Study finds surge in illegal gold mining in Brazil

The sharp rise ingoldprices has driven asurgeofillegalmininginBrazil, much of it in the Amazon rainforest, according to astudypublished Tuesday.

Goldoutput inBrazil, the world's 14th-biggest producer last year, has soared since the coronavirus pandemic pushed international prices to record highs.

Of the 112 tonnes ofgoldproduced inBrazillast year, at least seven percent wasillegaland 25 percent potentiallyillegal, found thestudyfrom the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG).

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"From 2020 to 2021, there was a 44-percent increase in the amount ofillegalgoldproduced," said thestudy.

The trend continued basically unchanged in the first six months of 2022, it found.

Lucrative profits are driving agoldrush in the Brazilian Amazon, where the amount of deforestation forminingset a record of 121 square kilometers (47 square miles) last year, according to satellite monitoring by the national space agency, INPE.

Thestudyfound at least 23 percent ofminingdeforestation in the Amazon, a key buffer against climate change, was on Indigenous reservations, conservation areas and other officially protected lands.

Illegalwildcat miners with links to organized crime have violently attacked Indigenous inhabitants in some areas, and studies show the mercury they use to separategoldfrom sediment is contaminating rivers.

Thestudyfound the vast majority ofBrazil'sillegalgoldoutput -- 98 percent -- came from three municipalities in the northern state of Para, with the Kayapo and Munduruku Indigenous groups particularly hard-hit.

Federal prosecutors have urged President Jair Bolsonaro's government, which faces international criticism over the accelerating destruction of the Amazon, to adopt stricter controls on the origin ofgold.

Prosecutors estimate the social and environmental damages fromillegalgoldminingat 39 billion reais ($7.5 billion) from January 2021 to June 2022, thestudysaid.

That is nearly equal toBrazil's total estimatedgoldrevenues for the period, 44.6 billion reais.

Total tax revenues fromgoldminingmeanwhile came to less than two percent of the damages.

"The harm (from wildcatgoldmining) in the Amazon affects everyone... but the profits generated by these operations are concentrated among just a few," thestudy's lead author, engineer Bruno Manzolli, told AFP.

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