Yanomamis: 59% of inhabited rivers have impact from mining – 06/21/2023 – Environment

Invasions and mining in the Yanomami Indigenous Land, in Roraima, impact 59% of rivers close to communities, shows a new survey. The strong indications of contamination in these areas were analyzed by the Geo-Yanomami working group, composed of researchers from Fiocruz (Oswaldo Cruz Foundation), Inpe (National Institute for Space Research), Veiga de Almeida University, UnB (University of Brasília), Ufam (Federal University of Amazonas), among others, in partnership with InfoAmazonia.

The work used geoprocessing and remote sensing techniques —the methodology does not include collecting samples from rivers or inhabitants— to understand which are the areas most affected by miners since 2015.

The researchers analyzed around 25,000 km of stretches of rivers within the Dsei (Special Indigenous Sanitary District) in the region. Of these, approximately 1,900 km have indigenous communities within a distance of up to 1 km from the banks.

Among these rivers with surroundings inhabited by Yanomami, 59% are currently under the effect of mining and invasions, with a high probability of mercury contamination, the scientists concluded.

Diego Xavier, doctor in public health from Fiocruz and one of those responsible for the study, says that “this is a conservative estimate”. In addition to possible inaccuracies in the data, he points out another factor: the indigenous people move around the territory a lot for hunting, fishing, agriculture and visiting other communities.

At work, living areas were calculated at 5 km around each community. To observe changes in forest cover, an area of ​​up to 1 km around the sites was examined, considering data from Deter, Inpe’s system that collects deforestation, degradation and mining alerts.

Thus, when overlapping living areas with problems related to invaders, the researchers concluded that around 62% of the Yanomami population lives in risk areas.

For Nathália Saldanha, anthropologist and doctor in information and communication in health by Fiocruz, these numbers indicate “the progressive extermination of this people”. The contamination of rivers, she emphasizes, affects all aspects of indigenous life: food, health, demographic and social.

“The presence of heavy machinery such as dredgers, tractors and other machines used in mining, scares away game animals. In addition to polluting the land and rivers”, he says.

Maurício Ye’kwana, director of the Hutukara Associação Yanomami, says that due to the impact of the invasions, some indigenous people are forced to beg food from prospectors. “Dispersion begins and the community’s coexistence changes: drugs, alcoholic beverages come in”, he says.

The indigenous leader explains that, due to the lack of food in the communities most affected by mining, they are forced to migrate, which creates conflict with other groups. Maurício Ye’kwana also points out that the distribution of weapons by garimpeiros makes these confrontations more violent. “Other communities feel they are being ripped off, but these people are just trying to meet their needs,” he says.

“There were no conflicts within the communities. So, the prospector arrives and says that Funai is not a friend, but that the friend is the prospector. He promises clothes, ammunition, medicine. And that changes the way the indigenous people think”, he adds. .

In the most recent report by the Pastoral Land Commission, it was found that indigenous people accounted for 38% of murders in rural areas of Brazil in 2022. The survey shows the concentration of violence against the Yanomami population.

“In 2022, of the 113 records obtained, 103 were in the Yanomami Indigenous Land, and of these, 91 were children, representing 80.5% of the cases”, states the study.

In January of this year, the federal government began a series of actions against mining within the Yanomami Indigenous Land. At the time, the Ministry of Health stated that approximately 570 indigenous children had lost their lives due to mercury contamination, malnutrition and hunger. In response, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) traveled to Roraima and determined the definitive withdrawal of the garimpeiros.

Maurício Ye’kwana points out, however, that the garimpeiros have resisted the actions. “The number of police is not enough, and the criminal factions know that the police forces are not strong enough for them”, he says.

According to an estimate by the Hutukara Associação Yanomami, before the actions of the federal government, there were around 20,000 prospectors operating illegally within the territory.

For Diego Xavier, from Fiocruz, one of the central elements to understand the degradation of the Yanomami territory is the facilitation of geographic access. “The miners took the tracks [de pouso] they already had and built new ones. And the inspection did not stop. They started to invade the space where the indigenous people lived, and they started to expel them”, he explains.

The group’s survey also identified these landing strips, using satellite images from the Planet system taken in December 2022 as a reference. A total of 188 were found in the analyzed territory.

When crossing the location of the runways with that of the rivers, the researchers observed that 138 have a very impacted nearby river.

The quality of the water was also analyzed in the study, with an assessment of the color change, in 2015 and 2022, based on satellite images. Considering only rivers with a large volume of water, 63% of the Yanomami villages studied have a river impacted by mining as their nearest water body.

Jefferson Santos, coordinator of the Laboratory of Geographic Intelligence in Environment and Health at the Veiga de Almeida University, explains that these are rivers “with large particulate matter, generating changes in color and quality parameters, such as oxygenation”.

One of these rivers is the Mucajaí, which crosses the central and eastern region of Yanomami territory. Due to prospecting activity, even its course was altered. The action was recorded and published on social networks by prospectors, in a celebratory tone.

According to Xavier, an action as drastic as that seen in the released video, which permanently changes the water course, could even lead to the death of the river. The researcher points out that the impact could extend to the entire basin, since the Mucajaí “is an important tributary of the Branco River, which in turn flows into the Negro River, which contributes to the flow of the Amazon River.”

All the rivers in the Yanomami Indigenous Land flow into the Branco River, which supplies water to Boa Vista, or the Negro River, which flows through various indigenous territories and, in turn, supplies the city of Manaus. For this reason, the effects of mercury on the health of urban populations, even if relatively distant from the areas first impacted by prospecting activity, have been the subject of other studies by Fiocruz. These works point to contamination in cities such as Boa Vista and Santarém (PA).

The report was originally published by InfoAmazonia.

_{The text is part of the PlenaMata project and was produced as part of the InfoAmazonia Geojournalism Laboratory, carried out with the support of the Serrapilheira Institute, to promote and disseminate scientific knowledge and analysis of geographic data in journalistic production.}