In early October, the Andean Community – a bloc of South American states – ruled that Peru had failed to clamp down on illegal gold mining and mercury trafficking, upholding a complaint by Amazonian Indigenous communities, who said they were being poisoned by the toxic substance. Lima was given 20 days to act and ordered to reform its laws, which included ending a registry to formalise miners that safeguarded illegal miners from criminal prosecution, and to confiscate the miners’ machinery.  

But before then, Peru’s president was impeached, and Congress president José Jerí – who had favoured legislation enabling illegal mining – was sworn in. 

“There was no great outcry by the state,” Luis Fernandez, executive director of the Peruvian Center for Amazonian Scientific Innovation (Cincia), says about the government’s reaction to the ultimatum as it passed its expiration date. The Andean Community warned Peru that failure to comply could result in the case being referred to the region’s Court of Justice, with the risk of trade sanctions. Indigenous people, meanwhile, have blockaded rivers in an attempt to force the state to respond.

Fernandez, who earlier this year assisted Peruvian customs authorities with a record four-tonne seizure of illegal mercury smuggled in bags of gravel, is in Geneva for the sixth high-level conference – or Cop6 – of the Minamata Convention. The treaty, one of the youngest environmental agreements, aims to help its 153 member states reduce and eliminate mercury and protect human health and the environment. The venue couldn’t be more fitting. Switzerland is the world’s top importer of gold.

States talk gold 

One of the priorities of the conference, which will gather roughly 1000 participants including government officials and diplomats this week, is tackling the use of illegal mercury in artisanal small-scale gold mining globally as the trade of the precious metal booms.

But Fernandez warns the treaty’s oversight mechanism leaves room for loopholes at national levels. “The relationship between Minamata and artisanal and small-scale gold mining is the weakest of the pillars for the Minamata Convention,” he says. 

The sector, estimated to employ 10 to 20 million people globally, represents 20 per cent of all gold production and 37 per cent of global mercury pollution, according to International Pollutants Elimination Network (Ipen), an alliance of environmental and public health groups. Peru, the world’s tenth biggest gold producer, is also a major contributor to the global supply of the metal produced by small-scale miners.

Also on the conference’s agenda will be debates regarding the phasing out or phasing down of other products using mercury in their manufacture, including dental amalgams and skin lightening cosmetics, and the production of vinyl chloride monomers for producing plastics.

Red flags

As gold prices soar to record levels, reaching almost $4,400 per ounce by mid-October  – nearly triple what they were 10 years ago – the trade in mercury has also skyrocketed, responding to demands from artisanal and small-scale miners, for whom the liquid mineral is the quickest way to separate the precious metal from the ore.

But its use comes with serious health and environmental consequences. “Mercury is one of the top chemicals of global health concern,” Monika Stankiewicz, executive secretary of the Minamata Convention, told a Geneva press conference last week. The World Health Organization says mercury, which bioaccumulates in organisms, poses a particular threat to babies in the womb, causing irreversible developmental and neurological disorders after birth, as well as cognitive impairment and organ damage in adults. 

In areas where mercury is employed in artisanal gold operations, the substance is burned off gold nuggets, then absorbed by plants, soil, rivers and fish. Earlier this year, the research centre Cincia found that 80 per cent of members in the northern Peruvian Amazonian local and Indigenous communities who were part of the complaint filed before the Andean Community had “chronic exposure” to the metal. Other recent studies, including in Nicaragua and Kenya revealed high levels of mercury sampled in women of child-bearing age.

Violations and treaty gaps

Indigenous peoples are also generally the most vulnerable to exploitation of their lands,  often living in poverty. That, along with climate change in part driven by deforestation from the gold mining, has “serious implications for the effective enjoyment of fundamental human rights”, alerted Marcos Orellana, United Nations special rapporteur on toxics and human rights, at a recent panel organised by the Geneva Environment Network.

Yet, in spite of the risks and unlike other products that use mercury in their production, small-scale gold mining continues to be a permitted use for mercury, Orellana pointed out. The Minamata treaty encourages countries to reduce or end its use, but without setting any cutoff dates. “By allowing the trade, it creates a global supply (and) the trade is often diverted to fuel supply for small-scale gold mining,” he explained.

Defending the convention, Stankiewicz tells Geneva Solutions that its approach has been “not to go for a striped-jacket ban”. Criminalising the use of mercury in small operations would limit the ability to work with miners to find solutions, she argued. “Sometimes it’s really about people’s livelihoods, and then they wouldn’t have any other similar options for gaining income,” she explains.

Instead, the convention has set in place mechanisms to engage with affected communities by raising awareness of the health and environmental risks associated with the toxic chemical and by supporting miners set on transitioning away from its use. The treaty also requires countries with significant small-scale gold mining to formulate and implement plans to reduce its use and minimise impacts.

Read more: The UN is helping Filipino gold miners quit toxic mercury – it’s harder than it looks

Fernandez recalls the tense debates before the convention’s adoption, and the struggle to secure votes for a more robust document from “countries that were sceptical or reticent to put too much teeth into something that would upset large parts of their society, especially those participating in or benefiting from small-scale gold mining”.

“There was a feeling of ‘we’ll fix this later or ratchet up after everything gets through ratification once we start engaging countries’,” says Fernandez, who had previously worked at the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s international affairs office. “But it hasn’t happened.”

Orellana said the Global Environment Facility, which funds national action plans to help wean gold miners off mercury, could play a stronger role, but admitted that a lack of international cooperation was impacting states that had banned mercury, by undermining their achievement. He accused gold-importing states of failing to assume their due diligence responsibility on gold refineries.

In Switzerland, Robin Poell, an environment ministry spokesperson, told Geneva Solutions that the country has “very strict regulations” for gold sourced from these small operations, and plays an “important role” in advancing Minamata convention goals particularly through a programme helping the miners with traceable supply chains.

Down but not out

The Minamata Convention has nonetheless paved the way for some progress. Yuyun Ismawati, Ipen co-chair, recognised that the treaty has had a significant effect on the trade of mercury. In 2012, a year before it was adopted, she said 4.4 kilotonnes of mercury worth $232 million were traded globally compared to 1.7 kilotonnes in 2022, valued at only about $34m. Ipen’s Mercury-Free Campaign was instrumental to the adoption of the Minamata Treaty in 2013.

Yet loopholes remain. Despite a ban on new mercury mines, weak traceability from legal or illicit sources, complicates efforts to reduce its use. Since the ratification of the convention, Mexico, Indonesia and China report regularly on volumes produced by mines and permits issued. But a recent investigation unveiled how massive volumes of mercury trafficked by a Mexican criminal group had gone largely undetected by authorities. 

“You can become a miner within a day with mercury,” Stankiewicz says. Intermediaries sometimes go to miners offering mercury for free in exchange for the gold to be sold exclusively to them, either informally or legally. Meanwhile, the latest gold rush has turbocharged illicit markets, driving up prices, particularly in remote areas.

Ahead of the conference in Geneva, civil society groups in the Amazon urged countries to prohibit mercury use and sales globally. But as of last week, none of the convention’s signatories has forwarded such the proposal.

“Just as illegal gold mining has gone up, the convention has stayed put,” Fernandez says. “There is a feeling that it’s getting away from the convention and the convention has to adapt.” The Andean Community decision to warn Peru, he adds, is an “essential part of that rationale, because Peru has still not gotten control of its sector”.