Guyana has experienced the bulk of the region’s negative environmental impacts from mining but is not enjoying the benefits, according to a study led by the French Forestry Agency (ONF).
According to the study, ‘Monitoring the Impact of Gold Mining on the Forest Cover and Freshwater in the Guiana Shield,’ Guyana has experienced the bulk of the region’s negative environmental impacts from mining with 50% of the total deforestation, versus 34% in Suriname, 15% in French Guiana and 1% in Amapá, Brazil.
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) provided financial support for the project, and in a statement, the WWF Guianas-Guyana office pointed out that Guyana’s gold declarations in 2011 were 373,313 ounces while in Suriname, despite the significantly smaller mining area, nearly twice the gold – 670,000 ounces – was declared.
“The study clearly illustrates gold mining’s impacts on Guyana’s forests and illustrates another aspect of the recent disclosures about gold smuggling,” the statement said. “These results emphasise the need to develop means to ensure that Guyana fully benefits from the gold that is mined from our soils, while we work to reduce mining’s environmental impacts,” it added.
The study analysed the impact of small scale gold mining on forests and rivers across Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana and the Brazilian State of Amapá. The study was coordinated by ONF’s ‘REDD+ for the Guiana Shield’ Program and the analysis of satellite imagery, which forms the basis of the study, was carried out by the relevant forest service in each of the four territories. In Guyana, this was the Guyana Forestry Commission.
The study documented the deforestation caused by small-scale gold mining between 2008 and 2014 and updates a previous study by ONF and WWF that analyzed the same impacts between 2001 and 2008.
“In the 2001-2008 study, mining’s impacts were spread more or less evenly across the three Guianas, but between 2008 and 2014, while deforestation from mining doubled regionally, it grew much faster in Guyana than in the other territories,” the WWF said.
“While Brazil effectively shut down garimpeiros in Amapá, and French Guiana attempted to do the same, the center of mining shifted west. While the mining-related deforested area grew by only 16% in French Guiana over the latest period, it doubled (97%) in Suriname and grew by four and one half times (354%) in Guyana. This rapid growth of deforestation in Guyana occurred at the same time that we were being paid by Norway to maintain a low deforestation rate. The expansion of deforestation over the period of that agreement reduced Guyana’s payments by tens of millions of US dollars,” the statement said.
Meanwhile, according to the study, the spatial analysis of the results shows that gold mining activities are moving westward in the region where 84% of total deforestation is now located in Suriname and Guyana, compared to 66% in 2008 and 61% in 2001.
It said that the cross analysis performed between gold mining areas and the watershed highlighted more than 40,186.3 km of waterways potentially impacted by gold mining, from which 22.5% or 9,057 km are in direct contact with gold mining activities.
While Guyana possesses the higher network of rivers potentially impacted (13,534 km), it also has one of the lowest ratio of direct/indirect impact (about 1/6), partly explained by the few small gold mines located in the extreme south of the country (far from the coast) which generate a potential indirect impact long of approximately 2,500 km.
“Given the sustained intensification of gold mining activities since 2001 in the region and the critical concerns it poses in terms of deforestation, water quality, environment and human health, it is becoming urgent for countries to improve their knowledge and understanding of what are the impacts of gold mining activities, including to enforce the regulation,” the study says.
