Facing environmental disaster

To get a gram of gold, people use two or three grams of toxic mercury to exploit it. And in order to have handmade gold mines, people do not hesitate to destroy forests and destroy the environment.

For several months now, the world gold price has continuously set new records. Tens of thousands of ' gold bandits ' are flooding deep into tropical rain forests in the western Amazon Peru. They created golden beaches along the Amazon River and tributaries. Hundreds of construction vehicles, mainly excavators and river dredgers, operate day and night at full capacity.

A forest in Madre de Dios becomes desert. (Photo: Reuters)

Enter mercury bluff

According to Peruvian customs documents, in the past four years, the country has imported mercury with an increase from 75,000 kg in 2006 to 132,000 kg last year. Particularly this year, as of early September, the official amount of imported mercury is 131,876 kg. The amount of smuggling cannot be calculated.

The Ministry of Energy and Mining (MEM) said imported mercury is used primarily for manual mining. A recent survey by Caritas estimates that in the province of Madre de Dios (Mother of the Gods) - home to the most illegal gold yards - uses 50 tons of mercury annually, most out of control. State environmental agency.

Last March, the Institute of Geology, Mining, Metallurgy and MEM issued 1,592 licenses for concessions mining in Madre de Dios but only 19 licenses were approved by the Ministry of Environment in terms of ecological impact. Notably, there are 87 mines in the Tambopata National Nature Reserve that are licensed to exploit.

According to MEM, the control of illegal gold fields is under the jurisdiction of the provinces but corruption is widespread so most are out of government control.

Due to the unlicensed and uncontrolled licensing of gold dumps, mercury has penetrated into the soil, flowing freely into water sources, killing aquatic species.

In smuggled gold fields in Huepetuhe or Inambari in the province of Madre de Dios, completely absent from tax officials, a sign of mercury is sold freely at prices ranging from 150 to 180 units (1 sole = 6,982 VND) in containers Paste the name Mercury American or Spanish Mercury.

According to national regulations, all companies importing mercury must take measures to recover or reuse mercury after use. However, the statute does not bind to the final conditions for mercury treatment, but according to experts it is best to go abroad because there is no burial place in the country. For this reason, tons of toxic mercury are scattered or evaporated everywhere.

So dangerous, why does the Peruvian Government not prohibit mercury free trade? This question was explained by Victor Vargas Vargas, General Director of the Mining Bureau: 'Prohibiting selling will produce smuggling. 98% of mine operations are gold mining with mostly mercury additives. Large gold mining companies do not use mercury to exploit gold but use cyanide. Only handcrafted gold yards use mercury . '

Hundreds of tons of soil and rock were dug up every day and tons of toxic mercury were used to treat land for gold by manual methods. (Photo: AFP)

Kill the forest

Dan Collyns, the BBC's correspondent, said that flying high to see how the tropical rainforest and the environment in southern Amazon were devastated .

The forest seemed to run almost endless, suddenly interrupted by the raw color of soil and sand. Rivers were torn apart and thousands of hectares of land were covered with mercury-stagnant ponds.

According to biologist Ernesto Raez, director of the Center for Sustainable Environment at Cayetano Heredia University in the capital of Lima, nearly 200 km ² of tropical rainforests in the province of Madre de Dios have disappeared due to illegal gold mining. This loss is very serious because Madre de Dios is considered one of the world's biodiversity areas. There are many records here about butterflies, birds, amphibians.

Mr. Antonio Brack, Peru's Minister of Environment, once told the BBC: ' If I, as the environment minister, allow what mine operators want to do, then within 20 years, Madre de Dios will become an unprecedented environmental disaster in human history . '

Mr. Brack once called on the government to close 80% of legal or illegal gold mines and ban the use of river dredges and other heavy equipment for mining. But each time, he faced the fierce reaction of mine owners and 'gold bandits' because the piece of rice.

But in fact, clearing gold mines even temporarily is impossible. The poverty and lack of opportunity to make money in the Peruvian highlands forced mountain people to rush to illegal gold fields to make a living.

Paulino Chavez is a mining worker with 7 children. Every day, he earns about 8 USD. He confessed: ' I know we are killing the forest. This land will never be the same again. But my life here is easier to breathe in my village '.