Formalisation, enforcement, and the production of illegality in Amazonian small-scale gold mining: implications for socio-environmental governance

This paper investigates territorial dynamics in artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) in the Amazon rainforest of Madre de Dios, Peru, with a focus on Indigenous territories. Based on interviews, fieldwork, and policy analysis, it foregrounds the perspectives of illegal gold miners – both Indigenous and migrant – alongside conservation NGO representatives and Indigenous communities to uncover overlooked interactions and impacts of ASGM policies. It examines how ASGM formalisation, concession allocation, enforcement, and shadow governance function as interconnected territorial interventions shaping physical and social space. The paper introduces the concept of “compounding territorialisation” to describe how these interventions interact to produce layered and cumulative constraints on local actors. Findings show that legal and illegal mining distinctions blur in practice, undermining the logic and effectiveness of formalisation. Enforcement is often performative, mirroring and exacerbating the harm it seeks to address. For Indigenous communities, compounding territorialisation limits their ability to defend territories against external ASGM while barring them from mining legally on their land. These dynamics, while experienced differently across actor groups, reveal structural misalignment in ASGM governance produced by compounding territorialisation: formalisation is experienced as inaccessible and ineffective, and enforcement as ineffective and harmful, yet formalisation remains necessary for accessing external support to improve mining practices. While illegal miners expressed interest in reducing environmental harm, improvements remain structurally out of reach. The paper calls for governance frameworks that address this misalignment by engaging with local realities and decoupling pathways to improved mining practices from formalisation.