Tag Archives: Enrique Ortiz

Mongabay: Amazon prosecutors get sharper impact tool to charge illegal gold dealers

Small-scale illegal gold mining is widespread throughout much of the Peruvian Amazon, but especially in Madre de Dios, causing enormous harm to the environment and human population in what’s recognized as a biodiversity hotspot. The Peruvian government has been sporadic in its attempts to curtail illegal mining over the years. In 2023, Peru adopted the Mining Impacts Calculator for use by law enforcement and prosecutors to better fight illegal gold mining. Image by Enrique Ortiz.

Enrique Ortiz, a good friend for many years, and a leading Peruvian environmental biologist with Andes Amazon Fund in the United States, sends out to a large email group new studies he thinks would be of interest on matters related to climate change, ecosystem services, biodiversity and environmental assaults. This story — my first focused on Brazil in a long time — came from an Enrique email.

Initially, I thought it was a straight-up, uncomplicated science story about how a Brazilian research team has put in dollar terms the amount of damage wrought in one enormous region of Brazil from the wide-scale destruction that illegal gold mining requires. One fact jumped out: through the team’s economic modeling, it concluded that the damage to nature, ecosystems and human health was twice as large as the value of the gold being mined — even as record prices for gold soar above $2,100 an ounce.

I pitched the story to my editor Glenn Scherer, who passed it to a Mongabay editor in Brazil, Alexandre de Santi. He gave the greenlight. Simple story? Not a chance. What I found from talking with the lead author, Pedro Gasparinetti, was that numbers from the study had a direct, practical use in what’s called a Mining Impact Calculator. This online tool is used by eco-investigators and prosecutors to bolster charges in court against not the small-scale mining operations, but rather the big corporate buyers of illegal gold. Gasparinetti connected me to an investigator and prosecutor for further insight into the value of the enhanced calculator. My own sources in Peru and the US — Enrique and Luis Fernandez — were essential in helping me understand the broader context of this important story.

This economic tool is no panacea. Illegal mining — responsible for widescale deforestation, biodiversity loss and human suffering across Amazonia — is not going away. But with Peru, Colombia, Ecuador as well as Brazil adopting the calculator in prosecutions of gold buyers, there is more than a glimmer of hope that uncorrupted courts will hold gold buyers accountable for billions in damages, thus choking off some the gold supply downstream. It’s starting to work. Let’s see how far it can spread and the impact it can have.

This is what illegal gold mining does to the Amazon in Brazil — once lush jungles filled with all manners of tropical life are reduced to a hellscape of desert, mercury-polluted ponds, poisoned species and dislocated people. I’ve seen this damage up close in Madre de Dios, Peru. It is heartbreaking — and unrelenting.
 Image by Fabio Nascimento

Mongabay: Government takedown of illegal gold mining in Peru shows promise, but at a cost

This drone shot of La Pampa in Madre de Dios shows the widespread environmental devastation from alluvial goal mining. A few years ago, that area was entirely dense jungle. In the middle of the photo are military outposts, Peru’s unprecedented attempt to reduce gold mining in one of the most notorious regions for such illegal extraction on earth. Photo by Jorge Caballero Espejo/CINCIA

Because of widespread media attention over the past five years or more — who can resist a story that combines gold, organized crime, prostitution and environmental devastation of a pristine rain forest? — Madre de Dios in the southern Peruvian Amazon has become known worldwide as a kind of hell on earth.

But as my story for Mongbay explains, a lot can happen in a year. La Pampa, the worst but by no means only large-scale illegal mining operation, was raided and largely shut down by the national government in February 2019. And the previous month, Madre de Dios — a region about the size of South Carolina known as the most biodiverse place on earth — elected a governor who wasn’t a miner. Instead, Luis Hidalgo Okimura is intent on reducing mining, formalizing and taxing miners who remain, and rescuing his home region from further environmental destruction.

I got to interview Hidalgo with three of my students in his government conference room not far from our hotel in Puerto Maldonado. After an hour and a half, I knew I had the makings of a good story. Specials thanks to my colleague Cesar Ascorra, national director of CINCIA, for arranging the interview. CINCIA is a Wake Forest-led science project that has developed proven strategies to repair deforested tropical areas and mitigate the public health threat of 185 tons of mercury dumped a year in Madre de Dios.

It was also a pleasure to work again with Mongabay editor Morgan Erikson-Davis. She not only accepted my story pitch, she enhanced the story by both downloading and analyzing satellite images that showed expanding deforestation outside La Pampa.

