The Amazon transformed

As today is World Environment Day, The Brazilian Report is republishing a study by the Amazonian Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information Network (RAISG), mapping the pressures and threats faced by the Amazon region. This is the second part of the series, focusing on extractive industries. The other parts, covering transport infrastructure and deforestation, can be found here and here.

Extractive industries have been a feature of the Pan-Amazonia region for several decades. Among these ventures are some of the largest open-cast mines on the planet and long distance pipelines to move oil out of the heart of the forest. These projects have generated unresolved environmental liabilities.

In its recent analysis of pressures and threats in the Amazonia, RAISG shows that, in terms of area, the extractive industries of mining and oil are those with the greatest weight. Together, these two sectors have blocks of land set aside for exploration and exploitation equivalent to 208 million hectares, representing 24.5 percent of the entire Pan-Amazonia, which has a total area calculated to be ​​847 million hectares.

These threats and pressures do not occur uniformly or with the same intensity throughout this vast territory of areas covered by mining and hydrocarbon concessions. But the existence of such an area confirms the proposed model for the countries of the region: one based on extraction and profit, with no evaluation of the consequences of losing more than a quarter of the Amazon.

Unremedied environmental damage is common. This occurs both where mining and oil extraction took place in the past and where these are still carried out. Although illegal mining, which we address in the special report “Looted Amazonia” (published by RAISG and InfoAmazonia in 2018), is present in all Amazonian countries, the greatest damage is caused by projects supported by national and regional governments. Often these projects have been authorized without due consultation with the affected populations and cause indiscriminate impacts on other countries of the Amazonia region. In other cases, government agents participate in or contribute to the activity, although in theory this is illegal.

The cost of oil and mining

According to the energy and mining investment watchdog, Osinergmin, 190 oil spills were recorded in the Peruvian Amazon over 20 years. This source also suggests that spills are mainly due to the existence of old infrastructure in the most productive wells, which date back to the 1970s and are not properly...