Lima, Peru - On Friday, July 11th, Conservation Strategy Fund (CSF) and the Attorney General's Office (PGE) signed an Interinstitutional Cooperation Agreement to strengthen technical capacities in the economic valuation of environmental damage caused by illegal gold mining. Through this alliance, the PGE will implement, validate and improve CSF’s Mining Impacts Calculator (MIC), an online and open access tool that allows estimating the social and environmental damage caused by illegal gold mining in the Amazon. 

This is the second Amazonian country, after Brazil, to formally implement the use of the MIC to reduce the harmful impact of mining on the environment and the people who depend on it. 

This tool was originally developed in Brazil and is being used by the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office and the Federal Police within Brazil to estimate appropriate fines in legal proceedings for the environmental destruction caused by mining operations. CSF is currently implementing versions of the MIC for use in Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Suriname and Bolivia, enabling the region to coordinate their response to this activity.  

To adapt this tool for expanded use in Peru, in the last year CSF added more Amazonian location data and cost estimations along with improved methodology specific to the local context. This work of methodological adjustment and training towards the adoption of the tool is being made possible with the support of the Foundation for Conservation and Sustainable Development (FCDS) and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

María Caruajulca Quispe, Attorney General of the State, stated that this collaboration represents the will to cooperate, exchange knowledge and build together sustainable solutions to face such complex challenges as deforestation, mercury contamination or the degradation of our Amazonian ecosystems.

Augusto Mulanovich Diez Canseco, Director CSF Peru, pointed out that this agreement is a decisive step towards a Peruvian iteration of this Calculator tool, as a formal indication of the support of the State Attorney General's Office, the Public Prosecutor's Office Specialized in Environmental Crimes, and the Directorate of Valuation and Expertise.
 

Fotos: CSF (1) y PGE (2-6).

As part of this agreement, on July 16 and 18, CSF will deliver a virtual course "Use of the Calculator of Impacts of Illegal Gold Mining" to train potential users to optimize MIC use for the State’s defence against environmental destruction. 

With the expansion of the Mining Impacts Calculator to Peru, CSF contributes crucial scientific information and technical tools to the work of the Public Prosecutor's Office Specialized in Environmental Crimes, within the framework of the Administrative System of Legal Defense of the State, and thus optimizes the strategic and important work of reducing environmental crimes within Peru.

This note is available in Spanish.