FEATURE-In Lula’s war against illegal mining, Amazon villagers count their losses

* Brazil is cracking down on illegal mining in the Amazon

* Deforestation affects traditional sources of income from forests

*The government insists on offering economic alternatives

By Andre Cabette Fabio HUMAITA, Brazil, April 26 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – In November, Pedro and two of his sons rushed to the river and sank their mining boat under the brown water to hide it from officials patrolling the Amazon , the Brazilian Amazon. The government is taking tough action against wild gold diggers.

Wooden ships like theirs, equipped with suction hoses and other mining machinery, are used to dredge for gold in the region’s rivers – a polluting and largely illegal activity that President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva wants to eradicate. Hundreds of unlicensed mining vessels have been destroyed by federal patrols since he took office in January 2023, with miners in some cases fined or arrested.

But in some communities along the river, villagers say mining has become their only means of survival as deforestation and land grabbing erode their income from traditional activities such as collecting and selling forest nuts and fruits such as the prized acai berry. “They took the wood from the forest and burned the nut orchards… Mining is what’s left, we survive on it,” Pedro, 54, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on the veranda of his wooden riverside house. His real name is not being used to protect his identity.

In the municipality of Humaita, where Pedro’s small village of Pirapitinga is located, annual deforestation increased almost 20-fold between 2015 and 2022, according to data from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research. Under Lula, who has vowed to protect the Amazon and its indigenous people to help fight climate change, deforestation has fallen sharply in the municipality and elsewhere in the region.

In places like Pirapitinga, located in western Brazil in the state of Amazonas, the loss of forest and the spread of cattle pastures has prompted some locals to rely more on wildcat mining, known in Brazil as “garimpo”, which involves the production of mercury used to separate gold from sediment. . Spurred by higher global gold prices, mining activity has increased over the past decade, according to MapBiomas, a Brazilian network of scientists, nonprofits, universities and technology companies.

The land area affected by small-scale mining more than doubled between 2012 and 2022 to 264,000 hectares (652,000 acres) in Brazil, much of it near the Amazon rivers, surpassing industrial mining, according to MapBiomas data released this month have been released. Many locals see the illegal trade as justified by the lack of economic alternatives, something critics say the government has failed to address as enforcement efforts intensify.

The government “burns the boats but never comes back, it doesn’t actually offer anything,” says local social worker Ireniza Lia Silva. The crackdown is taking a toll on the community and even affecting donations to her evangelical church, she added. LOSS OF INCOME

On the forested banks of the Madeira River, between the town of Humaita and Pirapitinga, you can see mining ships moored on grassy beaches, or hidden among the branches of trees. Some two-story boats are used both as mining stations and as homes by the poorest families, locals said. Another common occurrence is destroyed, partially submerged boats.

During Lula’s first nine months, 315 mining boats were destroyed along the Madeira — more than double the 2022 total, according to government data collected by Maria Karina Mendonca de Moraes, a doctoral student at the Federal University of Rondonia State. “There are people who have lost their homes,” she said, referring to the economic impact of the crackdown on mining families.

According to government data, more than half of Humaita’s 57,400 residents are considered poor. Pedro, who lives with his wife and five of his children, said he and his sons took out loans to help buy and equip their mining boat for 60,000 reais ($11,500).

It took them another 3,000 reais and a week’s work to get the boat running again after sinking it in November. People who work for the miners are also feeling the pressure.

“As a cook I used to earn 100 reais a week in a ‘garimpo’ boat, but now they don’t let people work anymore,” says Ocilene Brito Silva, another resident of Pirapitinga, who now relies mainly on direct cash transfers from the government to to survive. . “The acai (berry) season has ended, there are no more nuts and fishing has also become tough,” she said.

In a small office on the Humaita River, Mauri Maurilio dos Santos serves as both president of the local rural workers’ union and chairman of a new cooperative of ‘garimpo’ miners. He said the government must address the economic fallout from the crackdown on mining.

“If the government wants to eradicate ‘garimpo’, then we want compensation, or a (government aid) account to cover the costs for when they (miners) don’t have work,” he said. ENVIRONMENTAL COSTS

Illegal small-scale mining has been practiced by poor Brazilians for centuries, often tolerated by authorities seeking to consolidate colonization of the country’s vast interior. However, since colonial times, shovels and sieves have been replaced by heavier equipment, such as mining barges, expensive and more destructive dredgers, and bulldozers, used to dig slopes along rivers.

The resurgence of small-scale mining has led to chronic mercury pollution, and in parts of the Amazon, indigenous peoples are dying from diseases brought into their territories by miners and from violence related to land conflicts fueled by this activity. In Humaita, most of the mining takes place outside indigenous areas, but government officials say environmental costs must be addressed even if it causes hardship for miners.

“You can’t just give up crime enforcement because of extreme poverty or unemployment,” said Cesar Luiz da Silva Guimaraes, chief inspector at Ibama, a federal environmental agency. “There are environmental costs and health consequences for people who have no connection to mining.”

A 2023 study by the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation health research institute found that 25% of fish sold in Humaita’s markets were contaminated with mercury above safe limits. Researchers say that stopping the environmental damage caused by the ‘garimpeiros’ will only succeed if the miners have other ways to make a living.

For example, state subsidies boost the income of Amazon rubber tappers, potentially allowing some to earn nearly 15,000 reais in a month, says Aurelio Diaz Herraiz of the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Amazonas State. “This makes their (miners’) heads tick: they don’t have to invest in boats, nor do they have to move with their families,” he added, saying the federal government could do more to curb wiretapping rubber or other traditional forest activities. .

Only 50 million reais is earmarked for guaranteeing minimum prices for forest products in Brazil’s 2023/2024 agricultural plan, out of 364 billion reais in total subsidies, official data show. By contrast, gold prices surpassed $2,400 an ounce this month, a record high fueled by distant geopolitical instability fueling the Amazon gold rush.

Pedro said he had no plans to give up mining despite the risk of expensive equipment being destroyed. “If ‘garimpo’ comes to an end, we’re done for,” he said. ($1 = 5.2072 reais)

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)