country's actual output widens every time the price moves higher. At
small-scale mining — shift in ways that neither the sector nor the state
has yet fully confronted.¹²
tonnes per year, a figure that combines large-scale industrial
operations and licensed artisanal mining.¹ The U.S. Geological Survey
reports 80 tonnes for 2025 on its more conservative methodology, which
focuses on mine-reported output through formal channels.² Neither number
captures the full volume of gold that physically leaves Brazilian soil
each year.
operates outside the regulatory framework, often in Indigenous
territories, environmental reserves or on river systems in the Amazon
basin. Estimates of its annual volume vary widely, from an additional 15
tonnes on the conservative end to 40 or more tonnes in some academic and
investigative journalism estimates. The true figure almost certainly
moves with the gold price, and 2025's price environment is likely to
have pulled in additional informal activity.
with manual equipment, mercury amalgamation and a working relationship
with local intermediaries can operate profitably at gold grades and
scales that a formal mining company cannot. At US$2,000 per ounce,
marginal sites barely covered costs. At US$4,000 per ounce, the same
sites deliver two to three times the net margin and attract more
participants.
with limited formal employment alternatives see garimpo expand during
price cycles, with informal workers migrating across state borders to
follow the most productive sites. The social network is organised:
equipment rental, fuel supply, amalgam buyers, transport logistics and
downstream laundering chains all scale with the price.
produced by mercury amalgamation releases between 1 and 5 kilogrammes of
mercury into river systems. The cumulative environmental burden is
measurable in regional fish-contamination studies, in community health
data and in isotopic tracers detectable thousands of kilometres
downstream. The 2025 price environment makes that burden larger, not
smaller.
gold from the Brazilian Amazon is easier to monetise when the per-ounce
price is higher, because the fixed transaction costs of laundering —
intermediary fees, transport, border-crossing — are a smaller share of
the total. That fact alone explains why illegal garimpo expands more
than proportionally when gold prices rise.
under a simplified licence called Permissão de Lavra Garimpeira). The
licensed garimpo that the 100-tonne aggregate includes is part of the
formal system and contributes tax and royalty revenue.
through informal buyer networks, often crosses state lines, and is
eventually laundered into the formal market by being reclassified as
licensed artisanal production or by export through loosely supervised
channels. Federal enforcement actions — including high-profile
operations coordinated with the Federal Police and environmental
agencies — have become more frequent since 2023, but the gap between
formal and informal gold remains substantial.
The environmental liability of illegal garimpo goes beyond mercury.
access roads and pits accelerates the loss of Amazon canopy, and the
cumulative social fabric of affected Indigenous territories has suffered
documented harm. In the Yanomami territory in Roraima, the federal
government ran a sustained expulsion campaign in 2023-2024 to remove
illegal miners operating inside the reserve, and comparable operations
in the Tapajós, Alta Floresta and Karipuna regions have followed.
The environmental cost has financial consequences for the formal sector.
provenance for gold they accept, and a country perceived as permitting
large-scale informal production faces reputational headwinds on the
global market. Brazilian formal producers, who operate to high ESG
standards, bear the cost of the informal sector's behaviour even though
they play no role in it.
enforcement, traceability and economic alternatives is beginning to take
shape. Federal and state authorities have invested in satellite
monitoring systems that can identify active garimpo sites in
near-real-time. Gold traceability frameworks — of the kind the LBMA and
responsible-sourcing initiatives have been developing — are being
piloted with Brazilian refineries. And formal exploration initiatives,
including the SGB's favourability maps for the Carajás-Tapajós-Alta
region into licensed, technology-driven activity.³
live in regions with few alternatives to informal mining, and any
enforcement strategy that does not include livelihood programmes tends
to push activity elsewhere rather than eliminate it. Sustainable
forestry, açaí-based agriculture, formal mining-service employment and
tourism are all being tested at scale, but none is y