As gold prices skyrocket amid the Covid-19 pandemic, a recent report uncovers the scale and impact of mining on Amazon countries’ indigenous reserves. It found that over 20% of indigenous lands are overlapped by illegal mining and mining businesses, covering around 450K sq km (174K sq miles) – while 31% of Amazon indigenous reserves are significantly affected.
The report, published on October 7 by the World Resources Institute, highlights the importance of indigenous people being given more legal rights to manage and use their lands. It urged for better environmental protections. As pressure increases over the issue, a prominent Brazilian thinktank has demanded regulations to trace gold sold by financial organizations.
Peter Veit, one of the report’s authors, explained:
The extent of mining concessions and illegal mining areas that overlap indigenous areas in the Amazon is much more significant than many people thought.
The researchers used science reviews, geospatial analysis, and literature to estimate that 500K small-scale gold miners are active in the Amazon region. According to Veit, only 50% of legal mining businesses in the Amazon are active. However, that could change, as Amazon countries see mining as a key to development. On top of that, Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has sent a bill to Congress to legalize mining on protected indigenous reserves officially.
Veit added:
The implications for the environment and for indigenous peoples could significantly increase if those concessions that have yet to be allocated were to start up.
Increasing gold prices – which reached around $2,100 (£1,625) an ounce in August – have led to wildcat miners, known as garimpeiros, to invade indigenous lands in the Amazon. Sadly, deforestation caused by garimpeiros in the Amazon rose 23% in 2019.
The report wrote:
Gold prices had been rising for years, but the threat to economies from the novel coronavirus led to a surge in prices – up about 35% this year – as investors sought the perceived safety of gold. As prices rise, so does demand and mining.
From October 2018 to March 2020, around 2K hectares were degraded by mining in Brazil’s biggest indigenous reserve, as army forces failed to clear tens of thousands of miners from that region.
Amazonian indigenous people fail to benefit when illegal operations and mining companies enter their lands. “We are under siege from legal and illegal mining, and our governments are doing little to enforce the rights that do exist,” said Michael McGarrell, COICA’s human rights coordinator.
Legal mining can also have its downfalls. “Many companies don’t adhere to the law, the letter of the law; many don’t seem to adhere to their agreements with the government,” Veit warned. For example, case studies from Ecuador and Peru show legal struggles between mining companies, indigenous groups, and governments.
In Peru, scientists found over 170,000 acres of the Amazon rainforest destroyed and the land contaminated with mercury used by small-scale gold miners.
