Focus on Arts and Ecology

As the superpowers vie for influence in Peruvian infrastructure and mining, what about the environment? 

By César Prado, March 24, 2026

When videos surfaced of Peru’s president arriving in a hooded top for late-night meetings with the businessman Yang Zhihua, it sparked the latest in a string of Peruvian political scandals.

Dubbed Chifagate, after the Chinese-Latin American fusion restaurants where the undeclared meetings took place, it ultimately led to José Jerí’s ousting in February. Peruvian law requires all such meetings to be documented. The next election process – to choose a successor who will be the ninth president of Peru in just a decade – begins on 12 April.

Chifagate has elicited broader questions about the growing influence of Chinese investors and businesses in Peru. Yang is one of scores of business people who have driven Peru’s investment links with China since the 1990s. His company holds a concession for a hydroelectric project on Pachachaca River. Delivery was initially promised for early this year, but at the time of his meetings with Jerí, it had applied for a three-year extension.

Several Chinese companies have become key components of Peruvian mining, energy and infrastructure. The most notable example is Chancay port, a megaport near Lima, which the US has recently spoken out about as it targets Chinese influence in the region.

Beyond the implications of geopolitics, these developments are situated in some of Peru’s most ecologically sensitive regions. Research by the OECD and environmental groups has shown that weak governance has undermined environmental oversight of extractive industries in particular.

Decades of corruption

For years now, Peru has been mired in political turbulence, marked by presidents being investigated, prosecuted or convicted for corruption.

The first was Alberto Fujimori, removed from office in 2000, who spent 16 years in prison for human rights violations and corruption offences. Fujimori died in 2024.

Four of his successors were then ensnared in Lava Jato (Operation Car Wash), a bribery scandal involving Brazilian construction companies.

Another, elected in 2021, also found himself under investigation for alleged bribes, linked to public works. After being impeached and convicted of conspiracy to rebel, his successors were unable to complete their terms due to impeachment proceedings and congressional censure.

According to José Luis Gargurevich, executive director of Proética, part of anti-corruption network Transparency International, the balance between branches of government has broken down: “Political instability shows that any congressperson could become president tomorrow […] congress has accumulated disproportionate power.”

Congress is perceived as the country’s most corrupt institution, found a Proética survey conducted last year of 1,300 Peruvians living in urban areas, earning an 85% disapproval rating. In Transparency International’s 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index, Peru ranks 130 out of 182 countries.

Against this backdrop, Peruvians will head to the polls on 12 April to elect a new president.

China’s investment growth

Chinese companies are continuing to invest in Peru. “China has a long-term vision and Peru’s political turbulence does not necessarily alarm them,” says Cynthia Sanborn, director of the Centre for China and Asia-Pacific Studies (CECHAP) at the University of the Pacific (PE) in Lima.

The country has become Peru’s main trading partner in recent decades. According to CECHAP figures, seen by Dialogue Earth, Investments totalling USD 27.9 billion represented 21% of all foreign investment in the country at the end of 2023. Mining remains the flagship sector, accounting for 47% of this total.

The presence of major Chinese state-owned enterprises began in 1992, when Shougang acquired the state-owned company, Hierro Perú. This established Shougang Hierro Perú, based in Marcona in the coastal department of Ica, investing more than USD 2.25 billion.

This trade relationship deepened in 2007 with the arrival of the Aluminum Corporation of China, which took over the Toromocho copper megaproject in Junín, central Peru. It invested around USD 5.59 billion in infrastructure and mining operations.

The most significant recent acquisition came in 2014. A consortium led by MMG Limited, together with Guoxin and CITIC purchased one of Peru’s largest copper deposits, in the southern Apurímac region. They invested close to USD 4.74 billion.

In recent years, Chinese investment has diversified into energy, port infrastructure and logistics. Following the withdrawal of US and European capital, Chinese state-owned corporations acquired majority stakes in Enel and Luz del Sur, the main electricity distributors for the Peruvian capital Lima.

In 2024, China COSCO Shipping inaugurated the Chancay megaport, north of Lima. With a projected handling capacity of two million containers annually, it is considered the most important port facility on the South Pacific coast.

China also carries decisive weight in Peru’s trade balance. At the beginning of 2025, 28.7% of imports originated from China, while 33.8% of Peruvian exports were sent in the other direction.

