At a time of geopolitical instability, economic uncertainty and growing competition for strategic resources, gold has re-emerged as a symbol of a secure investment. Investors buy it. Central banks stockpile it. Luxury brands sell it.

But behind part of this global trade lies a hidden cost: one measured in destroyed forests, contaminated rivers and Indigenous territories under attack.

A new Greenpeace Brazil investigation, Gold Laundering in the Amazon: Anatomy of a Fraud, reveals how illegally mined gold from the Brazilian Amazon can be laundered into legal supply chains and reach markets around the world. 

How gold laundering happens in Brazil

At the centre of the scheme, revealed by the report, are the permits provided by the Brazilian Mining Agency, a licensing system originally created to regulate artisanal mining. Because the permits can be granted without prior geological surveys and rely on self-declared estimates of a site’s productive potential, there are no reliable technical parameters to verify whether reported production volumes are realistic. According to the report, this loophole allows gold extracted illegally from Indigenous Territories and conservation areas to be laundered into legal supply chains.

What the investigation found

Greenpeace Brazil analysed 187 mining permits between 2018 and March 2026, and identified 98 with signs of irregularities. Together, they accounted for 25.3 tonnes of declared gold worth approximately US$3,66 billion at current market prices. 

The Greenpeace Brazil investigation shows a gold laundering scheme that, for decades, has used a legal instrument to insert gold stolen from Indigenous Territories and other protected areas in the Amazon into national and international markets. 

The impacts of illegal gold mining in the Amazon

The consequences of this system reach far beyond the mining sites themselves. Between 2023 and 2025 alone, more than 5,249 hectares of rainforest were destroyed by gold mining inside Indigenous Territories in the Brazilian Amazon, an area equivalent to around 7,500 football fields. Illegal mining contaminates rivers with mercury, destroys biodiversity, fuels violence and accelerates invasions into protected areas.

The impacts are particularly severe for Indigenous communities. Mercury contamination threatens food systems and water sources, while violence associated with illegal mining disrupts community life and undermines territorial security. Indigenous women often face some of the harshest consequences, including increased harassment, exploitation and violence. In the Munduruku Indigenous Territory, a recent study found that 98.5% of pregnant Indigenous women examined had mercury levels above safe thresholds in their bodies.

We want to live in a standing and living Amazon, with our rights protected, with clean rivers, with fish free from contamination, and without the constant threat of invasions.

– Alessandra Korap Munduruku, Indigenous Leader

How Indigenous Peoples are resisting and taking action

For generations, Indigenous Peoples and local communities have stood on the frontline of forest protection. Through ways of life deeply connected to and respectful of nature, they have safeguarded the most important ecosystems on Earth long before the world began discussing climate negotiations, biodiversity frameworks or rights-based solutions. Despite representing only 6% of the global population, Indigenous Peoples manage or hold tenure rights over 25% of the earth’s surface and at least 37% of the remaining natural lands worldwide.

As illegal gold mining advances across the Amazon, Indigenous Peoples are once again leading the response. This June, prominent Indigenous leaders are traveling across France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy as part of “The True Cost of Gold” tour. 

The group includes: 

• Alessandra Korap Munduruku, winner of the Goldman Prize Award in 2023 for her fight against a mining company in her territory

• Juma Xipaia, founder of the Juma Institute, an organisation dedicated to environmental conservation, Indigenous self-determination and women’s empowerment, and the first woman leader of the Xipaya Tukamã village

• Megaron Txucarramãe, a key figure in the modern Indigenous rights movement and the official successor of Chief Raoni

• Beptuk Metuktire, Indigenous Youth leader and coordinator of the Raoni Institute 

Together with Greenpeace, they are meeting political leaders, journalists, decision-makers and other influential actors to demand stronger accountability in global gold supply chains, greater protection for Indigenous territories and increased support for Indigenous-led forest protection.

Their message is simple: protecting Indigenous rights is not only about justice for Indigenous Peoples. It is about protecting some of the most important ecosystems left on Earth, preserving climate stability, safeguarding water systems and defending the conditions that make life possible for everyone. 

Because in the end, what is truly priceless is not gold. It is the possibility of a livable planet for all of us.

