“You apply the strategies they have adopted to neutralise the mercury, you spend money doing this, but has the activity itself [i.e. the mining] stopped? That is what must happen. Yet it hasn’t stopped whatsoever. How can we solve a problem if the government hasn’t been able to stop what is causing it in the first place? How are you going to reduce the impacts [of mercury] if, let’s say, in just one river the water is completely contaminated? You start doing your remediation work. Will it have any effect if the contaminated water keeps on coming? If upriver the illegal miners keep operating? You keep spending money on remediation and the miners keep working. . . Is this ever going to solve the problem? Never, never, never, never.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/andes-to-the-amazon/2016/jun/19/top-peruvian-amazon-tourist-invaded-gold-miners
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