Since the beginning of this century and until the early 90s, mining in the Bolivar State, located in the south-east of Venezuela, was mainly small-scale (with the exception of the state company Minerven). In the great majority of cases, it was carried out by the small farmers of the area, who combined the extraction of minerals with their more traditional agricultural activities according to the season.

In 1990 the central government officially transferred the legal authority for the award of mining contracts in the Bolivar State to its state holding CVG (Venezuelan Corporation for Guayana). This has been considered the starting point for the mining boom of the region known as Guayana, which is made up of the states of Bolivar, Amazonas and Delta Amacuro and represents approximately half of the country.

This region is home to both traditional indigenous communities and the well-known Imataca Forest Reserve, which covers an extension of well over three million hectares of tropical forest, an area as big as some European countries such as Holland and Switzerland.

From 1990 onwards, the government also started a national campaign aimed at convincing public opinion of the benefits of handing over the exploitation of gold, diamond and other important minerals to transnational corporations. It was argued that a high level of investment would bring to the country not just the traditional economic advantages but also employment and foreign currency so badly needed in a country suffering under a social and economic crisis.

The government has gone as far as asserting that the exploitation of gold and diamonds can easily supply the national treasury with the required level of foreign currency needed to pay off Venezuela's external debt, which currently has been estimated as exceeding US$ 30 billion and absorbs more than three quarters of the national income obtained from exports.

In November 1997 Seniat, the national body in charge of collecting taxes, concluded that during the four year period 1993-1996, with the exception of the state company Minerven, taxes received by the state from the mining activity for gold and diamonds in the Bolivar State represented only about a million US dollars.

Although Seniat did not establish corporate responsibilities for tax evasion, it does suggest, in my opinion, that the exploitation of mineral resources and generation of state income is not as straight-forward as the government would like us to believe. On the other hand, prior to Seniat's report, in 1995 the Attorney General had established the illegality of the CVG's authority to grant mining contracts. Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that in 1996 those Presidential Decrees were abolished, the mining contracts were not affected and their terms were ratified.

In Venezuela, the transnational corporations interested in mining diamonds, gold and other metals are in general of Canadian origin. This is not to say that companies from other countries, such as Italy, the Netherlands, United States, South Africa and Britain, are absent or have no interest. Independently from where they come from, all these companies are eager to guarantee the country a high level of technology for everything they commit themselves to do: a technology that is efficient not only in achieving the extraction of precious minerals but highly effective also in the deforestation of valuable forests, their precious biodiversity and the important network of powerful rivers that laces the region.

There is ample evidence that industrial countries have environmental regulations which make mineral extraction within their own territories difficult and costly. These laws, together with the will and resources to enforce them, have forced transnationals to move to Third World countries, where for obvious reasons environmental legislation is weak and lobbying to make them even weaker is not so difficult, and where the enthusiasm of public servants is just another obstacle to overcome. All these conditions can be summarised as minimum environmental concern, which to the companies' books represents one item less in their long list of costs.

Under the lobbying pressure of the Venezuelan Mining Chamber and international corporations, Venezuelan environmental laws have been modified so as to facilitate the exploitation of minerals, whilst tax rates have been reduced. An environmental impact assessment of the activities is not compulsory. Furthermore, during the exploration stage companies are exempted from VAT, which is in force for all other commercial activities, and the purchasing quota of the Central Bank has been reduced to only 15% of the annual gold production.

Within this framework of changes designed to encourage mining investments, several projects with the sole purpose of transforming the mining law into a "modern " instrument have been introduced in the Congress. For example, the one currently being discussed argues for the need to allow mining within protected zones such as Forest Reserves and areas under special regimes of protection such as National Parks, wildlife refuges etc. Of great concern is the abolition of all taxes in preference for a set payment of only 3 US dollars a year per hectare. Furthermore, in relation to the need to fulfil legal requirements, it introduces a formula known as "positive silence", which defines a specific period of 30 days for the study of any given request. It also establishes that, once a petition has been introduced, if within this set period the authorities have not registered their opposition or listed their concerns, permission to proceed with whatever was requested will be granted automatically. The consequences of this measure are many. In countries such as Venezuela, the interests of the nation will suffer at the hands of a public service with a recognised tradition for inefficiency.

