Gold and Shipping Team Up to Threaten Yet More Emissions

She does not believe the company’s promises about recycling the water for the mine, and fears the poisoning of drinking water and rivers.

“There is a much better alternative to mining in the increasing development of eco-tourism”,  Boyanova says. There is already an established local industry of picking wild herbs and hunting wild game like pigs and deer. “When the gold digging is finished in 20 years, we will be left with a moonscape.”

Asked about climate change, she says that of course shifting 750,000 tons of rock would use vast amounts of diesel fuel, and destroying the forests would release carbon. The company would not comment on climate change but said local environmental damage would be minimal. The concentrate containing the gold and silver will go to Namibia for final extraction.

Dimitar Sabev, a Bulgarian economist and journalist, who has studied the metal trade in Europe, says the new mine is part of a pattern of uncounted carbon emissions involving the transport of lead, zinc and copper concentrates from Latin America to the smelters of the European Union, Bulgaria’s included. “This 10,000 km-long trade line across oceans is tax-exempt and free to create considerable emissions, since it is a several million tons load.”

The controversial free trade agreement between the EU and Peru and Colombia, dating from 2013, cemented these fast-growing shipments.

“The least that could be said is that this trade is carbon-irresponsible”, Sabev says. “I personally see here another manifestation of resource exploitation and profiting from others’ underdevelopment. The environmental impacts remain hidden from the public.”

He says work is still in progress on calculating the emissions involved, but ore transport from South America to Europe will not be less than one million tonnes of carbon dioxide – which is not counted in EU inventories.