operation Mercury?
- The Peruvian government’s launch of Operation Mercury to crack down on illegal mining had a burst of initial success, cutting deforestation by 92% since its kickoff in February 2019.
- Concerns have surfaced that the operation would simply displace miners, forcing them to deforest new areas.
- However, satellite imagery analysis published in January 2020 revealed that, while deforestation due to mining continues to be a problem in southeastern Peru, Operation Mercury has not led to a surge in forest loss adjacent to the targeted area.
- The government is also investing in programs aimed at providing employment alternatives so that people don’t return to mining.

The fight goes on for opponents of a Philippine mine given a new lease on life
- A permit to establish the largest copper mine in the Philippines was to have expired on March 12 this year, but will instead remain valid for another 12 years, thanks to an “under-the-radar” extension granted by the government in 2016.
- Anti-mining groups and local communities who have long opposed the project only found out last October about the secretly granted extension, which the government never consulted them on.
- They say the Tampakan project will displace some 4,000 indigenous people who have ancestral claims to the land, as well as pollute local rivers and raze thousands of hectares of forest and farmland.
- The project still faces an obstacle in the form of a provincial environmental code that bans open-pit mining.

NGOs charge Brazil’s Bolsonaro with risk of indigenous ‘genocide’ at UN
- At a session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on 2 March indigenous people from Brazil along with NGOs told the international community that the policies of Jair Bolsonaro, in office since January 2019, are resulting in a dangerous escalation in invasions of indigenous reserves in the Amazon and across Brazil.
- They especially emphasized impacts on the Moxihatetea and other uncontacted and isolated groups whose territories are being rapidly deforested by illegal miners, loggers and other intruders of conserved indigenous lands — while the government stands by and simultaneously dismantles indigenous protections.
- Meanwhile, the Arns Commission, a human rights body, is sending a petition to the International Criminal Court demanding an investigation into Bolsonaro’s attacks on indigenous human rights. Deforestation in 115 of the worst-affected indigenous territories totaled 42,679 hectares from 2018 to 2019, an 80% increase over 2017-18.
- The Arns Commission, and a new report, assert that the Bolsonaro administration’s socio-environmental policies are putting indigenous peoples at risk of ethnocide (the destruction of an ethnic group’s culture), and putting isolated groups at risk of genocide.

Map reveals Canadian mining company’s environmental, social conflicts
- The Environmental Justice Atlas released new maps March 2 alleging that Pan American Silver operates mines that don’t have the consent of local communities and that pollute local water supplies — assertions that the company denies.
- In Guatemala, the Canadian mining company gained control of a mine where operations had been suspended because the country’s supreme court ruled that a local indigenous community had not consented to the operation.
- The atlas uses information gathered from local communities to both raise the profile of their struggle and to connect disparate environmental justice groups doing similar work.
- The mine in Guatemala remains closed, pending a new consultation process.

Companies leave communities to grapple with mining’s persistent legacy
- The destructive legacy of mining often lingers for communities and ecosystems long after the operating companies leave.
- Several large, multinational mining corporations have scrubbed their images — touting their commitments to sustainability, community development and action on climate change — but continue to deny accountability for the persistent impacts of mining that took place on their watch.
- A new report from the London Mining Network, an alliance of environmental and human rights organizations, contends that these companies should be held responsible for restoring ecosystems and the services that once supported communities.

Mining could topple community-managed forests in Mexico: New film
- Community residents in the state of Puebla in southeastern Mexico are concerned about the exploration for gold currently underway in their region.
- Mining concessions currently cover around 30% of the state.
- Opponents of the project say it will sap vital water sources and destroy the local economy, which is currently based on sustainable management of forests for timber, farming and ecotourism.

Uphill fight to shut disaster-amplifying gold mines in Indonesian park
- The Indonesian government has begun cracking down on illegal gold mines in a national park outside Jakarta blamed for exacerbating floods and landslides last month.
- But local authorities say it won’t be an easy task, with only 26 of out nearly 400 of the mines shut down so far.
- A day’s worth of mining can yield nearly the same pay as the monthly minimum wage, which officials say will continue to make it an attractive livelihood for many people.
- The environment ministry plans to reforest the degraded areas of the national park by planting 1.2 million trees by March.

In Sumatra, authorities fight a resurgence of illegal gold mining
- Authorities say they’re boosting efforts to crack down on illegal gold mining in West Sumatra province, after having declared the practice over in 2014.
- The illegal mines are scattered throughout the province, including inside ostensibly protected areas, where miners claim to have the backing of corrupt officials.
- The country’s disaster mitigation agency warns that floods and landslides in downstream areas will get worse if the mining upstream, and its attendant environmental destruction, isn’t stopped.