Riverside alluvial gold mining continues unhindered throughout Madre de Dios, especically along the Rio Inambari and Rio Malinowski. Photo by Jason Houston
This photo was taken by a member of Gov. Hidalgo’s staff after our 90-minute interview with him. My friend and translator Marianne Van Vlaardingen is on the left, then Wake journalism minor Juliana Marino, me, Hidalgo, Cesar Ascorra, and Wake journalism minors Kat Boulton and Renting Cai.

Mongabay: Colombia, an example to world, balances conservation and development — a Q&A

Interviewing Colombia's minister of the environment on Sept. 21 at the headquarters of National Geographic. Photo by Enrique Ortiz

Interviewing Luis Murillo, Colombia’s minister of the environment, at the headquarters of National Geographic. Photo by Enrique Ortiz, Andes Amazon Fund

On Sept. 21, 2017, in Washington, D.C., I had the unique opportunity to interview one of the leaders of environmental protection in Latin America — Luis Murillo, the minister of the environment and sustainable development in the cabinet of President Juan Santos. Murillo was in DC that day for a ceremony sponsored by National Geographic honoring Santos for his aggressive action in doubling the amount of protected areas in his biodiverse country — from coral reefs to high-mountain rain forests — since taking office in 2010. My interview with Murillo preceded the event and was an exclusive for Mongabay. The story link is here.

In the weeks prior to my DC sojourn, I spent hours immersed in studying Colombian environmental politics, Santos’ environmental record, his controversial peace accord with the FARC that ended a 50-year civil war and earned him the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize, and as much as I could about Murillo. Haley Weibel, a communications specialist with the Andes Amazon Fund in DC, was instrumental in providing key material for me to read. My good friend Enrique Ortiz, program director with the fund, provided critical insight about Santos, Murillo and the myriad challenges to their environmental legacy.

My time with Murillo was limited, so we wasted no time jumping into deep end of the issues I wanted to discuss. He was a pleasure to talk with. He spoke with great candor and insight, and never ducked when I asked him pointed questions. He knows what’s at stake in setting aside so much land in Colombia — land that just below the surface is rich with fossil fuels and precious metals. He made it clear that he believes his developing country has a moral obligation to not plunder these critical ecosystems for short-term economic gain. But he stressed that the world’s wealthiest nations should feel compelled to support Colombia financially so that it can actually protect and preserve all the land Santos has set aside for future generations. Extraction industrialists will only sit on the sidelines for so long.  Deforestation in Colombia since the end of the civil war is already escalating. My interview with Murillo gets into such thorny issues and more. My thanks to Mongabay founder Rhett Butler for assigning me the story.

 

Mongabay.com: Pope’s encyclical draws support from Peru’s #1 environmental official

Manuel Pulgar-Vidal is Peru's minister of the environment, and among the most most influential climate change policy makers. Photo by Emilia Catanoso

Manuel Pulgar-Vidal is Peru’s minister of the environment, and among the most most influential climate change policy makers. Photo by Emilia Catanoso

I remember Manuel Pulgar-Vidal well from the UN Climate Summit in Lima in December 2014. He was seemingly everywhere, certainly at every press conference. He was friendly and accessible. I was offered to interview him the day COP20 opened, but declined; I could not get to Lima so soon.

In mid-July, 2015, through the high-level connections of Enrique Ortiz, my fixer and interpreter for two weeks in Puru, I got an hour with the minister. He had studied he encyclical and had a lot to say about it. He was less keen on discussing the Tia Maria copper mine in southern Peru. It was a great interview, linked here, and I’m glad mangabay.com chose to run this and two others.

Mongabay Edior Glenn Scherer’s summary: 

1, Peruvian Environmental Minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal hosted COP20 in Lima, and will play a leading role at Paris COP 21 in December.
2. He praises the Pope’s controversial encyclical written in “the language of a poet, with the precision of an engineer, and by a leader with the moral authority to have influence.”
3. “We [will] have an agreement in Paris,” says the minister. Obama, China, France, Peru, many nations want it. “The political moment is key, and this papal document is very helpful.”
More photos by Emilia Catanoso from the interview and just before:

Hanging out with an Indian tribe outside his office. Photo by Emilia Catanoso

Hanging out with an Indian tribe outside his office. Photo by Emilia Catanoso

During the interview. Photo by Emilia Catanoso

During the interview. Photo by Emilia Catanoso

Not too happy in the direction change of the interview. Photo by Emilia Catanoso

Not too happy in the direction change of the interview. Photo by Emilia Catanoso

Peru’s first-ever high-resolution carbon map could help the world breathe easier

To put an accurate price on carbon, you need to know how much you have and where it’s located, researchers say. Stanford University scientists have produced the first-ever high-resolution carbon geography of Peru, a country whose tropical forests are among the world’s most vital in terms of mitigating the global impact of climate change. Click here for the whole story at National Geographic NewsWatch.

Photo courtesy Greg Asner