Some Chinese firms operating in Peru have been linked to allegations of corruption. In 2022, a cooperating witness (providing information in exchange for legal benefits) made allegations against a group of congress members known as “Los Niños”. The group is accused of lobbying in favour of a consortia involving the China Railway Tunnel Group and the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation.

Yang’s construction company is also a part of a group of 13, dubbed the “Dragon Club”. The group has been accused of “influence peddling” in relation to the acquisition of public contracts.

Sanborn worries observers may oversimplify this state of affairs, and is at pains to counteract negative assumptions: “We should not treat all Chinese investment as homogeneous, just as we would not do so with Mexican, US or French investment. Corruption allegations are a domestic problem across various sectors – they are also our responsibility to address.”

Socio-environmental tensions

Some Chinese companies operating in Peru have also faced complaints over environmental damage.

There has been opposition among Indigenous communities in La Convención province, central Peru since the China National Petroleum Corporation acquired the concession for this gas field from Petrobras Argentina in 2013. They claim proper consultation has not been carried out.

More recently, the ceramics and porcelain manufacturer Tengda – also linked to Yang Zhihua – built a 35-hectare plant in Salas district, Ica, in 2022. Before operations began, Peru’s Environmental Assessment and Enforcement Agency (OEFA) investigated and determined the facility would overexploit water resources and release gases that are harmful to health. The plant is currently not operational.

The investigative journalism outlet Ojo Público recently reported that several companies are under investigation for the illegal extraction, theft and export of mining tailings to China. The material arrived at Chinese ports after being purchased by WuChan ZhongDa International Group Co, Ltd and Shuikoushan Nonferrous Metals Co, Ltd, both state-owned enterprises. Neither responded to Dialogue Earth’s requests for comment. The illicit transport and extraction of potentially toxic materials highlights a lack of oversight which creates the risk of environmental damages.

Two powers in contention

Partly because of the levels of Chinese investment, Peru finds itself in the middle of ongoing tensions between China and the US.

Following a recent court ruling curtailing the power of local regulators over Chancay port, the US Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs warned of a possible loss of Peruvian sovereignty to Chinese owners.

The US ambassador to Peru, Bernie Navarro, escalated the rhetoric by posting on social media: “Everything has a price. In the long term, what was cheap is costly. There is no higher price to pay than losing sovereignty.”

Lian Jian, the Chinese Foreign Ministry in Peru’s spokesperson, responded at a press conference: “China firmly opposes the false accusations and disinformation spread by the United States against China-Peru cooperation on the Chancay port.”

César Gutiérrez, consultant and former president of Petroperú, tells Dialogue Earth he rejects claims the judicial measure undermines sovereignty: “Regulation of Chancay should have been defined before the port concession was granted in 2008, not six months before inauguration, as has been attempted.” More broadly in the region, the recently released US National Security Strategy emphasises the country’s desire to remain the hegemonic power in the western hemisphere. But Jose de Echave, a former environment vice-minister and a researcher at the NGO CooperAcción. argues the US is playing catch-up: “China has become the main trading partner of most countries worldwide, and Peru is one of them. It is difficult for the US to reverse investments such as Chancay, although it will likely attempt to counterbalance that influence, as seen in Panama with renewed US involvement in the interoceanic canal.”

Meanwhile, the US has approved a USD 1.5 billion agreement for the modernisation of the Callao naval base, near Lima’s international airport. In turn, a decision from Peru is pending on the acquisition of a fleet of fighter aircraft worth more than USD 3 billion.

For now, 83-year-old temporary president José María Balcázar faces the task of trying to maintain stability in a country experiencing constant turbulence.

César Prado

Characterised by lawlessness and guerrilla violence, Amazonian mineral mining in Venezuela has attracted the US as it bids to cut off China. 

By Catriona Rainsford, March 20, 2026

At a discrete location near Venezuela’s mining region, several men handle blueish-black gravel in weathered hands.

The minerals they are transporting come from mines seized in 2023 by National Liberation Army guerrillas from Colombia. “Months later, they even brought in helicopters,” one miner tells researchers from the investigative outlet Amazon Underworld. “Everything was chaos. They were taking the material away.”

