An area the size of the state of Rio de Janeiro (4.4 million hectares) has been requested since 2019 by cooperatives for the exploration of gold in the Legal Amazon.
Orders are placed under a simplified mining regime, called PLG (Permissão de Lavra Garimpeira), which poses social and environmental risks and has the potential to cause distortions in the ore extraction market.
It is a new gold rush, led by miners’ cooperatives and stimulated by President Jair Bolsonaro (PL).
From January 2019 to September 2021, the number of requests of this type for gold exploration made by cooperatives in the Legal Amazon almost doubled: it increased by 83%, from 1,100 from 1990 to 2018 to 2,024 in the last three years.
The rise in the price of gold explains, in part, this intensified interest: the price of the metal went from BRL 197 at the end of 2019 to BRL 354 in August 2020. Since then, it has practically not dropped from the level of BRL 300.
In theory, the increased participation of cooperatives in the Brazilian mining sector would not be a reason for concern. “A mining cooperative is formed by miners and small miners who organize themselves to have a decent life, improve their processes and carry out an activity within environmental norms”, explains Alex Macedo, technical and economic analyst at the OCB (Organização das Cooperativas Brasileiras ).
With the justification of guaranteeing job and income opportunities for miners, the laws that regulate the sector offer bureaucratic facilities to cooperatives.
In 86% of the requests made since 2019, cooperatives have used PLGs, a simplified application type, which exempts the carrying out of prior research and full environmental licensing. It is also a cheaper procedure: the National Mining Agency (ANM) charges a fee of R$204.13 per PLG, against R$1,012.73 for a traditional order.
“The Federal Constitution protects the figure of the prospector, especially the cooperative, evoking the image of artisanal prospecting. But today, the extraction of gold in the Amazon uses machinery and technology that are incompatible with this idea of rudimentary nature”, observes the prosecutor Ana Carolina Haliuc, from the Federal Public Ministry (MPF) of Amazonas, coordinator of the Amazon task force.
PLG is an option prohibited to mining companies, but there are cooperatives requiring areas under this system almost as extensive as those of large companies operating in Brazilian territory.
InfoAmazonia report, published in October by sheet, showed how the recently created Cooperative of Miners of the Vale do Guaporé already competes, in size of required area, with multinational giants such as Vale, Nexa Resources and Anglo American.
“This can generate an illegal advantage in the dispute for areas with mining companies, because cooperatives are not subject to the same social and environmental obligations as traditional companies. They do not need, for example, to present complex environmental studies, such as the EIA-Rima”, assesses the Federal Attorney Paulo de Tarso Moreira Oliveira, who works in Pará.
More than 60% of the area for gold exploration contained in PLG requests made since 2019 are concentrated in 24 cooperatives founded in the same period, evidencing this recent movement.
Another advantage of having a mining cooperative is the size of the area to be required. While individuals or individual companies can apply for a maximum of 50 hectares, cooperatives are entitled to apply for up to 10,000 hectares per PLG in the Legal Amazon.
However, some entities are trying to explore much larger areas, requiring multiple PLGs glued together.
“It’s a way of circumventing the limit”, denounces prosecutor Oliveira.
When contacted, the ANM revealed that it is studying a change in legislation to “meet the technical, environmental and social demands that arise”. One of the proposals under discussion is to limit the maximum area to be required by PLG in the Legal Amazon to one thousand hectares.
Of the 2.4 million hectares required by Vale do Guaporé, almost half are distributed in contiguous PLGs, forming, in practice, 25 blocks that far exceed the 10,000 hectares allowed by mining rules.
The same strategy is used by Coomipaz (Mixed Cooperative of Miners of Peixoto de Azevedo), which has 15 blocks larger than 10,000 hectares, and by Coogam (Cooperative of Miners of the Amazon), with six blocks of requests above the legal limit — even thus, the cooperative obtained authorization from the ANM to start exploring for gold in one of these areas.
“There is a modus operandi being carried out by these cooperatives that require several mining processes under the Mining Regimen Garimpeira […] in contiguous areas to operate large projects with much greater potential for damage than that declared in the administrative proceedings”, denounces Opan (Operation Amazônia Nativa) in a technical note filed last week with the MPF, detailing the action of cooperatives in Amazonas.
The survey cites an opinion from the MPF itself on the existence of contiguous stretches required from the ANM by cooperatives.
“These areas are part of the same enterprise project and, therefore, should integrate a single licensing process, which would provide a more comprehensive analysis of the impacts caused by the cooperative’s activities in the region”, says the text.
The document also addresses the situation on the Madeira River, in Amazonas — even before the uprising of miners against inspection.
In addition to illegal exploration, the region is the target of interest from cooperatives seeking government approval to extract gold in the region. But even with mining permits, there are risks.
An ANM operation, carried out in 2018, on the Madeira River, found that cooperatives are not responsible for the correct disposal of mercury, a liquid metal used in mines to separate gold from gravel. Discarded without any care into the watercourse, the substance contaminates fish and humans.
Coogam —one of the ten cooperatives that account for 90% of PLG requests to explore for gold in the Amazon, according to Opan— had mining processes suspended in the Madeira River due to irregularities in environmental licensing.
The cooperative’s performance entailed “risk to the integrity of the Madeira River, as well as risks to human health, biodiversity and the maintenance of the Amazon ecosystem”, noted federal judge Mara Elisa Andrade in a decision handed down in 2018.
crime loopholes
Garimpeiro cooperatives have a total of 295 mining processes superimposed on indigenous lands and full protection conservation units in the Legal Amazon, places where this activity is prohibited.
“Since the beginning of the current administration, the federal government has been making it clear that it intends to make mining in the Amazon as easy as possible. This project includes encouraging mining in indigenous lands, an activity that is currently prohibited”, says Oliveira, from the MPF.
Despite being illegal, 16 of these requests were continued authorized by the ANM. Among them is an application in the name of Cooperativa Estanífera de Rondônia in the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau indigenous land, in Rondônia, and four in the Sawré Muybu (Pimental) indigenous land, in Pará, three of them filed by the Vale Mineral Extraction Cooperative of Tapajos.
The report was produced by InfoAmazonia with support from Opan (Operation Amazônia Nativa).
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