Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining in Northern Brazil

WWF Study on Amapá, Northern Pará and the Guianas

2010–2011 · WWF Guianas / WWF Brazil · NAEA/UFPA · Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining · Amapá · Northern Pará

Gold Mining · Garimpo · Mining Governance · Protected Areas · Transboundary Migration · Resource Access · Regional Development

Project Overview

Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining in the North of Brazil (Amapá and the North of Pará) was a research study examining the changing conditions of artisanal and small-scale gold mining in northern Brazil and their relationship to the movement of Brazilian garimpeiros into the Guianas.

The study was commissioned in the context of the Guianas Sustainable Natural Resources Management (GSNRM) Project, implemented by WWF Guianas in Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana from 2007 to 2011. The Brazilian research was undertaken in cooperation with WWF Brazil and focused particularly on Amapá and northern Pará.

I coordinated the study while serving at the Centre for Advanced Amazonian Studies (NAEA), Federal University of Pará (UFPA) and was the principal author of the resulting research report.

The research addressed gold mining not simply as a technical or environmental problem. It examined the relationships between mineral resources, mining technologies, labour organization, markets, public regulation, protected areas, migration and the territorial organization of mineral extraction.

Research Context

Artisanal and small-scale gold mining has played an important role in the economic and social history of the Brazilian Amazon.

During the second half of the twentieth century, changing international gold prices, new mining technologies and the expansion of mineral frontiers contributed to major transformations in Amazonian garimpo. Mechanization changed both the productive capacity of mining operations and their organization, while mineral discoveries attracted mobile populations of miners to new extraction areas.

By the period examined in this study, however, conditions in northern Brazil were changing.

Easily accessible deposits had become more difficult to exploit in several established mining areas, while significant mineral resources were located in or near territories subject to environmental protection. At the same time, enforcement against unauthorized mining increased.

These developments interacted with another process of growing importance: the movement of Brazilian garimpeiros across national borders into French Guiana, Suriname and Guyana.

The WWF study therefore sought to understand the Brazilian conditions contributing to this wider transboundary mining dynamic.

Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining in Amapá

Amapá provided the principal territorial focus of the research.

The study reconstructed the historical development of gold mining in the state and examined the legal and institutional framework regulating mineral extraction. It also analysed mining technologies, the organization of artisanal and small-scale production and the different actors involved in the sector.

Field-oriented analysis covered several mining areas, including:

Lourenço;
Gaivota;
Amaparí;
Capivara;
Tartarugalzinho;
Oiapoque.

This territorial differentiation was important because artisanal mining did not constitute a homogeneous activity. Mining conditions varied according to mineral deposits, technologies, accessibility, institutional arrangements and relationships with other forms of territorial use.

Mining, Protected Areas & Regulation

One of the central problems identified by the research concerned the changing relationship between mineral extraction and environmental protection.

A substantial proportion of Amapá was subject to different forms of environmental protection. Remaining mineral deposits and potential mining areas could therefore overlap with territories where extraction was restricted or prohibited.

This created a complex governance problem.

The issue could not be reduced to a simple opposition between legal and illegal mining. Mineral resources, environmental regulation, protected areas, livelihoods and historically established mining practices interacted within the same territorial settings.

The study consequently examined both the regulatory framework governing mining and the practical conditions under which garimpeiros attempted to maintain access to mineral resources.

From Amapá to the Guianas

The study's geographical significance extended beyond Brazil.

A major reason for undertaking the research was the increasing presence of Brazilian garimpeiros in the Guianas. Understanding this movement required examining the changing opportunities and restrictions confronting small-scale miners in northern Brazil.

The research indicated that declining accessibility of mineral resources, environmental restrictions and enforcement pressures could contribute to the displacement of mining activity rather than simply eliminating it.

The result was an increasingly transboundary mining frontier connecting northern Brazil with neighbouring territories in the Guianas.

This perspective made migration an integral part of the analysis of resource governance. Brazilian miners carried knowledge, technologies, working practices and social networks across national borders, while operating within different political, legal and environmental settings.

Mining Governance beyond Enforcement

The research also raised questions about the limitations of approaches based primarily on repression and enforcement.

