With the inaccessibility of remote areas in parts of South and Central America rendering state jurisdiction an increasingly difficult challenge, governments in gold-producing countries of those regions continue to lack the tools to rein in small-scale illegal gold mining and the environmental havoc which these activities continue to inflict on the environment.
There are reports that small-scale illegal gold miners in a region in Peru known as Madre de Dios, have transformed lush Amazonian forest into “a desert pock-marked with polluted ponds that are leaking into the human food chain.” Peru is Latin America’s largest gold producer.
