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by Rebecca Froese and Janpeter Schilling

Illegal gold mining not only threatens biodiversity in the Peruvian Amazon, but also endangers the health and livelihoods of many people living in and around the gold mining areas. The government is trying to gain more control by formalizing gold mining, while at the same time driving out illegal gold miners and destroying their camps with the support of the environmental police and the military. So far, these initiatives have been only moderately successful, while human security in the areas remains precarious.

The idea of governance initiatives, such as the legal formalization of gold mining, is to ensure benefits for the local population and contribute to human security. The concept of human security focuses on the local impacts of ecological, economic and social dynamics. Originally developed by the United Nations, the concept of human security comprises three central foundations that people need to live: (1) environmental security, (2) livelihood security and (3) political security. Environmental security is understood as the absence of risks or threats to the environment on which a person or community depends and in which they live. Livelihood security refers to resources and income-generating activities that are essential for the provision of food and healthcare. Political security, in line with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, refers to the absence of physical and psychological risks or threats to a person or community. In concrete terms, this means ensuring the free development of cultural identities and the existence of strong social cohesion within and between social groups and the state.

In the following, we analyse how small-scale gold mining and formalization initiatives affect the human security of local communities in Peru and which power structures determine the distribution of costs and benefits. This blog article is based on a , which was published in November 2020.

Environmental (in)security

In the state of Madre de Dios, the human security of rural communities depends heavily on ecosystem services. The availability of fertile land and clean water for agricultural production as well as intact forests for the extraction of forest products, such as Brazil nuts, are vital. Mostly illegal gold mining activities severely restrict the local population's access to land. Illegal miners, many of them migrants from the Andes, occupy land in order to settle and carry out mining activities. These are often accompanied by uncontrolled and illegal deforestation. Deforestation and the degradation of land through illegal invasions endanger livelihoods (Bebbington & Bury, 2009). As a result, food security for families is weakened not only at present, but also for future generations.

Water quality is threatened by surface and groundwater pollution. Every year, around 50 tons of mercury from gold mining are released into the ecosystem and the atmosphere in Madre de Dios. The destruction and pollution of the soil and the bioaccumulation of mercury in aquatic organisms pose a risk to fish stocks and thus to food security and the health of the population. In addition, mercury in the atmosphere leads to serious respiratory diseases and thus poses a further health risk. The local population as well as downstream water users suffer from the negative socio-ecological consequences of this pollution (SPDA, 2014). Special regenerative and decontaminating treatment would be required before the soil and water could be used again. However, such treatments are still at a trial stage and are rarely applied (MINAM, 2017). Inadequate sewage and waste facilities in often makeshift mining settlements further contribute to the deterioration of water quality.

Another critical issue is the unevenly distributed capacity to deal with environmental impacts and land loss. While miners bow to or ignore environmental standards and generate income to buy supplies such as bottled drinking water and food, rainforest communities are much more vulnerable to the impacts of pollution as they often live off subsistence farming, hunting and fishing and have little or no income.

Livelihood (in)security

Mining is lucrative for income security, as demand and the price of gold are high. Due to increasing government intervention in illegal mining areas and increasing pressure to formalize, i.e. to integrate informal gold mining into the formal economy (Damonte, 2013), miners fear the loss of income. Formalization entails additional costs, not only for the preparation of environmental management plans but also through the payment of taxes.

Furthermore, mining is not exclusively a poverty-driven activity, but one that diversifies livelihoods. By mechanizing their activities and employing labour, some mining entrepreneurs have managed to accumulate capital. In addition, a new elite of miners has gained political influence in the local government and influences decision-making in favor of their business interests. For example, the former head of the regional government in Madre de Dios was the director of the mining association before taking office in 2015. The local government supported the interests of the miners, for example by building roads to the mining camps (Cort茅s-McPherson, 2019).

For informal miners and those who are "in the process of formalization", the highly bureaucratic formalization process appears complicated, lengthy and expensive (Damonte, 2018). This poses a risk to their income security, as fees for accreditation and approval by the environmental authority, as well as for the consultants who develop the formalization plans, are high. In addition, miners report a fear of being "exploited" by the state through taxes on formalized revenues. Miners "in the process of formalization" are obliged to abandon mercury and cyanide products, while necessary incentives and funding programs for clean mining technologies are lacking.

Poor and unsafe working conditions, including lack of safety equipment when using mercury and powerful water pumps, pose a threat to the physical Wellbeing of gold mining workers. Cases of human trafficking are also reported (Ojo P煤blico, 2019). In illegal mining sites in particular, workers are exploited under slave-like conditions and women are forced to work as prostitutes. Sometimes the violence escalates when neighboring owners of forest, Brazil nut, agricultural or mining rights receive threats and are physically attacked by illegal miners after filing complaints about land invasions.

