Background

The Mining Impacts Calculator is a tool to assess the social and environmental damage caused by gold mining.The tool uses an economic formula that calculates the estimated effects on the environment and society by inputting variables such as the size of the mine, the amount of gold produced and the time of extraction. The automated formula uses average mining productivity and data-driven impact parameters systematized by the academic literature and by interviews with researchers and miners, to deliver contextualized data to the user.

The calculator can be used for three main purposes: to estimate social and environmental damage values to calculate the amount of financial compensation needed to mitigate the costs; to estimate the most efficient investment amounts for future impact planning and the prevention of negative impacts; and to estimate the recommended amount of investment in mercury-free technologies needed.

History

The tool was developed over 18 months and launched in June 2021, in response to a growing demand from governments, justice and control institutions, that wanted to better measure the relationship between mining and its socio-environmental impacts and the potentially irreversible damage caused by this sector to the environment and human health. This tool is especially useful in the Amazon, where illegal activity has grown significantly in recent years, driven by the high price of gold on the international market and the lack of supervision by governments in the region.

To address this, the Conservation Strategy Fund Brazil (CSF Brazil) worked in partnership with the Public Prosecutor's Office (MPF, in Portuguese) to develop the Calculator. The MPF has since officially adopted the methodology through its Technical Opinion 694/2021 and has been using it in several compensation claims, totaling more than US$ 9.3 billion (more information here). In addition, the Federal Police has also used the tool since 2022 to carry out dozens of calculations of environmental and social damage.

In 2022, with the support of the Amazon Sustainable Landscapes Program (ASL), a program financed by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and led by the World Bank, the tool was also adapted for use in Colombia and Peru. In addition, through an award granted by Conservation X Labs, the same was done in Ecuador. In all these cases, the same methodology was used, contextualized with the impact data in each country.