Carbon emissions from Peruvian gold mining ‘alarming,’ experts say
- According to a new study, small-scale gold mining in the Peruvian Amazon is contributing to the climate crisis.
- The study developed a novel approach toward measuring carbon emissions through deforestation, drawing on Earth imagery from a network of nanosatellites.
- In 2017, gold mining in one part of the Madre de Dios region emitted as much carbon as nearly 250,000 cars do in an average year.
- The study’s authors say their new approach will help global efforts to monitor forest destruction and carbon emissions.

Illegal gold rush causing ‘irreversible damage’ to rivers in the Brazilian Amazon
- A surge in illegal gold mining in the Brazilian Amazon state of Pará is causing a dramatic rise in water pollution and deforestation, as speculators clear swaths of forest along the riverbanks to make way for makeshift mines known as garimpos. These mines have invaded well into Kayapó indigenous territory, a vast region home to several indigenous groups, including some that live in voluntary isolation from the outside world.
- Deforestation has more than doubled in the Kayapó protected area since 2000, with nonprofit groups pointing to gold mining as the key driver. FUNAI, the government agency tasked with protecting the interests of indigenous people in Brazil, has identified almost 3,000 people contaminated by mining residue in the territory.
- In Brazil, it is illegal to mine on indigenous lands – but local sources claim this isn’t stopping illegal miners from encroaching on the Kayapó territory. Some indigenous people who live on this land have been battling to expel the invaders in recent years. Others have reluctantly tolerated the illegal mining in exchange for a cut of the profits, which they say brings badly-needed funds to their communities.
- Many point to the rhetoric of Brazil’s new president Jair Bolsonaro as a key factor that has emboldened illegal miners. The controversial far-right leader – who has his own past as a miner – has repeatedly railed against land protections as an “obstacle” to mining and development. Bolsonaro’s government is now pushing forward a controversial bill that would permit mining in indigenous territories.

Guyana refutes findings that deforestation skyrocketed after REDD+ payments stopped
- The South American country of Guyana is one of a handful of high-forest/low-deforestation countries, with around 85 percent of its biodiverse rainforest still intact.
- In 2010, Guyana entered into a partnership with Norway, which agreed to pay the heavily forested country $250 million if it kept deforestation low for five years. The project was part of a scheme called “reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation” (REDD+), which aims to curtail global warming by channeling funds from wealthy countries to tropical forest countries in exchange for lowering their deforestation rates.
- Guyana’s REDD+ project has been lauded as a success, with rates of forest loss between 2011 and 2015 registering below a 2010 benchmark. However, a new study analyzed satellite data between 2000 and 2017, finding tree cover loss more than doubled after Norway’s payments ended in 2015. The study’s authors say their findings point to a need for continuous forest protection payments.
- But Guyana’s government says the country’s higher levels of tree cover loss in 2016 and 2017 revealed in the study were likely due to tree death from El Nino climate events and not active deforestation. When the Guyana Forestry Commission conducted its own analysis using another, higher-resolution satellite dataset, it found instead that deforestation remained low in 2016 and 2017. Both datasets agree that deforestation stayed low in 2018.

A Philippine community fights a lonely battle against the mine in its midst
- A tribal community in the Philippines has since July maintained a blockade of a controversial gold mine whose permit has expired but whose operator insists is allowed to continue working pending a renewal.
- The expiration in June of the permit held by OceanaGold Philippines Inc. (OGPI) for the Didipio mine has sparked a policy tangle, given that it’s the first permit of its kind in the Philippines to end, with no precedent for how the renewal application should proceed.
- The provincial government supports the end of mining operations, but has been largely bypassed in the permit renewal process, which existing laws place under the authority of the national government.
- President Rodrigo Duterte, who has criticized destructive mining practices in the past, omitted to do so in his latest state of the nation address, but has thrown the community a lifeline by requiring that OGPI seek free, prior and informed consent for its renewal application.

$750,000 prize seeks solutions to challenges from small-scale mining
- While the devices we carry around in our pockets everyday provide us with unprecedented convenience and levels of access to information, the materials they contain are often linked to the destruction of some of the planet’s richest ecosystems.
- Yet small-scale mining is an important source of income more than 40 million people worldwide, generating livelihoods and, in some cases, creating paths to escape poverty.
- For these reasons, last week a broad coalition launched a $750,000 global competition to identify ways to make small-scale and artisanal mining less damaging to communities and the environment.
- The Artisanal Mining Grand Challenge is hosted by Conservation X Labs, a Washington, DC- and Seattle-based non-profit that has organized other prize-based competitions around difficult environmental problems.

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