Political (in)security

In the region, there is a strong alliance between environmental groups and indigenous organizations supported by Peruvian and international funds (Damonte, 2016). In addition, the way in which mining is to be operated and controlled is highly controversial. While previous regional governments were sympathetic to miners and supportive of mining activities, the current regional government, which took office in 2018, emphasizes measures to formalize and discourage illegal mining. Often, the owners of the official mining concessions fear violence and are therefore reluctant to evict the illegal land invaders or file a complaint. This fear means that the regulatory mechanisms originally intended to protect their rights are not used. Nevertheless, concessionaires are responsible for the integrity of their concession and thus obliged to prevent land invasions. In the event of non-compliance with their obligations, the government levies a fine. The concessionaires therefore suffer the negative consequences of land invasions twice over, both through the threat of illegal land occupiers and the government fines. In addition, unclear state responsibilities in such cases contribute to insecurity and police forces are not sufficiently equipped to take effective action against major invasions. Such land invasions can also deprive concessionaires or indigenous communities of a source of cultural identity if primary forests are permanently destroyed (Bebbington & Bury, 2009). Social cohesion in Madre de Dios is threatened by two strong opposing interest groups: the proponents and opponents of gold mining.

Formalization initiatives and their hurdles

The formalization process in Peru started in 2002 and was largely driven by international pressure. On paper, the formalization policy aims to integrate informal gold mining into the formal economy and make the activities socio-ecologically responsible (Salo et al., 2016). Since the early 2000s, formalization has been the main instrument used by governments (IGF, 2017), large mining companies (ICMM, 2016), donors (CASM, IFC CommDev, & ICMM, 2010) and non-governmental organizations (ARM & Barreto, 2011) to regulate the artisanal and small-scale gold mining sector. The Peruvian government has also been implementing a formalization plan to regulate and combat informal and illegal gold mining since the early 2000s. Madre de Dios is the most prominent location for these initiatives, as the region has become a hot spot for Amazonian gold mining in recent years. The concessions are mostly owned by individuals who either work themselves on the basis of their concessions or invite other informal miners for a fee.

The Peruvian state uses three instruments to control gold mining (Damonte, 2018): Firstly, legal frameworks attempt to oblige informal miners to obtain official certificates and a tax number and to draw up environmental management and regeneration plans. As this has had little effect, miners have been given the option to avoid sanctions by submitting a "declaration of commitment" to the formalization process and moving from the "illegal" category to the "informal" category until they meet the requirements and become formal. Secondly, mining was restricted to certain areas only ("mining corridor"). Thirdly, the Peruvian government began to destroy illegal machinery and mining camps - in its most extreme form through bombing and intervention by the Peruvian military. This triggered protests that led to the political organization of miners and blockades of the formalization process (Damonte, 2018).

This formalization process is a globally supported initiative. The Peruvian central government is trying to enforce the formalization process in the informal and illegal mining areas (see also Salo et al., 2016). This regulation divides the local population and leads to the consolidation of power asymmetries between the vulnerable indigenous population, the local elites and the Andean settlers. Political processes are controlled by local elites in combination with a high level of corruption and reinforce the local regime of gold mining. As a result, the formalization process has had little success in limiting the negative impacts on human security and has further fueled the conflict between informal and illegal miners. This is an example of how formal governance instruments and progressive domestic legal designs do not guarantee improvements in the human security of the local population. Instead, it shows that the decisive forces lie in the power relations that unfold at local and national levels and in between.

Conclusion

While the central government has vigorously sanctioned illegal mining, enforcement of legal formalization is low due to the economic importance and political influence of miners. Nevertheless, some mining associations support formalization, have renounced mercury and initiated legal proceedings to obtain government protection and avoid (military) government sanctions. However, the local population negatively affected by mining activities has no say in the regulatory process, fears the illegal miners and often does not have the necessary economic income to compensate for their losses. So while some environmental standards are improved, the imposition of governance instruments also leads to a higher risk to the livelihoods and political security of the local population. Moreover, the unsustainable informal practices that de facto dominated the gold mining sector in Madre de Dios prior to state intervention and local power asymmetries remain deeply entrenched in the miner-dominated subnational political landscape. Governance initiatives such as formalization carry the risk of creating or exacerbating power imbalances and divisions. The winners of resource extraction are mostly to be found at the national and international level, while local communities hardly benefit or are disadvantaged by both the direct effects of resource extraction and the negative effects of formalization initiatives. In order to improve human security in Peruvian gold mining, the question must therefore be asked: "Governance by whom and for whom?". For future research, it is therefore important to analyze how local communities can be meaningfully integrated into the design of conflict-sensitive governance instruments. Governance initiatives should always aim to protect local communities from externalities while ensuring that they benefit from resource extraction in both the short and long term. This is the only way to transform unequal conditions of resource extraction and thus (ultimately) improve the lives of the affected communities.