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.

Con el objetivo de fortalecer las capacidades técnicas en la valoración económica del daño ambiental causado por la minería ilegal de oro, Conservation Strategy Fund (CSF) y la Procuraduría General del Estado (PGE) firman un Convenio de Cooperación Interinstitucional. 

Background

The Asmat Regency is one of four regencies in South Papua, an Indonesian province with abundant natural resources, among them tropical forest ecosystems, fisheries, mining, and inland aquatic ecosystems. Natural resource management and economic development are some of the key challenges facing the region and are often assumed to be in opposition to each other. 

Two weeks ago, I joined a webinar hosted by the World Bank for the Amazonia Viva team on the development and use of the Mining Impacts Calculator in the Amazon. There was strong interest from participants, and I was particularly struck by how IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental enforcement agency, is actively using the tool to impose fines on violators engaged in illegal gold mining.