A window into what we’re reading at the Stimson Center’s Environmental Security Program

Illegal and Unregulated Mining Runs Rampant in Venezuela (Inside Climate News) 

Located across the Venezuelan states of Amazonas, Bolívar and Delta Amacuro, the Orinoco Mining Arc is a center of mining illegal and unregulated mining activity. Mining has exploded in this area during the Maduro regime, as operations use high-pressure pumps and toxic mercury to strip vast stretches of Amazon rainforest, and choke rivers with sediment and pollutants. Recent activities even carved open-pit mines into the summit of Yapacana National Park’s sacred tepuy mountain. The environmental impacts on populations are also devastating: up to 90 percent of women in mining areas show toxic mercury levels that are linked to neurological damage. 

Local organizations report that agreements between government officials and armed groups have left the industry’s management and profits to non-state armed actors. The resulting lack of transparency has led to numerous human rights abuses over the past 8 years, including mutilations, forced prostitution, child labor, and the documented murders of at least 32 Indigenous and environmental defenders. Experts also see a US withdrawal from international oversight mechanisms and the Trump administration’s focus on extraction as events which will prioritize rapid resource development over Indigenous rights and democratic values. This potentially may enable further abuses while eliminating accountability mechanisms that have historically helped document crimes for future prosecution. 

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Mauritania’s Fishmeal Industry Declines as New Regulations Take Hold (Mongabay) 

Civil society concerns recently prodded Mauritania’s government to tighten regulations on a rapid expansion of the country’s fishmeal production. Now, the evidence that it is slowing has arrived. In 2020, fishmeal production reached 128,789 metric tons across 44 processing plants, which ranked as the second-highest number of fishmeal processing plants in the world. Lax regulations that allowed industrial vessels to fish in coastal waters—including critical breeding and spawning grounds—fueled the expansion. More than half of the pelagic fish species caught in Mauritania in 2021 were converted to fishmeal for animal feed. 

This speedy transition from fishing for human consumption to fishmeal processing raised concerns about pollution, overfishing, and food security. In response to civil society organizations, authorities introduced comprehensive reforms in 2021 which included banning the use of six fish species for fishmeal, requirements that plants to have freezing facilities to preserve fish for human consumption, and new zoning laws that restricted larger vessels from coastal waters. While enforcement gaps remain, these tougher regulations reduced the number of operating purse seiner vessels from 59 in 2022 to 32, as well as reducing the number of fishmeal plants from 44 in 2021 to eight in September 2025. 

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Deforestation Concerns Spike as Brazil’s Soy Industry Exits Moratorium 

(Associated Press)  

Brazil is the world’s largest soy producer, and accounts for about 40% of global output. Yet efforts to protect Amazon land from soy production suffered a reverse last week when representatives from the world’s largest soy traders announced they would withdraw from an agreed-upon moratorium initiated in 2006. The ban on purchasing soy grown on Amazon land cleared after July 2008 was the victim of legislation in the state of Mato Grosso which ended tax benefits for companies participating in the pact on January 1, 2026. Mato Grosso is Brazil’s top soy-producing state, and companies in the agreement receive about 4 billion reais ($743.5 million) a year in tax incentives, according to state estimates. 

 Major soy traders’ exit from the moratorium now puts large swaths of the Amazon at risk of deforestation. Municipalities tracked by the moratorium saw a decline in deforestation of 69% between 2009 and 2022, despite soybean production rising by 344%. Monitoring and enforcement mechanisms within the moratorium were key to these positive effects. Officials used satellites and government farm registry data to detect new deforestation in the Amazon biome, and soy traders were required to cut off purchases from any farms found in violation of the ban. A preliminary study by the nonprofit Amazon Environmental Research Institute said ending the moratorium could raise deforestation in the Amazon by up to 30% by 2045. 

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