In 2016, the Nicolás Maduro regime opened more than 12 percent of Venezuela territory to gold mining, including national parks, the Venezuelan section of the Amazon forest and the Orinoco River, fabled by Jules Verne, sung about by New Age crooner Enya, and ranked as the third worldwide in terms of flow.
The Minning Arc (Arco Minero in Spanish) comprises 112,000 square kilometers of delicate jungle and rivers, including the Sierra de Imataca in the east and the central location of El Caura, as well as the basins of the Orinoco and Caroni rivers.
You must read The Mining Arc causes devastation in 12%-plus of Venezuelan territory
But according to a publication by the professor from the University of Ottawa, Isaac Nahon-Serfaty, very little has said about Venezuela’s mining activity at the international level: in some fora, there have been no mentions since 2018. And this silence and inaction include main environmental groups, such as Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), have remained silent about this.
The Orinoco mining project did not receive the approval by the National Assembly, so it is no legal. Human Rights Watch denounced massacres from criminal groups’ for the control of the illegally awarded mines, with resulting and accompanying instances of environmental disaster, slave labor, prostitution, and human trafficking.
Since June 2018, Venezuela has no mention on Greenpeace’s international website, “Mineria del Orinoco” on the WWF website (apart from an article on sustainable fishing in Colombia) or the Minning Arc.
The professor Nahon-Serfaty, who is also a member of the Canada-Venezuela Democracy Forum, other organizations such as MiningWatch Canada have not released a public statement about the participation of Gold Reserve — a gold mining company headquartered in Washington state — in the Arco, “beyond a recent timid tweet after being pressed to say something about the partnership between the Canadian mining corporation and the Venezuelan regime.”
You can read the full story on the website The Conversation Why global environmentalists are silent on Venezuela’s mining crisis.
