New Policy Brief Details Necessary Reforms, Policy Changes to Tackle Extraction and Sale of Illegal Gold
CALI, COLOMBIA – Today, FACT joined leading civil society organizations from Peru, Colombia and Brazil for an event detailing the crisis of illegal gold mining affecting the Amazon basin as part of the Sixteenth Conference of Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (COP16) in Cali, Colombia. At the event, the organizations released a new policy brief outlining seven key recommendations for governments to better address, mitigate, and prevent the harms caused by illegal mining.
The policy brief is the result of collaboration between the Amazon Alliance for Reducing the Impacts of Gold Mining (AARIMO) in Colombia, the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition in the United States, the Igarapé Institute in Brazil, and the Observatory on Illegal Mining (OMI) in Peru.
“As international leaders gather in Cali for the UN Biodiversity Conference, tackling illegal gold mining in the Amazon must be on the agenda,” said Duban Canal from the Amazon Alliance for Reducing the Impacts of Gold Mining, a coalition of six leading environmental organizations in Colombia. “The growing and alarming combination of environmental crimes associated with illegal gold mining is compromising our ability to reverse biodiversity loss in the Amazon, a region that is home to over 47 million people, including two million Indigenous peoples and other local communities.”
The recommendations made in the policy brief to tackle illegal gold mining include measures to:
- Promote shared responsibility among both source and destination countries to address illegally-mined gold;
- Combat illicit finance to prevent environmental criminals from profiting off of the destruction of vulnerable ecosystems;
- Strengthen governance in cross-border areas;
- Advance collective, community-led actions under a “watershed approach” to address mercury contamination in affected areas;
- Establish a minimum legal and regulatory framework for gold supply chains across the Amazon region;
- Strengthen due diligence and financial monitoring in the gold supply chain; and
- Facilitate a shift toward a sustainable development model that includes alternative livelihoods for affected communities.
“Environmental crimes like illegal gold mining cut across national borders,” said Julia Yansura, program director for environmental crime and illicit finance at the FACT Coalition. “For countries where illegal gold mining is taking place, the environmental, human and economic costs of this illicit activity are all too clear. Illegal gold also has consequences for market countries, however, where illicit goods and dirty money threaten the integrity of their financial systems, pad the pockets of transnational criminal networks, and significantly undermine security and governance at the regional and international levels. We need to adopt a collaborative, transnational approach to tackling these crimes. This policy brief provides a blueprint for the governments of both source and destination countries to do exactly that.”
“The Amazon has been facing an alarming crisis caused by illegal mining and gold laundering that fuels organized crime networks across several countries,” added Melina Risso, research director at Igarape Institute. “This complex dynamic not only intensifies local conflicts, but also makes it difficult to implement conservation policies and combat deforestation, illegal mining, and other practices that threaten the integrity of the forest. To change this scenario, it is crucial to establish a minimum structure for gold supply chains in Amazon countries and promote due diligence and financial monitoring programs.”
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Notes to the Editor:
- Click here to read the full policy brief by FACT and three leading civil society organizations from countries in the Amazon region.
- El informe en español está disponible aquí.
- FACT’s latest report analyzes 230 cases of environmental crimes committed in the Amazon region, finding that the United States is the most common destination for the illegal products and proceeds of these crimes.
- For press inquiries, please contact Julia Yansura at jyansura@thefactcoalition.org. The following spokespeople are also available for comment: