RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – Brazil’s mining lobby group asked the country’s foreign ministry to work with other governments to improve tactics used to combat the illegal gold trade, it said on Friday.
“The trade of illegal gold feeds a criminal alliance in Brazil, which is responsible for part of the devastation we see in the Amazon rainforest, something the world is watching,” said Raul Jungmann, president of the Ibram trade association, in a statement.
Unregulated mining, which surged under right-wing former President Jair Bolsonaro, has destroyed rainforest land and polluted rivers with deadly mercury, while illegal miners have clashed violently with indigenous groups protecting their land.
But even legal mining is at an industrial scale spurring deforestation as once-impenetrable forest is cleared for access roads and mines for gold, iron and coal.
Ibram represents mining giants such as Vale, Rio Tinto, BHP as well as gold miners such as South Africa’s AngloGold Ashanti and Canada’s Yamana Gold
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