ILLEGAL MINING AND TERRITORIAL VULNERABILITY IN THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON: SPATIAL ANALYSIS OF IMPACTS ON INDIGENOUS LANDS

Abstract

This chapter addresses the expansion of illegal gold mining in the Brazilian Amazon and its socio-environmental impacts on Indigenous Lands, from the perspective of territorial vulnerability. The growth of mining activity within protected areas has intensified processes of environmental degradation, mercury contamination, and sociocultural disruption of Indigenous peoples. The objective is to spatially analyze the distribution of illegal mining and its impacts on Indigenous Lands, based on spatial analysis and geoprocessing. For this purpose, official data from INPE, IBGE, and the Amazonian Network of Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information (RAISG) were used. The results show that mining pressure is not homogeneously distributed, concentrating in specific territories such as the Yanomami, Kayapó, and Munduruku Indigenous Lands, where impacts are more severe and territorial vulnerability is more pronounced. It is concluded that illegal mining represents a central vector of threat to Indigenous territorial integrity and that spatial analysis is essential to understand and monitor this dynamic in the Amazon.