Respect the Amazon

Ask political leaders to act on their promises to stop Amazon destruction.

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Jaqueline Sordi is the Communications and Engagement Lead for the Tropical Forests campaign at Greenpeace International.

This World Oceans Day, we are celebrating a truth that global policy keeps ignoring: the people who have lived closest to the ocean for centuries are often the ones keeping it alive. But while governments keep signing deals to “save the ocean,”  the people actually doing the work are rarely in the conversation.

Greenpeace’s latest report documents what coastal communities already know, and what global policy keeps getting wrong: the path to a healthy ocean runs through the people protecting it. Here is what the people, and the data, are telling us.

1. Ocean protection has been happening for millennia

Expertise built over millennia of stewardship should be hard to ignore. And yet governments somehow keep managing to do so.

From the Kawésqar people in Chile, who have navigated and cared for the waters of Patagonia for more than 6,000 years, to the artisanal fishers of southern Thailand – Indigenous Peoples and local communities hold generations of knowledge about how marine ecosystems work, what keeps them healthy, and what puts them at risk.

In the Los Lagos region of Chile, the local community manages their maritorio (their interconnected sea-land territory) through traditional seed collection and sustainable mussel and seaweed farming. In this area, they haven’t just revitalised their cultural traditions; they have successfully triggered the recovery of vulnerable species and created a natural barrier against the polluting activities of industries close by.

This is not just heritage. This is expertise. The kind that no corporate manual, no government decree, and no international framework has ever come close to replicating. And yet it is the first thing to get ignored when decisions get made.

2. Where communities lead, the ocean thrives 

Research tells us that marine ecosystems tend to be healthier when local communities hold real decision-making power over their territories. Unlike industries focused on short-term profit, these communities understand a fundamental truth: protecting their livelihoods means keeping the ocean healthy and full of life for generations to come. 

In Kawawana, Senegal, a decade of community-led stewardship brought back more than 20 fish species, along with manatees and dolphins, to waters that had been pushed to the edge.

These are not isolated success stories. It is a pattern repeated around the world: when communities have secure rights and the power to act on them, nature recovers.

3. People and nature can thrive together

We are constantly told that in times of crisis – war, inflation, energy insecurity – nature must be sacrificed in the name of economic survival.

Coastal communities are proving the opposite. They are not only defending what exists, they are building something better.

In Chana, southern Thailand, this knowledge is applied through the “Talae Na Baan” (Homefront Sea) programme, where communities act as primary guardians of their local waters. Together with other communities they created “Fish Homes” – traditional artificial reefs constructed from natural materials like bamboo poles and coconut fronds – to restore marine biodiversity, and implemented common regulations for coastal management. The result? Fish populations increased – and the communities’ income rose by 20% within one year. This is what ocean protection looks like when local people have real power, real resources, and real decision-making authority.

4. Protecting ecosystems can feed millions

Coastal communities are not just protecting the ocean. They are protecting the world’s food supply.

Small-scale fisheries account for at least 40% of the global catch and cover 20% of the diet of 2.3 billion people worldwide. Not only that, the fish they catch is often proven to be more sustainable and with a lower carbon emissions per kilo. 

Yet industrial fleets are stripping those same waters bare, diverting fish that could feed people into animal feed for export markets. In Senegal alone, enough fish to feed 33 million people disappears into the fishmeal industry every year.  

5. Standing with coastal communities means standing with women.

Protecting coastal communities is, at its heart, also a matter of gender justice. Women make up around 40% of the global small-scale fisheries workforce, sustaining local food systems, economies, and ecosystems, yet their labour and leadership are still too often overlooked.

In Sri Lanka, women are at the heart of one of the world’s largest community-led mangrove restoration programmes. Through more than 1,500 local communities, women are leading mangrove propagation, reforestation, and coastal protection, linking ecosystem recovery directly to economic independence for their families and communities.

In Senegal, women fish processors in Kayar recently helped lead historic legal action against a fishmeal factory accused of polluting local air and drinking water, while diverting fish away from local communities and into animal feed for export.

If governments are serious about ocean protection, women’s leadership in coastal communities must be recognised. 

Global ocean targets must include community leadership

These are not local disputes. They are part of a global struggle over who gets to shape the future of the ocean.

