Global gold production increased from about 2,445 metric tons in 2000 to 2,770 in 2013. The price of gold rose from $250 an ounce to $1,300 an ounce over the same period.
“This has stimulated new gold mining activities around the world and made it feasible to mine for gold in areas that were not previously profitable for mining, such as deposits underneath tropical forests,” said the statement.
The study looked at forests in Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, french Guyana, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia.
On the sidelines of UN climate talks in Lima in December, seven Latin American countries pledged to replant nearly 20 million hectares of forest by 2020.
Forests are crucial carbon “sinks”, their trees sucking up Earth-warming CO2 emitted into the atmosphere by mankind’s fossil fuel burning. Several million square kilometers of forest land is lost globally every year.
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