by Laurenz Fischer, Switzerland, ELP 2014
Written on July 14, 2014.
In this year’s Environmental Leadership Program (ELP 2014), eight students from some of the world’s best universities had the chance to join the group of experienced environmental leaders at the University of California, Berkeley. I, Laurenz Fischer from Switzerland, am one of them. I am a Masters student in Management, Technology and Economics, with a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Engineering, at ETH Zürich.
However, this blog-post is not about me, rather I write about the work of one of the experienced ELP participants: Monica N. from Peru, a passionate lawyer against illegal mining.
Illegal mining is not a regularly mentioned issue in Switzerland’s media scene – because it’s not of great concern? Wrong. Switzerland is one of the main importers for Peruvian gold and more than 20% of that gold comes from illegal sources.
Peru is a South American country with 31 million inhabitants. Its area is almost 1.3 million km2, which is more than 30 times the size of Switzerland and larger than Germany and France together. The costal and the southern parts are most densely populated. East of the Andes, which traverse the whole country, are large areas of rainforest. Most of the Peruvian mines are in the highlands and in the jungle. Most illegal mines are hidden somewhere in the buffer zones surrounding the rainforest, far away from the country’s bigger cities.
The extent of illegal and informal mining seems almost inconceivable. Just in the region Madre de Dios (Illustration 2), approximately 6150 ha per year are deforested due to illegal mining.
The economic magnitude is not to be underestimated either. Approximately 100,000 people are directly involved in illegal mining - both owners of mines and miners. Further, about 300,000 people are involved indirectly, including the trade of illegally obtained ore in Peru.
The huge amount of workers far away from dense civilization causes, in addition to the environmental damage, a variety of other problems, including nutritional and health issues, corruption, prostitution and many more.
Monica works for the OEFA (Organismo de Evaluacion y Fiscalizacion Ambiental www.oefa.gob.pe), a governmental institution with two main tasks:
- Direct supervision of certain economic activities, including large and medium mining activities.
- Supervision and training of environmental enforcement institutions at national, regional and local levels.