http://www.perumineria.com/2011/05/24/mineria-informal-genera-graves-problemas-ambientales-en-el-peru-leer-mas-en-suite101-mineria-informal-genera-graves-problemas-ambientales-en-el-peru-suite101-net-httpwww-suite101-netcontentmi/
Informal mining causes serious environmental problems
Informal artisanal mining was initially developed in the south of Peru, Madre de Dios, Arequipa, Ayacucho and Puno, has progressively extended north to Cerro de Pasco, Piura, La Libertad and Cajamarca.
Only in the Pasco region are nearly 2,000 informal miners who work with their entire families in some 345 artisanal mines. In Cajamarca, on the hill Algamarca, Cajabamba, there are more than 4,000 informal miners extract gold from more than 60 pools of processing. In Puno, in several rural communities as Putina and Sandia, are taken informally tons of gold, but there's only seen poverty and violence.
Mother of God suffers heavy contamination
Mother of God there are more than 2,000 mining concessions, but only a dozen of them have an approved environmental impact study. To extract gold from riverbeds, the miners used dredges, although its use is prohibited. In February, a dozen of them were shot down during a joint operation between the Armed Forces and National Police, which involved some 1,500 troops.
Each year the informal miners dumped in river basins around 30 tonnes of mercury, highly toxic and even degenerative used to make the gold is separated from the sludge extracted from the rivers, where its operation produces about 800 million dollars annually.
Also in the Amazonian department, mainly in areas of Macaw, Colorado Huepetuhe Puquiri and have increased forested areas due to intense informal gold mining that reaches some 20 tons per year, plus new outbreaks continue to emerge from this illegal rapidly expanding activity.
Negative effects incurred in the informal mining
Although no official statistics on the number of informal miners in Peru there are estimates that between 100 thousand and 150 thousand people draw various types of minerals, especially gold, whose price has increased exponentially in the international market as a result of the global economic crisis.
This illicit activity, which operates in our country more than half a century, causing serious environmental impacts at the poor state of operation and use of highly toxic substances like mercury, cyanide, arsenic, caustic soda and activated carbon to process the ore, which wastes are thrown into rivers, lakes and soils, causing excessive pollution.
It also represents a serious social and security for the country, as both adult and child workers are exploited, resulting in conflicts and confrontations between miners and farmers, creates crime, alcoholism, violence and insecurity, and also used dynamite dangerously and detonators for mineral extraction.
The Fund United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has reported that there are networks of labor and sexual exploitation against children in the gold mines of Cuzco and Madre de Dios. Also, the International Labour Organization (ILO) on the findings of its report "A global alliance against forced labor" indicates that this kind of treatment particularly affect indigenous workers in Peru and Bolivia.
It must deal decisively with this illegal activity
In addition to improving the socioeconomic situation in the areas where this activity proliferates, it requires the urgent implementation of public policies and action plans and measures of regulation, supervision and control to encourage the formalization of illegal miners.
It must also establish rules and procedures that encourage the formalization of illegal producers to reduce and eliminate this illegal activity that is causing casualties, severe damage to the environment that affect the health of people and the flora and fauna and as labor and sexual exploitation against children, which violates human rights
