Brazil, Guyana share mercury menace
The ongoing indiscriminate use of mercury in gold mining in parts of the Amazon having come into sharp focus in the electoral campaign exchanges between the still Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and his political rival Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva, a local miner familiar with the gold-mining industry in parts of Brazil has told the Stabroek Business that any expectation that a change in government in Brasilia is likely to bring an end to the use of mercury in gold recovery is nothing more than a “silly dream.”
Speaking with the Stabroek Business in Georgetown earlier this week, the one-time Mazaruni miner who says that he is still “very much in the business” said that policymakers and artisanal miners live in “two different worlds” insofar as the use of mercury is concerned. “When political noises come into contact with realities that have to do with whether people feed their families or not, only one side will ever win”, he said.
While stating that he had “no problem” with efforts to remove mercury from gold mining, the miner told the Stabroek Business that banning mercury will never succeed except the people who ban it can explain to the users how they are going to feed their families. Asserting that how the problem of the use of mercury is seen “depends on the side that you are on.”
Returning to the Brazil situation the local miner who said that he had spent “quite a few years” in artisanal mining told the Stabroek Business that he was “not sure” that the argument between the two men seeking to become Brazil’s next president had “anything at all to do with mercury in mining.” Asserting that the issue of the use of mercury has been “an argument in gold mining” in Brazil for many years, he said that it was his guess that the “mercury issue” would go away just as soon as the elections are over. “Brazilian politicians are like any other politicians. They make noises when they think they have to make noises. Do you know how long they have been doing that [using mercury in mining] in Brazil?
The example of the travails of the country’s Yanomani Indians is a microcosm of a wider problem that is now prevalent in other parts of the country. More than thirty years ago, after Brazil had issued a decree recognising the ancestral homes of the country’s Yanomani Indians, what became, then, a protected area witnessed a devastating invasion by garimpeiros, marauding miners with no regard for environmental considerations. The area inside the Yanomani reserve believed to have been destroyed by mining activities has reportedly increased from 1,200 hectares (2,965 acres) at the end of 2018 to 3,272 hectares (8,085 acres) at the end of last year, according to the report “Yanomani Under Attack,” from the Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), an NGO that advocates for environmental diversity and the rights of Indigenous people.
The current status of the use of mercury in gold mining in Guyana is perhaps best summed up in a comment made to the Stabroek News on this issue by the Commissioner of the Guyana Geology & Mines Commission, Newell Dennison in which he asserted back in August last year that “complete eradication of the chemical in local mining activities may not be possible.” The reason, Dennison was reported as saying, was that many artisanal miners are unable to access financing to transition into mercury-free mining.
The miner with whom this newspaper spoke, says that old habits die hard. He believes that the presence of what he calls “really bad habits” in the local gold mining industry, including the presence of illegal Brazilian gold miners in Guyana and the absence of sustained attempts by the authorities to curb the practice, have combined over the years, to cause the practice of mercury in mining to become entrenched.