Illegal mining on Indigenous lands in Brazil dropped under Lula: report

Illegal gold mining in Indigenous Brazilian territories declined under President Lula, but challenges remain, Greenpeace report says.

Illegal gold mining in Indigenous Brazilian territories has declined dramatically since leftist leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took office in January 2023, a report by Greenpeace said Tuesday (April 8, 2025), as the country readies to host U.N. climate talks later this year.

Satellite images revealed that during the first two years of Mr. Lula’s third term, the area of land cleared by mining halved compared to the government of his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro.

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Under Mr. Lula, illegal mining destroyed 4,219 hectares of Amazon rainforest — equivalent to about 5,900 football fields — in areas demarcated as protected Indigenous land by the state, where deforestation is a crime.

During Mr. Bolsonaro’s four-year term from 2019 to 2022, the figure was 16,000 hectares, according to data from the MapBiomas monitoring network.

“So far, the (Lula) government has shown willingness to combat ‘garimpo’ (illegal mining) on Indigenous lands,” Greenpeace spokesman Jorge Dantas told AFP.

“We came from a previous government sympathetic to the ‘garimpeira’ cause; willing to open indigenous lands for economic exploration,” he added.