IGARAPE INSTITUTE Edmund Kelly, Merton College, Second Year Undergraduate, BA Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Remote working Work Projects I completed three projects with Igarape, working with their Climate and Security Team to research environmental crime in the Amazon region: 1) Gold Mining and Logging: This project was about 2/3 of the total work I completed. The goal was to collect and analyse data relevant to the gold mining and logging industries in Brazil, Colombia and Peru, and attempt to estimate the size of the illegal gold mining and logging markets compared to the legal markets. I reviewed academic and NGO/think tank literature relevant to the topic, and compiled data from international organisations and government databases for both gold mining and logging. For example, the UN's Comtrade database gave data on imports/exports of gold/wood products, whilst databases contained on government websites gave data on domestic production of gold/wood. I then used data on imports/exports and domestic production/consumption to estimate the volume of illegal gold mining/logging. Using pricing data, I attempted to estimate the value of the legal/illegal markets for each product, and the approximate tax losses faced by the governments involved due to unreported production. In each case the size of the illegal markets was very large, typically between 40-85% of the total estimated market, with billions of dollars of losses for each of the governments involved per annum. I produced an Excel spreadsheet and an accompanying 28-page research note summarising my findings and the methodological difficulties involved in estimating these dynamic and often hidden markets. After discussions with my supervisors, we are considering publishing
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