Canaima National Park & the Caroní Watershed — A Hydropower Lifeline Undermined by Illegal Gold Mining

Canaima National Park protects roughly 30,000 km² of Guiana Highlands rainforest and tepui plateaus in Bolívar state, including the headwaters of the Caroní River. The Caroní feeds the Guri hydroelectric complex, whose 162-metre dam has flooded 425,000 hectares to create South America's largest reservoir and which alone supplies close to half of Venezuela's electricity — a textbook avoided-cost case for watershed protection, since losing the upstream forest cover would silt the reservoir and threaten national power supply.

In practice, that protection has failed. An FAO assessment found that Canaima and neighbouring reserves lack the basic planning instruments needed for management, surveillance or enforcement. Field and satellite investigations reported by CSIS and Mongabay found roughly 22,000 hectares cleared across Canaima, Caura and Yapacana national parks between 2017 and 2020 for illegal gold mining, with 59 active mining clusters identified inside Canaima in the three years to 2025. Mercury used to process the gold has entered the Caroní system; independent estimates cited by Mongabay suggest up to 70% of the river may now be contaminated, and a 2021 SOS Orinoco study found more than a third of Pemón Indigenous people tested in the Gran Sabana region exceeded WHO safety thresholds for mercury in hair samples.

This is included as a cautionary case: the ecosystem-service logic (protected watershed forest sustaining a hydropower asset supplying half a country's electricity) is sound and well documented, but the near-total absence of enforcement shows that formal protected-area status alone does not deliver the outcome unless governance and monitoring are actively funded and maintained.

Read the full analysis: https://www.csis.org/analysis/illegal-mining-venezuela-death-and-devastation-amazonas-and-orinoco-regions