World Heritage Watch Report 2021
Canaima National Park: Relentless Mining on the Rise - A report by SOSOrinoco (page 154 of the Annual Report)
The year 2020 marked the 58th anniversary of the founding of Canaima National Park, a World Heritage Site (CNP-WHS), celebrated while the park lay under siege by the illegal mining operations inside its boundaries as well as in adjacent areas. According to UNESCO, “Canaima is one of the principal marvels of creation, unique in the world. It constitutes one of the most archaic and best-preserved territories on the planet.” In June of 1962, it was declared a National Park, and was added to the World Heritage List in 1994.
The following reports, going back to 2018, describe the destruction of more than 1,000 hectares of its ecosystems (see Table 1), from which gold is being extracted by means of semi-mechanized techniques that also use the toxic element mercury (Hg). These operations also involve some 20 floating factories known as “mining rafts,” which have a devastating effect on the beds of the crystal-clear rivers in the immediate vicinity of well-known Angel Falls, the tallest uninterrupted waterfall in the world (Figure 1):
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Angel Falls (Auyantepuy), Canaima World Heritage Site | Photo by Rodolfo Gerstl
The reality is even worse along the boundaries of CNP-WHS where more than 7,400 hectares are being impacted by the illegal mining operations, as was made evident by the SOSOrinoco (2020) report.
The Correo del Caroní report (funded by the Pulitzer Center) investigated the southeastern sector of CNP-WHS, known as the Gran Sabana, where the largest mines are located, and where there is participation by the Pemón indigenous inhabitants, whose economies had been associated in past years, directly or indirectly, with the flow of tourists who once visited Roraima Tepui and other Gran Sabana attractions. The report identified 7 areas, the most prominent being El Mosquito and Mayen-Macriyen. These two areas have drawn attention as a result of an increase in mining activity there, which now occupies more than 500 hectares (Table 1 and Table 2).
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Mining inside CNP
Canaima National Park is divided into two sectors: The Western (64%) and the Eastern (36%), differentiated from each other by at least two factors: (1) the amount of rainfall and (2) the continuity of the forests. The Western sector has less rainfall (1,600 to 2,200 mm/year) and its forests are more continuous, while the Eastern sector has greater rainfall (2,200 to 4,000 mm/year) and its forests are distributed in a mosaic pattern, interspersed with savannas, and are more fragmented. The reason for this is the subject of inconclusive scientific debate.
At least 480 hectares of illegal gold mining operations have been detected in the Western sector, where the park boundaries are under increasing pressure emanating from a large mining focus situated outside the national park at Las Claritas-Chibay (along the eastern boundary) and from another large focus of operations at San Salvador de Paúl-Urimán (along the Caroní river boundary). These pressures generate greater threat to the landscape, directly affecting the Caroní River, and threatening the continuity of the forests that had remained relatively unperturbed up until lately thanks to the difficulties in accessing the area. In this sector, it is troublesome to see the degradation of the ecosystem surrounding the table-top mountain mass known as Auyantepuy, the most outstanding icon of CNP-WHS, one that attracts the most tourists, thanks to its waterfalls, particularly Angel Falls, as well its number of species. It is noteworthy that no Land Management Plan and Use Regulations have yet been implemented to provide better zoning and administration in this Western sector. In any case, this would probably have no effect on the current mining situation, as already existing legislation absolutely prohibits mining activity in any areas designated as national parks; however, there is no political will to enforce this. Furthermore, the entire social situation in the region has resulted in the unfortunate disappearance of all scientific activity in one of the planet’s most interesting regions for the study of biodiversity, as for instance the summits of the tepui formations of the Guiana Shield.
In the Eastern sector, known as the Gran Sabana, most of the forests are sub-mesothermic montane forests types. These are distributed along the hills and dales of the larger river valleys, and constitute the transition between the forests of the highlands and lowlands. In the El Mosquito sector, it was observed that the mining activity (e.g., Arenales) had displaced the woodlands that were once characterized by species having very specialized adaptations, distributed in patches, which suggests that the eradication of the woodlands may be permanent. The soil substratum that facilitates the fixation of plant species has been totally removed, thus there are areas that are now devoid of any vegetation with no likelihood of restoration.
