Peru is currently the biggest gold producer in Latin America and the 6th biggest producer worldwide, generating billions of dollars in exports every year. These figures don’t include Peru’s illegal, informal mining sector which has grown at an exponential rate over the last few years due to the increase in gold prices and improved road access, and has meant thousands of colonists migrating from the Andes to the Amazon to participate in small- and medium scale mining, sometimes on indigenous lands and in supposedly protected areas.
The increase in gold-mining has paralleled the rise of international prices, which quadrupled between 2002 and 2011 and peaked at US$1,800 per ounce, although it has been found that deforestation rates linked to mining increased more rapidly than the price of gold. Recent research shows that informal gold-mining accounts for between 15% and 20% of all Peru’s gold production, and has much in common with the market for cocaine. ‘‘Gold surpasses cocaine—it’s Peru’s largest illicit export. It’s pretty staggering... it’s important to look at the parallels and difficulties of combating drug trafficking: huge profits, bribing local officials, and greed, in an area that’s a ‘no man’s land’.” One recent study using high resolution LIDAR technology able to detect small-scale operations, estimates that the total deforestation caused by gold-mining in Madre de Dios alone has increased from less than 10,000 hectares in 1999 to more than 50,000 hectares in 2012.
Before 2008, the deforestation rate was estimated at 2,166 hectares per year, but this study estimates it is now three times higher at 6,145 hectares per year. The impact of gold-mining on indigenous peoples is extremely high because it involves permanently destroying the forest and contaminating the rivers on which they depend. That is to say nothing of the violence, conflict, and social problems gold-mining brings with it.
“We used to fish in the River Puquiri, but it’s not a river anymore due to the tailings and sediment.The miners work there now and there’s no fish. It’s all mud.” The government has tried to enforce punishments for illegal mining, but it has failed to formalize a significant number of the gold-miners, meaning that negative impacts can’t be controlled.
Impacts include the invasion of indigenous and non-indigenous lands with or without rights to use resources, destruction of the riverbanks, and contamination of the rivers by mercury. There is now artisanal and small-scale gold-mining in every region in Peru, but no estimates of the deforestation it has caused other than in Madre de Dios. However, clearly total deforestation as a result of gold-mining in Peru will be significantly greater than in Madre de Dios alone.
(Adapted from "Revealing the Hidden: Indigenous Perspectives on Deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon")
Artisanal (gold miners) - Miners who are not working independently, not for a mining company; they mine in smaller areas and may more easily avoid regulations / rules.
Exponential growth - A math concept; growth that increases at greater and greater rates
Illicit - Something illegal or not allowed
Import - To buy from another country
Indigenous - Native to a place; can refer to plants, animals, people who are originally from a particular location
Tailings - The residue or leftover material from mining gold