Gold transnationals have moved into areas occupied by indigenous and non-indigenous communities, as a result forcing its inhabitants to move to other zones. These companies have penetrated into the strategic and most fragile upper part of the basin of the River Caroni.

Mining has significantly altered the traditional way of living of the indigenous communities of the Guayana region. After a relentless campaign by the companies, in some of these communities the companies have obtained indigenous co-operation. As a result, indigenous people have requested and successfully obtained mining concessions which, after a prudent time, become the legal possession of a mining company and operate under its name. An example of this manipulation by mining companies is the case of the indigenous community of Buenavista located in Uaiparu, Bolivar State.

The Venezuelan Congress has received many letters of protest from both indigenous and non-indigenous communities and their grass-roots organisations. The impact of mining on indigenous communities has been publicly denounced and the national press has echoed these concerns, but so far the civil society has been unsuccessful in persuading the state authorities to draw up a system of coherent national policies, adding to the equation the cost of the destruction and degradation of the environment of the Bolivar state.

Most of the gold and diamonds at the centre of mining companies' attention can be found in the Venezuelan portion of the Guyana Shield. As a result of millions of years of erosion, the soil in this region is very poor in nutrients and has a high acidity pH. In order to survive, the roots of the trees avoid this high pH of the mineral soil and remain close to the upper layers of the soil, where a continuous recycling of organic matters takes place. Understanding this process and the impact of mining on it is essential to the survival of the forests of the region. Once this layer of vegetation is removed, the only nutrients upon which trees depend disappear as well. The capacity of the forest to grow and to regenerate itself becomes null.

Another important factor affecting the soil is the accelerated erosion process that occurs as a direct consequence of the torrential tropical rains, the constant draining of the waters through the superficial layers and the action of the wind and the sun. These mechanisms contribute further to the mobilisation of particles which accompany the sand drained towards the watercourse.

On the whole, these characteristics - a very low resistance to changes and a low capacity for recuperation - have been the two main elements used to define these rainforests as an ecosystem of fragile equilibrium. Like the whole of Amazonia, the Venezuelan portion forms part of one of the richest sources of biodiversity in the world.

The Venezuelan Congress and the public in general oppose the government's policy of expansion of the mining frontiers in the south of the country. An added element fuelling this opposition has been a new Presidential Decree allowing mining in approximately 50% of the Imataca Forest Reserve.

Public opposition is rooted not only in legal considerations such as the use of a loophole in environmental regulations or the many instances in which the law has been broken by the Decree. Above all, the decree has been surrounded by secrecy and a lack of consultation. The system of special administration establishes that any plan affecting the use of forests protected by those measures should be subject to public consultation. However, the new plan for Imataca has been imposed by the government without any public consultation.

The indigenous people or traditional inhabitants of the forests were not consulted. This is in spite of the fact that their lands will be invaded by activities which above all destroy their environment. They have no legal property titles which would enable them to protect and defend the rights to occupy the land. The Decree represents a violation of the rights of the indigenous people, according to national and international agreements signed by the government.

Furthermore, the decision adopted by the government also represents an abuse of authority, because the law establishes that any changes in the use of the Reserve can only be authorised by the Congress. The government's decision has also been criticised because within the reserve, the sector assigned for "conservation" or "protection" is scarcely more than 3% of the total area covered by the reserve.

Direct opposition by the civil society was not slow in coming: letters to the President from the Catholic Church and professional associations such as engineers and anthropologists, legal suits against the Decree introduced in the Supreme Court of Justice, public demonstrations in front of the Congress as well as student demonstrations from the Central and Andean Universities and letters from a very long list of environmental and human rights NGOs.

The debate, which the government anticipated would last no more than 15 days, has continued for more than 7 months. The Congress requested from the government that the decree be nullified. The same request has been put to the President by several representatives of the civil society. Each and every one of the legal suits is based on the irregularities already mentioned, such as the breach of environmental laws protecting forest reserves and the violation of the Constitution.

The Supreme Court of Justice has accepted the legal suit brought by environmentalist organisations, indigenous communities and the member of the Congress Deputy César Pérez Vivas. As a result, the Court has provisionally suspended new leases to either logging or mining companies until a final decision is adopted.