The riparian forests of the Gran Sabana are distributed mainly along the shores and valleys of the Yuruaní, Aponwao and Kukenán rivers, and have unique characteristics, in other words, their flora is very peculiar, as many of the species in these forests are not generally found in the other sub-mesothermic forests of Venezuela’s Guayana region, where the distribution of these riparian forests is restricted to the Caroní River basin, which means that any activity that results in their degradation will also lead to the loss of unique biological communities. Any mining activity along the shores of these rivers constitutes an irreversible assault against Venezuela’s and humanity’s biological heritage. These are the forests that are under the most pressure. They are fixated in the slightly better soils used by the Pemón people for small-scale farming. Because the region’s soils tend to be very poor in nutrients, this also contributes to the transformation of forests into savannas, a process known as savannification (Hernández and Dezzeo, 2004).
Another ecosystem that is highly vulnerable to the mining operations is found in the Mauritia flexuosa palm swamp communities, known locally as morichales. These are major ecological icons of the Gran Sabana, and are highly diverse and complex. The morichales are being adversely affected by mining activity at places such as the El Mosquito and Campo Alegre mines, near which one can see isolated remnants of them, into which now run contaminated flows originated in the mines located at higher topographical locations.
Finally, the diagnostic analysis conducted by SOSOrinoco, Current Gold Mining Situation in 2020 at Canaima National Park, estimates that: a) 7,419 hectares in the CNP-WHS show “high vulnerability” to the mining activity, as these areas consist mainly of potentially vulnerable “sub-montane ombrophilous forests” (SOF); b) 8,935 hectares of the CNP-WHS show “average vulnerability,” and here the areas most likely to be affected are also SOF’s. This same report estimated that current mining operations on 7,679 hectares along the boundaries of the CNP-WHS in turn are causing 22,481 hectares within the CNP-WHS to become likewise vulnerable (Figure 3).
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The mines continue to operate in an unrestricted manner and are on the rise inside the CNP-WHS. It is evident that the authorities have neither the interest nor the wherewithal to respond effectively to these problems. In recent months the presence of irregular armed groups have given rise to an increase in violence in the entire region, all related in one way or another to the mining operations, inside the CNP-WHS as well as along its boundaries. The various conflicts between and among these groups, the military and the Pemón people have resulted in homicides, massacres and the forced migration of the indigenous people into Brazil. Furthermore, there is evidence of possible political pacts between the government and the indigenous leadership aimed at expediting the mining operations in exchange for minimizing the violence and preventing the indigenous territories from being invaded by non-Pemón miners.
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The recently published IUCN World Heritage Outlook 3 (November 2020) again places Canaima National Park (PNC-WHS) on the list of World Heritage sites that are cause for “Significant Concern,” a category no different from what was assigned in the 2017 report. This strongly suggests that the aforementioned report has been less than compliant with the tenets and objectives of IUCN World Heritage Outlook, which clearly state that: “Based on expert knowledge, IUCN’s World Heritage Outlook is designed to track the state of conservation of all natural World Heritage Sites over time. Implemented by the IUCN World Heritage Programme and IUCN’s World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA), it aims to provide reliable, transparent and independent information on the present situation and future prospects of natural World Heritage through Conservation Outlook Assessments (from their own website: About the IUCN World Heritage Outlook).”
It is our opinion that such has not been the case with Canaima National Park, given that the authors of this latest Outlook report should have had access to all the above-mentioned reports (and we are confident that they did), and logically they could not have concluded that the 2020 status of Canaima was equal or similar to that of 2017. If indeed they had access to these reports, then we are faced with a worrying methodological problem with the Outlook’s assessment, because it would seem that it is unable to measure the degree of evolution of a situation of “Significant Concern.” Our conclusion is that Outlook has not provided good advice on the real situation of Canaima National Park, a natural World Heritage Site to UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee. IUCN should have reclassified Canaima’s situation as being “Critical.”
Canaima’s situation has continued to deteriorate, even more so amidst Venezuela’s current humanitarian crisis, and as a result of the Venezuelan State’s policy of openly encouraging more mining activity, totally disregarding its environmental obligations. It is necessary for UNESCO to include PNC-WHS on the List of World Heritage Sites in Danger, as a political action that would motivate the authorities to act in a decisive and assertive way to put an end to mining operations inside the park’s boundaries.
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WE NEED YOUR HELP!
- Visit the www.SOSOrinoco.org website
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- Join/sign our petition to UNESCO to include Canaima World Heritage Site on the World Heritage Site in Danger List
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- Volunteer: if you would like to help, please tell us how and we’ll be happy to enlist you in this important endeavor
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