Despite the fact that in 2022 the area detected with alluvial gold exploitation was 94,733 hectares, 3.9 percent less than in 2021, illegal exploitation increased by 5,000 hectares, as 73 percent of the Evoa in Colombia (69,123 hectares) is classified as illegal exploitation.
This is one of the data provided by the most recent Evoa Alluvial Gold Exploitation Report 2022, produced by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) for the Andean Region and Southern Cone.
The document indicates that only 21 percent of it has technical and/or environmental permits and a further 6 percent is in transit to legality.
This measurement, which only refers to alluvial gold and does not include subway or subsistence mining, indicates that 46,550 hectares (49% of the national total) were detected in areas excluded from mining, where this activity should not be carried out because they correspond to territories of protection and development of renewable natural and environmental resources, and 48,183 ha (51%) were detected in areas free of environmental restrictions.
The document details that most of the mining in prohibited areas was in Forest Reserve Zones; 76 % of this was located in the Pacific Forest Reserve within the so-called 'Chocó Biogeográfico', 24 % was in the Magdalena Forest Reserve, and 0.5 % was in the Amazon Forest Reserve.
According to the report, 85 percent of gold mining is concentrated in the departments of Chocó, Antioquia and Bolívar, although in total there are 13 departments with Evoa on land.
But in Chocó, which has 40 percent of the national consolidation, there is an additional alert as it concentrates the largest amount of illegally exploited Evoa (33,938 hectares).
Looking at the phenomenon from a municipal perspective, Evoa is in 101 municipalities out of the 1,122 in the country, but only 10 of them concentrate 56 percent of the national consolidation: Nechí, Zaragoza, El Cantón de San Pablo, Nóvita, Cáceres, Ayapel, Istmina, El Bagre, Río Quito and Unión Panamericana.
These areas accounted for 21 percent of Colombia's alluvial gold last year, with the aggravating factor that 70 percent of the exploitation with machinery on land was carried out outside any legal framework.
The case of departments such as Valle del Cauca and Guainía is also noteworthy. Although they are not in the first places with the highest extraction, according to the UNODC report, more than 95 percent of the gold in those regions came from illegal exploitation and coincided with areas excluded from mining, territories of protection and conservation of natural heritage.
According to the UNODC investigation, several of the areas where illegal mining is present also have coca crops.
The UNODC analysis also shows that approximately 44 percent of the territories with Evoa presence on the ground in 2022 also had illicit coca cultivation, and of the total territory affected by coca cultivation and Evoa presence, 87 percent of gold mining was illegal.
This confluence of illegal economies is found to a greater extent in the departments of Antioquia, Nariño and Cauca.
The UNODC recalled in its report that illegal gold mining generates significant environmental impacts including deforestation, water contamination from the use of mercury and cyanide and change in the course of rivers, and detailed that according to Evoa's ground monitoring conducted since 2014, there has been a loss of 54,356 hectares of primary and secondary vegetation cover due to mining activity.
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