Policies and regulations for Brazil’s artisanal gold mining sector: analysis and recommendations Rodolfo Sousa a, * , Marcello Veiga a , Dirk Van Zyl a , Kevin Telmer b , Sam Spiegel c , Jeff Selder a a Norman B. Keevil Institute of Mining Engineering, University of British Columbia, 6350 Stores Rd., V6T 1Z4 Vancouver, BC, Canada b School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria, Canada c University of Cambridge, UK article info Article history: Received 1 May 2010 Received in revised form 4 December 2010 Accepted 6 December 2010 Available online 13 December 2010 Keywords: Artisanal small-scale gold mining Garimpo Brazilian Amazon Policy Legislation Mercury abstract In Brazil, artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) produces in the range of 6 tonnes of gold (Au) per annum, and employs approximately 200,000 people. Most of this mining activity is in the Amazon region, where miners have been extracting gold for more than 40 years. In the Tapajos River Basin, assessments indicate that around 99% of miners operate without the environmental and mining permits required by law. This is a result of a combination of unrealistic or lack of proper policies and regulations, lack of political will, lack of infra-structure to enforce the existing regulations and lack of incentives to miners to comply with legal requirements. In this article, we analyze a group of 20 laws, decrees and resolutions in Brazil, focusing on how idiosyncrasies in these regulations reveal gaps between policy and reality in ASGM areas. Artisanal miners operate in vast and remote areas and the government lacks the resources (personnel, vehicles, information and materials) to enforce the laws. Our analysis emphasizes the need for creating new government commitments and identifying priority areas where government agents can focus their efforts. There is no single solution for the environmental, health, technical and socio-economic problems associated with ASGM. However, a realistic approach should consider improving the level of education of miners, creating government programs to provide technical assistance in the field, simplifying admin- istrative procedures and ensuring adequate measures for enforcement. Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Until 1980 the deforested area of the Brazilian Amazon was below 300,000 km 2 (6% of total area) and it has almost tripled in less than 30 years. This represents an average of 24,000 km 2 /annum (INPE, 2007). As environmental policy research in the Amazon has increasingly focused on deforestation, a realm of specific environ- mental concerns have also been raised in relation to soil and water contamination from logging, farming and artisanal small-scale gold mining (ASGM) (Peterson and Heemskerk, 2001). ASGM is charac- terized by the use of rudimentary processes to extract gold from any type of ore, typically employing low levels of mechanization. While ASGM activity is often associated with negative impacts (Machado and Figueirôa, 2001; Labonne and Gilman, 1999), ASGM in Brazil produced around 6 tonnes Au/annum in 2008 and employed around 200,000 miners (DNPM, 2010). Artisanal miners in Brazil e known as “garimpeiros” e often operate in sensitive ecosystems such as river beds and river banks. When a gold deposit is depleted, it is not uncommon for miners to abandon the areas and move to another location (Veiga and Hinton, 2002). Responding to concerns about pollution, health and envi- ronmental degradation, the Global Mercury Project (GMP) was initiated by the United Nations Industrial Development Organiza- tion (UNIDO) in 2002 as one of the largest single initiatives in the Amazon region to promote technical training and promote sound policies for addressing risks in garimpos areas (GMP, 2010). The GMP established partnerships with local government and miners’ associations to implement environmental and health assessments and train the miners to adopt practices of gold extraction that minimize risks (GMP, 2010; Sousa and Veiga, 2007, 2008, 2009; Spiegel and Veiga, 2005, 2010; UNIDO, 2006, 2009). The GMP also supported an integrative study of environmental laws, mining laws and policy frameworks in order to understand institutional * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ1 604 8226717; fax: þ1 604 822 5599. E-mail address: rodolfoneiva@gmail.com (R. Sousa). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Cleaner Production journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro 0959-6526/$ e see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2010.12.001 Journal of Cleaner Production 19 (2011) 742e750