With the inaccessibility of remote areas in parts of South and Central America rendering state jurisdiction an increasingly difficult challenge, governments in gold-producing countries of those regions continue to lack the tools to rein in small-scale illegal gold mining and the environmental havoc which these activities continue to inflict on the environment.
There are reports that small-scale illegal gold miners in a region in Peru known as Madre de Dios, have transformed lush Amazonian forest into “a desert pock-marked with polluted ponds that are leaking into the human food chain.” Peru is Latin America’s largest gold producer.
The trend, according to reports, continues unabated, the efforts of government to stamp out artisanal gold mining in order to protect the country’s forests, notwithstanding. It is, however, the mode of operation of the miners and the strategic understanding of the environment, it seems, that keeps them ahead of the game. They have been able, up until now, to discreetly shift their operations from one location to another without attracting undue attention so that before the authorities become wise to it they have transferred the base of their operations and are already entrenched there before the authorities become wise to what is happening.
The Peruvian authorities, it seems, have become sufficiently concerned over the huge negative shadow which the activities of the artisanal miners have cast on the country’s environmental credentials that it has sought and secured the services of the United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), specifically its machine learning-enhanced satellite technology, to monitor the clandestine movement of the illegal gold miners in Peru. While the initiative is said to be still in its early stages it has reportedly showed signs of promise in terms of helping to preserve areas in which the miners operate.
The effectiveness of the miners in the Madre de Dios region reportedly belie the fact that their gold recovery pursuits employ the same basic tools as were used by miners in the USA almost 200 years ago… a high pressure hose to remove the layers of rock and a primitively created but effective sluice used to collect the runoff. Once the heavy metals are caught in the fibres of the fabric, mercury is then pressed into service to recover the gold. This method of gold recovery which is common in the hemisphere is replete with environmental downsides, not least, its impact on human health.
Guyana, in South America, is no stranger to gold mining and in relatively recent years, with the price of gold skyrocketing, small scale, mercury-driven mining activities have reportedly been on the increase though the pursuits of the state-run Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) do not appear to treat regular assessments of illegal mining and disclosures thereon as one of its priorities.
One development that has caught official attention, however, are gold mining operations inside Guyana’s territory which reportedly have the protection of a gang said to have its origins in Venezuela, known as the Syndicatos. Back in October, Natural Resources Minister Vickram Bharrat was reported as saying that government was working to clamp down on the Syndicato menace though he did not say how the authorities proposed to tackle a gang that reportedly not only terrorizes Guyanese citizens but has also been known to open fire on local Joint Service patrols that include members of the Guyana Defence Force.
Adopted in 2013 by several countries in the hemisphere including both Peru and Guyana, the Minamata Convention is designed to regulate the mining, export and import of mercury, as well as the production of products using the substance and its emission into the atmosphere, soil and water. The understandings enshrined in the Convention include one that bans the mining of mercury within 15 years after the Convention takes effect. Half of those years have already elapsed and there are, as yet, no signs of purposeful movement in the direction of banning the recovery of mercury. Minamata also speaks to the manufacturing, export and import of blood pressure gauges and antiseptics using mercury, along with fluorescent lamps containing a certain amount of mercury, which, it was agreed “in principle,” would have been banned, in principle, from 2020.
While Guyana subscribes to the principles that are enshrined in the Minamata Convention, an official of the GGMC told this newspaper that “in real terms” the authorities here lack the effective physical control over “its vast and remote mining spread” and can therefore provide no reliable assurances that it can effectively adhere to the commitments required of countries under the Agreement.
