🌍 Indonesia’s Illegal Gold Boom Leaves Toxic Mercury Legacy
Illegal gold mining in Indonesia has surged with rising global gold prices, causing widespread mercury pollution, deforestation and health risks that are devastating forests, rivers and communities.
🛠️ Boom in illegal mining: Nearly 1,200 illegal mining sites operate across Indonesia, including in protected forests such as Bukit Gajah Berani near national parks.
☣️ Mercury pollution: Illegal mining is now Indonesia’s single largest source of mercury emissions, contaminating rivers, fish, crops and drinking water.
🐟 Health impact: Mercury levels in fish and soils in mining regions far exceed World Health Organization safety limits, endangering human and animal health.
🌲 Environmental damage: Forests, farmland and watersheds are destroyed, reducing rice production, worsening floods, and displacing wildlife habitats.
⚖️ Weak enforcement: Despite Indonesia’s commitments under the Minamata Convention to eliminate mercury use by 2025, regulations are poorly enforced and criminal networks adapt faster than authorities.
📉 Community effects: Local people have seen lands the size of hundreds of football fields wrecked by illegal mining, with traditional livelihoods disrupted.
The illegal gold boom highlights how high commodity prices can fuel destructive activities that outpace regulation, undermining public health, food security and forest ecosystems in vulnerable regions.
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