Latin America – Illegal mining advances on indigenous lands
The report by the Alianza Consejo Político en Defensa de los Territorios (Political Council Alliance in Defence of Territories) states that illegal mining increased more than eight times in the Amazon between 2016 and 2022.
A new report by the Alianza Consejo Político enDefensa de los Territorios (Political Council Alliance in Defence of Territories) states that illegal mining increased more than eight times in the Amazon between 2016 and 2022. The document's projection is based on the National Institute for Spatial Research (INPE) data.
The INPE data show that the tolerance for mining and the dismantling of control structures has led to successive and significant increases in mining. In 2016, for example, mining in indigenous areas covered 12.87 km² but continued to increase and grew significantly in 2019, reaching 97.24 km². A new leap occurred in 2021 when mining stretched to 114.26 km². Only in 2022 was a registered decrease in activity observed; there were 62.1 km². Still, it was much higher than what was recorded six years before.
According to the report of the Political Council, entitled "Terra Rasgada: how mining is advancing in the Brazilian Amazon", between 2010 and 2020, illegal mining on indigenous lands increased by 495%, with Kayapó (PA), Mundurukú (PA) and Yanomami (RR) territories the most impacted by the activity.
According to the Indigenous Missionary Council - CIMI, the growth of illegal mining in the Amazon became more evident in January this year with the humanitarian crisis of the Yanomami. In January alone, the Ministry of Justice estimated that 20,000 miners were inside the indigenous resguardo, with an average number of indigenous people in the region of 30,000.
In addition, the report also highlights the impacts of illegal activity on the environment, such as the contamination of rivers by mercury released by gold mining near the villages, generating the loss of terrestrial and fluvial biodiversity, causing the siltation of waterways. Data from the Ministry of Health indicate that in 2023 alone, around 50 Yanomami Indians died from disease or malnutrition.
With information from https://paamsj.org.br/
Source : jesuitas.lat
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