By Kathryn Maureen Ryan
Impunity Watch, Managing Editor
LIMA, Peru – Large shafts of Peru’s Amazonian rainforests are disappearing every day, turned from once pristine virgin rainforest ecosystems, home to countless animal and plant species, have been turned into fragmented forests and mercury poisoned wastelands. This devastating deforestation trend is driven by illegal gold mining operations in Peru, a practice dependent on the use of toxins like mercury, a neurotoxin used to bind gold found in natural deposits. The ruined wastelands scar the southeastern region of Madre de Dios, a region high in biodiversity whose unique natural environment attacks scientists interested in studying the area for its future pharmaceutical and scientific potential as well as eco-tourists whose visits help support the region’s economy. The practice of illegal mining is devastating to the local indigenous community, who live in voluntary isolation deep within the Amazonian forests.
Over the past decade, mining has denuded 230 square miles (595 square kilometers) of forest in the Madre de Dios region, poisoning the critical watershed. A study released last year, led by the Carnegie Institution for Science, found that 76.5 percent of people in the region had mercury levels above acceptable limits. Illegal mining is the second largest cause of deforestation in Peru, behind clear-cutting for agricultural development, Environmental Minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal said. “It is terrible for the nearly irremediable wounds it causes to the forest,” he said.
Rainforests serve as large scale natural carbon seeks, absorbing and holding atmospheric carbon dioxide, which make these ecosystem’s important natural mitigation tool for global climate change. Peru is home to the second-largest area of the Amazonian rainforest, after Brazil. According to the findings of new research conducted by the Carnegie Institute for Science (CIS) the Peruvian rainforests stores nearly seven billion metric tons of carbon stocks, mostly in its Amazon rainforest which is higher than The United States’ annual carbon emissions for 2013 which were calculated at 5.38 billion tons. However, according to Greg Asner, the project “found that nearly a billion metric tons of above-ground carbon stocks in Peru are at imminent risk of emission into the atmosphere due to land uses such as fossil fuel oil exploration, cattle ranching, oil palm plantations and gold mining.”
Deforestation and land conversion account for about 40 percent of Peru’s greenhouse gas emissions. The Peruvian government has vowed to halt deforestation by 2021, and Norwegian in September pledged $300 million toward that goal. However, Peru’s stewardship and conservation efforts have come under scrutiny by environmentalists as deforestation appears to be on the rise in the country. Despite the government’s crackdown on illegal minge smuggling has continued to proliferate in the country as smugglers move to bring illegal gold across the border into Bolivia for export to the United States.
The United Nations will host the 20th session of the Conference of the Parties e to the Kyoto Protocol to United Nations Convention on Climate Change will be held from December 1 to 12 December and is being hosted by the Government of Peru, in Lima.
For more information please see:
U.S. News and World Report – Scarred, poisoned wasteland highlights Peru’s challenges in halting deforestation – 2 December 2014
Reuters – FEATURE-Peru crackdown on illegal gold leads to new smuggling routes – 25 November 2014
The Guardian – Peru’s forests store more CO2 than US emits in a year, research shows – 7 November 2014
The United Nations Convention on Climate Change – Lima Climate Change Conference – December 2014 – December 2014
