In a new short video, Mongabay visits the Dimonika Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO site in southwestern Republic of Congo. The government shut down a Chinese company’s gold mining operation in November 2024, but mining pollution and its impacts on local communities persist.
Photojournalist Berdy Pambou talked with local artisanal gold miners who accuse the Chinese company, City SARL, of polluting the reserve and contaminating the river that provides water to nearly 3,000 residents in the Mvouti district.
“We used to have water sources, very good water sources,” Merveille Mbouinga, a local gold panner, told Pambou. “Today it’s all yellow; you’re even afraid to wash your hands in it.”
The Dimonika Biosphere Reserve covers 136,000 hectares (336,000 acres) of forest and is home to endangered mammals including chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla).
For decades, artisanal miners from the local community have panned for gold. But when City SARL arrived on the scene in 2023, artisanal miners say the company worked with heavy machinery at a scale that caused widespread damage to the forest and water.
“What we do in a year the Chinese companies do in a week.” Prudal Makayis, another local artisanal miner, told Mongabay. “With artisanal gold panning, we can’t cut down 10 or 15 trees. With their machines, they raze everything to the ground. So how are we going to feed our families? And our children, how will they survive?”
According to local media, backhoe loaders operated by City SARL destroyed an estimated 5 hectares (12 acres) of forest.
And water samples taken by the nonprofit Congo Nature Conservation found mercury levels are 140 times higher than the accepted level for freshwater sources.
A City SARL representative told Mongabay that the ecosystem damage preceded the company’s arrival and denied all responsibility.
“The damage was already visible before we arrived,” Odin Malonga, a City SARL manager, told Pambou in the company’s office in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo’s capital city, more than 300 kilometers (186 miles) east of the reserve. “We find ourselves carrying everything that came before us.”
In November 2024, Arlette Soudan-Nonault, the nation’s environment minister, ordered a ban on the company’s gold mining activities.
Watch the video by Berdy Pambou here.
Banner image: Gold mine in the Dimonika Biosphere Reserve, Republic of the Congo. Image by Berdy Pambou for Mongabay.
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