Military or police operations could interrupt unauthorized mining activities, but they did not necessarily remove the economic and social conditions sustaining artisanal gold mining.

The study therefore emphasized the importance of developing alternatives that could combine environmental protection with the social and economic realities of mining populations. These could involve opportunities for more socially and environmentally responsible forms of regulated mining as well as alternative livelihoods where mining could not continue.

A particularly important implication was the need to recognize garimpeiros as social actors rather than treating them exclusively as objects of regulation.

Their decisions reflected economic opportunities, knowledge, mobility, social networks and the capacity to adapt to changing regulatory and territorial conditions.

Research Approach

The study combined historical, institutional, economic and territorial perspectives.

Research addressed:

the historical development of Amazonian gold mining;
mining legislation and public regulation;
artisanal and small-scale mining technologies;
actors and forms of organization within garimpo;
industrial mining and its relationship to regional mineral development;
individual mining areas in Amapá;
economic dimensions of gold extraction;
protected areas and environmental restrictions;
changing mining policies and enforcement;
Brazilian mining migration into the Guianas;
conflicts between institutions involved in mining and environmental governance.

The resulting analysis treated artisanal mining as a socioeconomic, institutional and territorial system, rather than as an isolated extraction technique.

My Role

I served as Study Coordinator and principal author of the research.

My work included the overall analytical coordination of the study and the integration of its historical, economic, institutional, environmental and territorial dimensions.

The project extended a longer trajectory of research on Amazonian garimpo while introducing a more explicitly transboundary perspective.

Earlier research had examined transformations in artisanal gold mining through questions of labour, technology, markets, public policy and regional development. The WWF study added greater attention to protected areas, environmental governance, territorial restrictions and cross-border mobility.

Research Output

The principal confirmed output of the project is the research report:

Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining in the North of Brazil (Amapá and the North of Pará)

Mathis, Armin. 2012. Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining in the North of Brazil (Amapá and the North of Pará). WWF Guianas / WWF Brazil.

The report documents the historical, institutional and territorial analysis undertaken for the project and places developments in northern Brazil within the wider context of artisanal mining in the Guianas.

Contribution to My Research

The WWF study represents an important stage in the development of my research on artisanal mining, natural-resource governance and regional development in Amazonia.

Three dimensions were particularly important.

Mobility and territorial displacement. Mining activity cannot necessarily be understood within fixed administrative or national boundaries. Changing opportunities and restrictions can redirect actors, technologies and extraction practices toward other territories.

Governance and access. Formal regulation influences access to mineral resources, but effective resource use also depends on enforcement, organizations, economic opportunities, social relations and the capacity of actors to adapt.

Transboundary regional relations. Developments in Amapá and northern Pará became connected to mining processes in the Guianas. Regional transformation therefore emerged from relations crossing national borders rather than exclusively from processes contained within individual regions.

These questions subsequently remained relevant to my research on responsible mining, resource governance, organizations and extractive transformations.

From Transboundary Mining to Regional Development in World Society

The WWF study was not conceived within the later theoretical framework of Regional Development in World Society (RWS). Its relationship to the current research programme is therefore retrospective and genealogical.

From the perspective of my current research, however, the project provides particularly useful empirical material for examining how processes operating beyond individual regions become consequential within specific territorial configurations.

International gold markets affect the economic viability of extraction. Mining technologies alter access to deposits and forms of production. Environmental regulation differentiates territories according to permitted and prohibited uses. Public organizations attempt to enforce these distinctions. Miners respond through adaptation, organization and mobility—including movement across national borders.

The result is not a uniform regional effect. Instead, these processes produce differentiated and shifting configurations of access, extraction, regulation and migration.

The study is therefore relevant in retrospect to questions concerning organizational mediation, resource access, territorial differentiation and the regional consequences of globally and transnationally structured processes.

Retrospective analytical relevance:
Resource access · Organizations · Regulation · Territorial differentiation · Mobility · Environmental governance · Global commodity relations · Transboundary regionalization

The connection to RWS is one of research genealogy rather than theoretical continuity.