Presenter: Yifan (Flora) He is an environmental politics scholar and an assistant professor at the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. Her research examines land and natural resource governance in Latin America. She combines causal inference methods, geospatial and remote sensing data, and qualitative interviews to advance knowledge in three areas: the distributive politics of environmental policy implementation; the social consequences of environmental degradation; and global conservation policy.
Abstract: Small-scale and artisanal gold mining (ASGM) can degrade the environment and lead to a variety of negative health outcomes associated with mosquito-borne diseases. Gold mining has been accelerating in the Brazilian Amazon in the past decade, raising concerns over its impact on population health, especially the health of Indigenous peoples. Yet, no study has systematically documented the health impact of gold mining across the Brazilian Amazon, and causal evidence is lacking. We address this gap using a Bartik shift-share instrumental variable design combined with complementary causal inference strategies. Our analysis shows that gold mining significantly increases malaria prevalence among both the general population and Indigenous peoples. For Indigenous communities, limited healthcare access and underreporting hinder full assessment. These findings demonstrate that gold mining imposes broad, long-lasting, and unequal health burdens across the Amazon. By providing causal evidence at scale, we highlight the need for stronger regulation of gold mining and targeted health interventions to mitigate its effects.