Less than 10% of the world’s oceans are protected right now. Most of that protection exists only on paper. The global target world leaders have committed to is 30% by 2030, but protected areas only work if they are actually protected. Too often, conservation exists on paper while destructive activities continue in practice. 

Industrial destruction does not just damage nature. When a fishmeal factory moves in and hoovers up the fish that feed a coastal town, that town loses everything: its food, its income, its future. But when industrial fishing, aquaculture, port developments, shipwreck disasters or fossil fuel projects threaten marine ecosystems, coastal communities are often the first to push back. 

Community-led conservation, whether through Indigenous and traditional territories, traditional fishing grounds, or community managed marine areas is already delivering real protection in many parts of the world. 

If governments are serious about meeting global biodiversity targets, they need to support and recognise these efforts, not work around or against them.

Learn more in our new report!

Stand with coastal communities

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Sara Bettinelli is an Engagement Manager with Greenpeace International. 

An AI cake, an Arctic sponge, and a celebrity SLAPP. Here are some of our favourite images from Greenpeace work around the world this week.

Taiwan – As US semiconductor giant NVIDIA kicks off its GTC AI conference in Taipei, Greenpeace East Asia activists confronted CEO Jensen Huang face-to-face, demanding that the AI chip leader and its billionaire founder take responsibility for the soaring energy demands and carbon emissions across its supply chain, especially in the East Asian manufacturing hub Taiwan where most of its hardware is produced.

Bulgaria – Greenpeace activists from Bulgaria, Hungary, Croatia, and Romania, deployed a massive “TOXIC” banner beneath the chimneys of the Bobov Dol Thermal Coal Power Plant. The direct action demands an immediate, permanent restriction on the facility’s operations and calls out the Bulgarian government’s irresponsible refusal to halt a chronic, rule-breaking offender.

USA – Ocean advocates and Pacific community leaders unite in Washington D.C. at Upwell: A Wave of Ocean Justice to demand the U.S. government stop its plans for deep sea mining in the Pacific. Surrounded by ocean allies from across the movement, they stand in solidarity with Pacific Island communities facing the world’s first proposed lease sale for deep sea minerals — slated for American Samoa. A delegation of Pacific community leaders from American Samoa, Hawaiʻi, CNMI, and Guam traveled to Washington D.C., where Greenpeace facilitated meetings with members of Congress and the media to help amplify their voices.

The Arctic – Images of underwater inhabitants of the Deep Arctic, captured during the current expedition. Pictured from left to right:

• Dumbo Octopus (Grimpoteuthis), in front of the underwater structures at Loki’s Castle hydrothermal vent field in the Norwegian Sea.
• The stalked deep-sea sponge Stylocordyla borealis, sampled from the Schulz Bank seamount along the Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge.
• Purple Seastar discovered at the “Unnamed” seamount.

U.K. – Award-winning actor Javier Bardem and Children’s and Family Emmy Award-nominated actress Yasmin Finney star in a new film, SLAPP Suit, that dramatises the threat of — and resistance to — abusive SLAPP lawsuits, released this week by Greenpeace International.

Billionaire bullies and corporate polluters use Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) to bury activists, journalists, whistleblowers, and non-profit organisations in legal fees, drain their time and resources, and ultimately make the cost of dissent too high. US-based fossil fuel pipeline company Energy Transfer has been waging back-to-back abusive SLAPP lawsuits against Greenpeace in the US and Greenpeace International for nearly a decade in a blatant attempt to silence free speech, erase Indigenous leadership of the Standing Rock movement, and punish solidarity with peaceful resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. Watch the full video on YouTube

Spain – Thirty Greenpeace Spain activists unfurled a huge banner on the Barqueta Bridge in Seville bearing the slogan “Aznalcóllar: Not Again” to protest against the plan to reopen a coal mine.

USA – Activists hold a banner near the US. Capitol Building in Washington DC demanding protection of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The federal government plans to open the Coastal Plain of the refuge for oil & gas drilling in a lease sale June 5, 2026.

Greenpeace has been a pioneer of photo activism for more than 50 years, and remains committed to bearing witness and exposing environmental injustice through the images we capture.

To see more Greenpeace photos and videos, visit our Media Library.