Attention following the US capture of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, on 3 January initially focused on the country’s flagging oil sector. But another potential bonanza lies in the south, where vast mineral reserves lie beneath remote jungle. Control of this area is violently contested between feuding armed groups.

In early March, Maduro’s replacement, Delcy Rodríguez, met with mining executives – including several from the US – and promised to move at “Trump speed” to unlock these riches.

Doing so would require bringing order to an anarchic sector in which industrial mining is almost non-existent and production by state mining company Minerven is largely made up of minerals traded from artisanal mines.

Despite this opaque supply chain, a deal was announced shortly after the meeting that would see Minerven sell one tonne of gold to the commodity trader Trafigura, which has also done major deals in Venezuelan oil since the US intervention.

Flows of gold from southern Venezuela had long been crucial in propping up Maduro’s cash-strapped regime. But in recent years, new commodities have begun to gain ground: critical minerals.

“The gold in this area is already diminishing and there’s little left,” an Indigenous miner told Amazon Underworld, an investigative outlet that visited the region in mid-2025. “Now people are working mostly on these things: black sands, tin, coltan.”

Many of these resources ultimately end up in China, which controls 91% of global rare earth processing. Recent actions by the US under Donald Trump suggests his administration wants this to change. “The US wants to prevent China from accessing these resources, but they also want access themselves,” Bram Ebus, director of Amazon Underworld, tells Dialogue Earth.

Black sands

On the ground in Venezuela, black sands appear to be little more than coarse dirt. They sell for around USD 7.50 per kg. But they contain important traces of rare earth elements, crucial for renewable technologies, as well as advanced electronics and military hardware. They are mined in areas also rich in cassiterite, the source of tin used in the solder for electronic appliances, and coltan, which ends up in semiconductors and mobile phones.

US interest in these resources has so far been understated compared to its vocal promotion of Venezuelan oil. But the spectre of the White House has been present since the early days of the US intervention.

“You have steel, you have minerals – all the critical minerals. They have a great mining history that’s gone rusty,” the US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, told journalists the day after Maduro’s capture. “President Trump is going to fix it and bring it back.”

He provided no details about how this would happen in practice.

Industrialising Venezuela’s minerals sector would be a still more daunting task than restoring its dilapidated oil infrastructure.

The reserves cover a vast swathe of territory in the remote southern states of Bolívar and Amazonas. In 2016, Maduro designated 112,000 sq km of this area the “Orinoco mining arc”, and later announced plans to trade minerals with China and other members of the BRICS bloc.

There is still no formal geological mapping of these mineral reserves, however, and commercial mining infrastructure remains all but non-existent. Instead, excavation is carried out by local miners using rudimentary techniques such as dredging rivers from makeshift barges and digging shallow holes. The miners include thousands of Indigenous people, whose marginalised economic position forces them into an economy that poses a severe threat to their ancestral lands and ways of life.

Executions, forced labour and child workers

Aside from a lack of oversight and regulation, miners also work in conditions of chronic insecurity. Many operations take place under the control of armed groups, including Colombia’s National Liberation Army (ELN).

Amazon Underworld’s research details how mining communities are subjected to systematic human rights abuses, including summary executions, forced labour, child recruitment and sexual violence. Freedom of movement is restricted. Punishments are imposed upon miners accused of theft or insubordination.

“They have a prison there, with barbed wire and everything,” one miner told researchers. “But you can’t do anything about it, because if you do, they’ll throw you in there, too.”

Similarly brutal conditions have long been documented in Venezuela’s illegal gold sector, alongside deforestation and mercury poisoning of rivers. But the rise of critical minerals is creating new dangers, for both the environment and human health.

“We don’t know what disaster is coming, because everyone is searching for these rare earth elements, digging holes everywhere, making it look like a ravaged field,” Venezuelan environmental journalist Fritz Sánchez tells Dialogue Earth.

Indigenous miners have reported adverse health impacts, adds Sánchez: “They have skin burns. They have persistent joint pain, swollen joints and a series of pathologies associated with the radioactivity of the minerals.” Due to the lack of clinics in these remote areas, such claims cannot be medically documented, he says.

According to Amazon Underworld’s investigations, Venezuelan state forces collaborate with Colombian guerrillas in this shadow economy. Mineral ores must be moved in bulk, with kickbacks paid to local military who permit or facilitate the transport. The Venezuelan government recently refused to comment on allegations of criminal activity in its mining sector.

