Mongabay Series: Amazon Infrastructure
Remote Guyana in the northern Amazon is home to some of the world’s largest un fragmented forest expanses, but the immediate expansion of gold mining in the region threatens to leave a mosaic of devastation for many years, according to a new study.
The research, published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, found that the recovery of the forest in the artisanal gold mines of the abandoned Amazon remains sterile, without tree growth, 3 to 4 years after the miners packed their devices and set off for other Amazonian perspectives.
The Guyana Shield covers 270 million hectares (more than one million square miles), spanning Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana, parts of Venezuela, Colombia and northern Brazil. The region offers stunning ecological services: it retails 18% of the world’s tropical forests and 20% of the world’s new water. It is also, in the most sensitive case, a large and widespread gold deposit that has attracted the interest of local and foreign researchers in search of profit.
The director of the article, Dr. Michelle Kalamandeen, a former graduate student at the School of Geography of Leeds and lately a postdoctoral student at the University of Cambridge, has been reading about small-scale mining in the Amazon for several years. He explained that, while previous studies had tested the forest recovery of agricultural activities, there had not been a cash assessment of forest recovery from artisanal gold mining. The new study was based on box studies on 18 plots spread over two well-known gold mining spaces, Mahdia and Puruni, in central Guyana.
“There is very little recovery of 3 to 4 years after the abandonment of a mine and a relave pond,” Kalamandeen said. “The site on the land where the rejected arable layer was stacked had a recovery rate similar to that of agricultural plots in South and Central America.”
Dr. David Galbraith, an associate professor at the School of Geography at the University of Leeds, co-designed the exam with Kalamandeen as a component of his PhD. Galbraith indicated that depleted nutrients were the main explanation for why the forest had recovered.
“Our examination shows that nutrient extraction during the excavation procedure can be critical to restricting recovery. Other modes of deforestation are not related to the extraction of the arable layer in this way,” Galbraith said.
The study, in particular, noted that impoverished nitrogen levels were responsible for limited growth, as opposed to contamination with heavy metals such as mercury. The research, which took samples of mercury pollution, found that grades fell 250 times less in deserted sites compared to active mining areas. Rather than being a positive finding, Kalamandeen warned that the poisonous detail, which does not break down, was likely to leak to the larger ecosystem, causing disorders especially for neighboring indigenous communities that rely on fish as their main food source. The study did not explore this option in its scope.
Although agriculture and extensive livestock are to blame for much larger general deforestation in the Amazon, the rainforest’s ability to sequester carbon is much more seriously affected by the oil mine consistent with the hectare. According to Kalamandeen. Much of the rainforest is mining concessions, and an estimated 1,680 square kilometers (617 square miles) of the Amazon were lost due to gold mining between 2001 and 2013, according to a 2015 study.
“We estimate that the slow recovery rates in mine wells and ponds have lately reduced carbon sequestration in Amazonian secondary forests across around 21,000 [tons of carbon consistent with the year], to carbon that would have accumulated as a result of more classic land uses, such as agriculture. . pastures,” the authors examined, referring to land already lost due to gold mining, wrote.
Juliana Siqueira-Gay, a tropical mining researcher who did not participate in the study, looked favorably at the new research and said it had vital implications for the creation of new policies for the rehabilitation of post-mining sites.
“The effects on needs for large-scale recovery of mining areas. This is a contribution not only to science, but also to land control and rehabilitation plans in mining areas,” Siqueira-Gay said.
Kalamandeen warned that new studies can help the consultant to make an effective recovery of the landscape. It is especially important, he said, that mining wells and relapever ponds are filled with plant soil in a way that mimics soil grass layers. The problem, of course, is the collection of such recovery, which it says can reach up to $3,000 per hectare in some cases, which is much more expensive than paying fines for violating environmental regulations, especially if it is considered that environmental fines when assessed in countries like Brazil are rarely paid if ever.
In addition to the rapid environmental devastation at gold mining sites, a 2017 review found that infrastructure built for large-scale commercial mining operations in the Amazon leads to an accumulation of deforestation that extends to surrounding forests.
Researchers from the study, published in the journal Nature Communications, used satellite photographs to show that 11,670 square kilometers (approximately 4,500 square miles) of the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest, were lost due to mining between 2005 and 2015, representing approximately 10%. Amazon deforestation. This loss lasted 70 kilometers (approximately 43 miles) due to auxiliary infrastructure, adding roads, accommodations and airports.
In Guyana, the population extracts gold from rivers using craft strategies from before colonization. However, practice has grown in the country for more than 10 to 15 years as the value of gold is higher and mechanized techniques have presented greater opportunities for profit.
Kalamandeen explained that most of Guyana’s mines are built as small-scale operations, whose degrees of production vary with the conversion of economic situations and opportunities. Many miners paint like loggers when the value of gold falls, but will move to gold mining when the value increases, leaps connected to social upheavals like economic crises.
In 2008, the housing crisis in the United States raised the value of gold to US$1700, in line with the ounce. At that time, small-scale or farm-consistent mining exploded throughout Guyana, but then declined, as did mining-like deforestation, when the value of foreign gold fell. Since the advent of COVID-19, which had a major effect on the global economy in the first part of 2020, the value of gold has risen to more than US$2,000 consistent with the ounce and is expected to increase further.
Kalamandeen stated that there are already reports on the floor that gold mining in the Amazon is expanding as the global pandemic and economic crisis worsen, and that the lack of oversight, implementation and weakening of environmental legislation will nearly worsen the situation.
“We are already seeing reports of increased mining activity. It reportedly turns out it’s almost becoming a kind of loose [gold] extraction for everyone,” Kalamandeen said.
While Guyanese law requires mining corporations to repair the forest ecosystem, most miners do not comply with regulations and choose to pay a small fine, which can be much less expensive than restoring land, according to Kalamandeen.
“The fines are too low and there is not enough tracking or application for the land to be restored. Until the prices of the non-restoration of the land reflect the value of the restoration, the same disorders will occur in the future,” Kalamandeen concluded.
Quote:
Kalamandeen, M., Gloor, E., Johnson, I., Agard, S., Katow, M., Vanbrooke, A., Ashley, D., Batterman, SA, Ziv, G., Holder-Collins, K. Array Phillips, OL, Brondizio, ES, Vieira, I., Galbraith, D. Limited biomass from gold mining in Amazon forests. Journal of Applied Ecology, 2020.
Header image: golas pond at the site of the Mahdia gold mine, Guyana. Image by Michelle Kalamandeen 2017.
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