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Climate Security > Illegal Gold Mining in the Amazon
321
is the number of active and inactive illegal mines mapped in the 9 states that comprise the Brazilian Amazon Basin.
source: Rede Amazônica de Informações Socioambientais
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Illegal exploration of gold in the Amazon has caused the destruction of the forest and lives, mostly amongst indigenous populations. Corruption, deforestation, violence, contamination of rivers are advancing in the forest region. The connections between garimpagem and security are the main focus of the article “Illegal gold that undermines forest and lives in the Amazon”, produced by Igarape Institute.
“The preservation of the Amazon forest is adamant in order to avoid an irreversible climate collapse. In this sense, the need to prevent illegal mining and to protect indigenous land in the Amazon more urgent than never.”
23%
was the net contribution of of mining activity to deforestation rates in indigenous territories as a whole, up from 4% in 2017.
source: DeterR$1.7M
is the amount in environmental damages
caused by the illegal mining of 1 kg of gold,
according to Public Prosecutors Office.
Critical and Urgent
Short-term recommendations
Long-term Recommendations
Critical and Urgent
- Bill 191/2020, which would open indigenous lands to mining, oil and gas extraction, electricity generation, and agriculture needs to be closely monitored and advocacy efforts directed towards ensuring that the Bill, in its current format, must not pass in Congress.
- Funai must immediately recognize indigenous territories (even those under an appeals process) in formal land registries.
- Mining permits must be adapted to include volumes of gold that could be viably extracted from any given piece of land, in order to weaken attempts to wash illegal gold continuously with the same mining permits.
- BAPES as well as Funai health posts must be reintroduced to the regions at once, critically during Covid-19.
Short-term recommendations
- Technology should be used by the private sector to monitor company ESG metrics, as well as by consumers and civil society to monitor heavy machinery use and new infrastructure networks in indigenous and protected territories. Initiatives of bioacoustic monitoring should also be given more support to scale-up operations.
- OECD Guidelines need to be made clearer and more objective, as well as binding for member companies. The ConflictFree Gold Standard should be made public for greater gold-supply chain transparency.
- International and national civil society must engage in greater and on-going communication and advocacy campaigns to educate on the illegalities along the gold supply-chain.
Long-term Recommendations
- Regulation and the respective mining code need to be brought to the fore of the political agenda, debated in Congress and implemented, respecting indigenous rights (which should be implemented through a legislation that guarantees the protection of indigenous lands against mining). Garimpagem also needs to be defined more clearly to avoid the current lack of differentiation between industrial and small scale mining.
- Law enforcement should seek to further understand the dynamics of mercury and implement more regular seizures of mercury.