Amazon Underworld discovered that some of the ores are sold to traders, who move them across the border into Colombia. There, they are processed and exported using fraudulent customs codes. Another portion is sold to collection hubs set up in 2023 by another state mining company, the Venezuelan Mining Corporation (CVM), then shipped. Export documents and testimonies collected by Amazon Underworld indicate that via both routes, most of the minerals ultimately reach China.

Due diligence guidelines issued by the China Chamber of Commerce for Metals, Minerals and Chemicals aim to mitigate human rights and environmental risks linked to mineral supply chains. However, these guidelines are voluntary. And the export documents demonstrate that these minerals from troubled regions like Venezuela can still reach Chinese industrial hubs with relative ease.

Production on the rise?

The lawlessness of the region presents an issue for any companies seeking to invest. That has not prevented the Venezuelan government from pushing for more mining. Two weeks after the US action, Rodríguez announced plans to increase gold production by 30% during 2026, alongside iron, bauxite and critical minerals.

The results can be seen on the ground. “Fuel is flooding to these mining areas, and none of this mining would happen if they didn’t have access to fuel,” Cristina Burelli, director of the NGO SOS Orinoco, tells Dialogue Earth. “When [Rodríguez] says ‘we’re going to increase mining,’ it’s a signal to just keep doing what they’re doing.”

Amazon Underworld’s Ebus says US mining companies are unlikely to rush to invest in a sector fraught with legal and security challenges.

Much of the mining takes place in protected areas, including the Yapacana national park in Amazonas; mining is entirely outlawed in the state. As per Venezuela’s constitution, mining in Bolívar state requires consultation with Indigenous communities – who would likely oppose large-scale extraction on their ancestral lands.

“I think what’s more plausible is that the US will buy from Venezuelan state companies and then refine in the US, and basically pretend they don’t know it’s coming from illegal mines,” Ebus says.

Until recently, US sanctions on Venezuelan gold and mining companies would have complicated such an arrangement. But on 6 March, the US treasury’s office of foreign assets control (Ofac) issued a general licence authorising certain transactions in Venezuelan gold, enabling the sale of Minerven’s gold to Trafigura. This is potentially a signal that the US is open to involvement in Venezuelan minerals.

This is not a surprise to David Soud, head of research and analysis at the consulting firm IR Consilium: “They did it with the oil, where Ofac issues a limited licence in an otherwise heavily sanctioned environment.”

Ebus says: “It’s remarkable that Washington sanctioned Minerven for illegal practices in 2019, watched it fail to change its behaviour, and is now introducing corporate investors to it. Not only corporations interested in direct mining, but also those sourcing Venezuelan gold will be financing the ongoing violence that has been documented over the last decade.”

The guerrilla challenge

The US designation of Colombia’s National Liberation Army (ELN) as a terrorist organisation complicates matters: any company sourcing minerals from ELN-controlled mines risks being accused of financing terrorism.

Trump has clashed with his Colombian counterpart, Gustavo Petro, whom the US accuses of benefitting terrorist groups like the ELN via his peace policies. In February, Trump told reporters the US and Colombia had vowed to fight together against the group. Colombia will hold a presidential election in May and Petro cannot run again, so it is unclear how this apparent commitment will develop.

Even if the ELN were defeated – far from a foregone conclusion – there is still the presence of other armed groups to contend with. Dissidents from the demobilised Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) and Venezuelan gangs, both also present in the area, could seek to capitalise on any power vacuum. The ELN’s battles with rival groups and military forces in Colombia have seen thousands of civilians displaced by the crossfire.

The need for reform

Beyond military action, any genuine attempt to clean up Venezuela’s mining sector would require addressing the needs of vulnerable local communities. They are forced into mining by coercion or poverty.

“There’s no government programmes, no health, no education,” Burelli says. “If you’re really going to tackle illegal mining, you have to provide alternatives to these thousands of impoverished people.”

At present, there is little sign that such holistic solutions are a priority for either Trump or the Rodríguez government. This means scrutiny and reputational risks will remain high for any current or future buyers of Venezuelan minerals.

