Gold Mining Using Mercury in the Amazon: A Legal Review

Summary

This report was commissioned by The Nature Conservancy in support of the program of work on managing and protecting freshwater fisheries in the Amazon Basin to benefit both freshwater biodiversity and the people who rely on those fisheries for nutrition, livelihood, and cultural and social well-being.  

In the Amazon, gold mining using mercury has risen as a key threat with few effective and tested solutions. Law and public policy present one avenue for progress, and so in support of that approach, this report describes the most significant laws and public policies in five countries—Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru—bearing on the use of mercury in gold mining. Each of these countries struggles with high levels of illegal or informal gold mining using mercury, with the bulk of this activity concentrated in the Amazon Basin, and each is a Party to the Minamata Convention on Mercury (“Minamata Convention”).

Despite this common baseline, the countries discussed in this report have developed distinct legal and policy approaches to the problem of mercury-based gold mining. While the five focus countries have all pursued a handful of common strategies—formalization of informal gold miners and restrictions on the mercury trade, chief among them—the similarities begin to fade into the background upon examination of specific legal instruments.

With the foregoing in mind, this report aims to clarify the legal landscape in the focus countries as concerns the use of mercury in gold mining. Specifically, this report discusses the extent to which the laws of each country regulate use of mercury in gold mining; importation and exportation of mercury; domestic commerce in mercury (i.e., buying and selling mercury within a country’s borders); and penalties for violations of any such norms. 

Citation

Fromherz, N. (2025). Gold Mining Using Mercury in the Amazon: A Legal Review. The Nature Conservancy.