Recently those groups and organisations whose main interest is the promotion of mining within the country have started an aggressive programme of activities aimed at influencing public opinion and the Supreme Court of Justice. Articles have been published in the press, conferences have been organised, films and promotional material have been dedicated to the virtues of the "sustainable mining". The embassies of Canada and Australia have organised talks in order to highlight the success of mining in their own territories. The World Bank has not been very successful in its conciliatory approach. On one hand, it committed itself to understanding the position of environmental groups in relation to Imataca and mining in fragile forests, whilst simultaneously, last November, funding the event "The Congress of Gold".

In spite of the provisional decision adopted by the Supreme Court of Justice, the Governor of the Bolivar State invoked the severity of the economic crisis which affects the country to continue with his policy of authorising the activities of small-scale miners. In this way he exceeds his legal authority and violates the same law which he ought to uphold.

Environmentalists see a long-term strategy in the behaviour of the Governor. If he succeeds in his initial objective of achieving that the Reserve be occupied by small-scale miners, it would be very easy to justify the need for industrial mining later on, especially if one takes into account that their discourse is full of promises asserting that, with the use of modern technology, environmental disruption belongs to the past. The environmentalists’ concern is not too far-fetched. One could argue that something similar already happened, when a whole village dedicated to small-scale mining was evacuated in order to give way to what is known today as the mining development "Las Cristinas", a partnership between the CVG (a state holding) and Placer Dome Inc. from Canada.

Faced with a Decree riddled with irregularities and many more inconsistencies in the information supplied by those representing the government, the Mining Commission of Congress initiated its own investigation into the alleged legal rights of those mining companies which had obtained concessions within the Imataca Forest Reserve.

What the report shows is that the great majority of the companies do not fulfil all the conditions established by the Venezuelan law as essential requirements for obtaining a mining concession. Furthermore, it is clear that for many of these companies (some with British capital), their main interest was to make a quick profit, and their official business residence was not Venezuela but those Caribbean islands which operate as tax havens.

Due to the intricacies of the law, what is important to highlight here is that prior to the start of industrial activities within a concession, a formal authorisation must be obtained. This requirement demands from any company a business plan clearly establishing investment, cost of the recuperation phase and within the EIA a full explanation of what measures will be taken for the protection of the environment. Although many of the companies investigated in the study had received this final authorisation, the majority of them did not have an estimated production output, nor did they know what was the mineral they would exploit. Likewise, there was no indication of the cost of the process of restoration of the affected land, or discussion of the techniques that would be used to achieve it.

Throughout this year, the government's discourse has made small-scale mining responsible for the environmental destruction of the Bolivar State, attempting to establish the link with illegality and tax evasion. What this official investigation has brought into the public domain is that illegality is also present in the domain of large-scale industrial mining. What is quite clear to me, is the hidden agenda of the government. Above all, decree 1850 represents an opportunity to legitimise a series of corrupt, illegal administrative actions carried out for key figures of the present government.

The initial investment required to start a mining operation is immense. Only with the full support of international banks, financial institutions and the back-up investment of shareholders can mining companies raise the required funds. To ordinary members of the public like me, it is quite clear that we need to be more vigilant of the banking sector and monitor how they invest our funds.

Most British people seem to be genuinely concerned for the fate of the rainforests and interested in the rights of indigenous communities, as well as the welfare of the Third World. However, these highly desirable values are not found in British financial institutions. Most of them have no care beyond their own interests, and in the pursuit of these benefits they are financing mining projects that have a direct impact on our forests, indigenous communities and countries.

To oppose mining activities within the tropical rainforests is a shared responsibility that involves each one of us. It is not just the responsibility of Venezuelan NGOs or a few international organisations. As consumers, we need to be aware that each piece of gold jewellery that we buy represents the destruction of an important portion of a tropical forest and its biodiversity. In order to produce that gold item, the mining industry has polluted underground waters and rivers. Most important of all, it is destroying ancient indigenous cultures.

The real gold of the future lies in the preservation of the tropical rain forests - tropical forests which do not belong to this or that country, but form part of the world's patrimony, because it is our only guarantee for survival on this planet.

It is urgent that Venezuelan NGOs obtain the help of international organisations and people concerned with what is happening in Venezuela. We need your support to achieve the annulment of Decree 1850 which opens up the Forest Reserve of Imataca to mining. We urge you to send your letters of support to the President of the Congress, Venezuelan embassies and the commission for the Environment of the Deputies' Chamber. Please support our campaign and help us to stop the destruction of our forests in exchange for gold pieces.