Peru election offers few plans to tackle illegal mining in Amazon

Candidates in Peru’s elections offer few plans to tackle illegal mining

Peruvians vote Sunday to elect a new president and Congress, but illegal mining—described by experts as a major driver of deforestation and mercury pollution—has largely stayed on the margins of campaign messaging, according to environmental and anti-corruption groups.

Environmental lawyer César Ipenza said the limited attention reflects a political failure to recognize how much of the country’s illicit economy illegal mining represents. “Political parties don’t understand that illegal mining has become the country’s main criminal activity and the one that moves the most money,” he said, adding that there is either ignorance about the impact or, in some cases, parties’ involvement in the economy.

Proetica, a Peruvian anti-corruption group, said that gap shows up in how parties write about the issue. Magaly Ávila, Proetica’s director of environmental governance, said around 64% of party platforms fail to meaningfully address illegal mining, while only about 5% do so “clearly and explicitly.”

A March analysis by Peru’s Observatory of Illegal Mining also found uneven coverage across the political landscape, with only 12 of 36 registered parties presenting specific proposals. The remaining platforms, the analysis said, offered only general statements without concrete measures or did not address the issue at all.

Some candidates did address illegal mining in their proposals, including former ministers and technocratic candidates. The planning described by the AP includes measures such as gold traceability, financial intelligence and protections for environmental defenders, but experts said those elements remain fragmented and short of a comprehensive strategy.

Other candidates, AP reported, focused their agendas on security, economic growth or extractive development without directly addressing illegal mining or how it links to corruption and territorial control in the Amazon. In some cases, AP reported, plans omit the issue entirely, including for Ricardo Belmont and Carlos Álvarez, both media figures turned political candidates.

Experts point to weak enforcement as well as political incentives that keep the problem expanding. Peru has previously announced operations and strategies to combat illegal mining, but critics say enforcement remains limited, and lawmakers have extended a temporary registry that lets informal miners continue working while seeking formalization—an approach critics say has been widely abused and has helped illegal mining grow.

Rights groups also said recent legislative changes have undermined prosecutors’ and judges’ ability to pursue organized crime, including networks tied to illegal mining. Analysts cited by AP said the measures reflect political pressure from small-scale miners, who have staged protests demanding looser regulations, and that the protests appeared “highly organized,” suggesting more powerful actors behind the scenes, according to Julia Urrunaga of the Environmental Investigation Agency.

Gold prices have also helped fuel the expansion, experts said, as mining spreads deeper into the Amazon and into Indigenous territories. AP reported that illegal mining has grown rapidly in recent years as soaring gold prices reached around $4,500 to $5,000 per ounce, making small amounts of gold especially valuable.

Illegal mining operations frequently use mercury to extract gold, contaminating rivers and entering the food chain through fish, AP reported. Mariano Castro, Peru’s former vice minister of environment, said that in Amazonian river communities, “between 50% and 70% of the diet is fish,” which he said means “exposure increases exponentially,” with mercury “highly toxic” and associated with “serious neurological impacts.”

Environmental and health experts warn that in some regions, contamination already exceeds safety standards, creating long-term risks. Expected expansion through the Amazon, Ipenza said, “will bring contamination, transnational criminal groups and direct impacts on Indigenous and local populations.”

For Indigenous communities, the issue is both environmental and existential, according to AIDESEP board member Tabea Casique. “Illegal mining already ‘puts at risk our health, biodiversity and ways of life,’” she said, adding that most parties were not taking the problem into account or offering concrete proposals.

Even where enforcement exists, experts say systems to track and disrupt illicit supply chains are weak. Ipenza called for better control of small-scale processing plants and stronger coordination across government agencies, including customs, financial intelligence units and prosecutors, to track gold flows and identify illegal activity, while analysts said flawed traceability is a central vulnerability.

Urrunaga said Peru lacks an effective production-tracing system, telling AP: “There is no real way to trace mining production in Peru.” She said authorities hold “fragmented pieces of information,” but there is “no system — and apparently no political will — to connect them.” She added, “We are talking about more than $12 billion in illegal gold exports,” and asked how that could happen amid what she described as “almost total impunity?”

Castro said the state’s efforts remained “insufficient,” and he warned that if the next government fails to confront illegal mining quickly, the crisis could become harder to contain. “Authorities cannot fulfill their responsibility to protect citizens if they continue to normalize an activity that causes significant harm,” he said.