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SOSOrinoco's new report
The 2016 Mining Arc decree marked a milestone in the mining history of Venezuela. This report shows the status of some important socio-environmental variables within the Mining Arc space, and analyzes their link to mining through a preliminary spatial analysis. In a “geographic information system” (GIS), we integrate documentary, statistical, cartographic, thematic data and satellite images, taking into account their potential relationship with mining activity.
The report highlights violent events, the presence of irregular armed groups, the participation of the Venezuelan Armed Forces and the spatio-temporal behavior of diseases such as malaria. The sources of technical, scientific and testimonial information cover the period between 2016 and 2020.
The informal and illegal mining sector is currently the most important economic activity in Bolívar state, around which other activities associated with the provision of goods and services are developed, many related to smuggling, trafficking of drugs, weapons, people, labor and sexual exploitation, among others, managed by organized crime groups.
Highlights of the report:
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Mining: “Formal” mining is almost non-existent. Having been "nationalized", gold mining has been placed primarily in the hands of collectives of "informal" miners who make the first wave of gold extraction with mercury and gravimetric methods, this being the first key to the government's strategy. The second key is to employ or subcontract irregular and illegal armed groups to efficiently capture much of that production and transfer it into the hands of the regime. The third key point of the strategy is to establish numerous industrial cyanidation plants (currently there are at least 13) completely controlled by government agents, which allow the extraction of mining waste that has already undergone previous extraction with mercury with even greater efficiency (especially from the mines closest to the plants). Cyanidation (extraction of gold by chemical processes with cyanide) can extract up to 80% of the total gold content of raw geological material.
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Deforestation: Within the Mining Arc, mining is not the main factor of change in vegetation cover. However, more than half of the almost 21,300 hectares affected by mining occurred in the last 10 years. The largest mining activity is concentrated and expanding south of Block 4 of the Arco Minero, in the heart of the Imataca Forest Reserve, on the outskirts of the towns of El Callao and Las Claritas. It is also evident that in Block 5 (Icabarú) mining and infrastructure have expanded.
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Violence: The report analyzed and geo-referenced data collected by CODEHCIU (Comisión para los Derechos Humanos y la Ciudadanía - CODEHCIU) from 2018-2019.
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Public Health: The collapse of the public health system and the re-emergence of diseases that had been controlled or eradicated in the past can be seen. Tens of thousands of people, coming from all regions of the country, have mobilized towards the Arco Minero looking for an economic alternative that allows them to survive.
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Mercury: Despite the fact that Venezuelan laws prohibit its use, possession, storage, and transportation in Venezuela, mercury is massively used in mining areas, where it is smuggled in from Colombia, the Essequibo Reclamation Zone, Brazil and other countries, through a lucrative illicit traffic benefitting smugglers, police and the Armed Forces.
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Conclusions & Final Considerations:
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We are faced with a government that, confronted with the fall in oil revenues and the collapse of its oil industry, was unable to find another alternative, in the short, medium or long term, other than that of turning to mining, especially gold, for its profitability, ease and relative low investment, immediacy of marketability and little traceability. This source of income, which is not income for the Treasury but for the actors who control the mine, is being exploited by any possible means.
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Mining activity now has new actors such as the Colombian guerrilla groups, operating under agreements with the political-military
sector.
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The Mining Arc represents an essential policy for the regime, structured around an intricate web of organized crime, managed by the high levels of the Chavista-Madurista political spheres of power, and further at the top, by the Venezuelan military leadership. It is a policy that has deepened and expanded the old, unsustainable reliance on extractive industries and the rentier state, elevating them to unprecedented levels.
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The Mining Arc is the arrogant and defiant public manifestation of the will of a failed state to survive at the expense of looting the heritage of the Venezuelan nation.
* Download the report: Characterization and Analysis of Some Key Socio-Environmental Variables in the Orinoco Mining Arc
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By: Francisco Dallmeier and Cristina V. Burelli
The political and economic ruin of Venezuela, once one of Latin America’s wealthiest countries, is by now a well-known story. Far less understood are the catastrophic impacts of the crisis on the country’s environment. International action is urgently needed — first to stabilize the downfall, and then to rebuild functional environmental institutions. The fifth session of the U.N. Environment Assembly (UNEA-5) in Nairobi could provide a path to reverting Venezuela’s untenable environmental trajectory.
The dismantling of Venezuela’s environmental institutions and the collapse of its oil sector have generated a chain reaction of unsustainable natural resource extraction. Illegal land grabbing, deforestation and an out-of-control gold rush in protected rainforest areas have created a perfect storm combining environmental degradation with a humanitarian crisis. Massive sediment loads from mining are decimating reservoirs and hydropower generation capacity, while mercury from gold extraction pollutes rivers and sickens people. READ MORE
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¡We invite you to watch SOSOrinoco's short documentary on the Mining Arc (English subtitles)!
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HOW YOU CAN HELP
- Visit the www.SOSOrinoco.org website
- Follow us on @SOSOrinoco Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for updates and news and use #SOSOrinoco
- Join/sign our petition to UNESCO to include Canaima World Heritage Site on the World Heritage Site in Danger List
- Write to us with ideas, send us testimonials, photos, information
- 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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