“Illegal mining in Venezuela is not only devastating Indigenous communities and fragile ecosystems but also eroding the stability of mineral supply chains, which are central to the energy transition,” Emily Iona Stewart, head of policy and advocacy at the NGO Global Witness, tells Dialogue Earth.

“What’s needed now is full supply chain transparency, enforcement of existing sanctions, due diligence laws, and meaningful investment in community-led alternatives to illegal mining.”

Catriona Rainsford

Discarded eggs and tiny juvenile animals could otherwise contribute vital income to struggling coastal communities. 

By Zubaida Mabuno Ismail, March 13, 2026

For thousands of coastal Ghanaians, artisanal fishing is a livelihood difficult to replace.

Centenary Cidi Ocloo, who has been fishing for 17 years, says the activity is much more than just a way to make ends meet. The sea and the three landing beaches in Ghana’s Keta district have become permanent fixtures in his life.

“I used to follow my father and his siblings to the shores as a child,” Ocloo tells Dialogue Earth. “There were times I would join them during hauling or simply swim while they worked.”

As Ocloo grew up he began coming every day to fish with other children and to help sort the catch.

“It was fun and still is,” he says. Nowadays, though, it can be a tough way to earn a living. Nets are increasingly brought in without fish, just holding garbage and sand. “There are days we haul an empty net,” says Ocloo.

He adds that any cuttlefish eggs trapped in his net are returned to the sea immediately. This follows some local education on protecting cuttlefish given by the chief fisher at his landing beach.

Ghana runs on seafood

The average Ghanaian eats 20-25 kg of fish a year, higher than the global average of 20 kg and many other West African nations.

To supply the catch, the country has a sizeable fishing industry, including scores of trawlers and industrial vessels. But it’s small-scale artisanal fishers that are the backbone of the sector. They put to sea in more than 12,700 canoes, operating out of nearly 200 fishing villages, using beach seine, lobster, gill and purse seine nets.

These artisanal fishers produce about 70% of the marine fish landed in Ghana, according to a 2023 paper. And around three-quarters of all the fish landed are consumed in country.

The fishing industry transcends nutrition and commerce in Ghana, serving as a cornerstone of social and cultural identity in coastal areas like Tema, Takoradi and Chorkor.

The sea governs the daily existence of people here, acting less like a simple resource and more like a generational legacy that fosters communal unity.

This precious resource has been under pressure for a long time. A 2015 research paper found that contrary to the rules, almost all artisanal and industrial vessels operate in the shallow parts of the coast. These practices have degraded breeding sites and depleted fishery resources, the paper says.

To make matters worse, Ghana’s fishers could be throwing away over a million US dollars’ worth of potential seafood annually by catching and discarding tiny, early-life-stage organisms before they can grow to sellable size.

That’s what a six-month study of the country’s beach seine net fisheries has found. It investigated catches on three landing beaches in Ghana, including Dzelukofe where Ocloo fishes.

Bycatch problems

Beach seines are a popular fishing gear along the coast. These nets are set in the water with a canoe and then hauled in from the shore.

The gear consists of two lines to be pulled in, two wings of net and a “cod end” in the middle. The wings have floats at the top and lead weights at the bottom, so the net hangs from the water’s surface down to the seabed.

The net is set in a curve by the canoe and hauled in by a team of upwards of 20 people. This leaves enclosed fish no option but to swim into the cod end as the net is usually hauled along the seabed, dragging along anything in its way.

Beach seines in Ghana can catch a lot of fish. They also catch quite a lot of garbage, plastics, sand, seaweed and anything else within the area the net is dragged through.

Everything besides the fish is left on the shores to dry out or rot. But often, nestled among this detritus, are eggs and tiny invertebrates, too small to be noticed by most people.

Margaret Fafa Akwetey has noticed.

The lecturer at Ghana’s University of Cape Coast led the six-month study into beach seining. She and her team found thousands of animals discarded from many different species. Three-quarters of the discards were juveniles or early life stages of species that are commercially important, such as cuttlefish, bivalves and crustaceans.

“Some 80 species [and] 20,545 individuals were recorded during the dry season,” Akwetey says. “While 75 species comprising 8,351 individuals were recorded during the wet season.”

Extrapolating from these figures, Akwetey estimates that some 8 million cuttlefish eggs may have been discarded through beach seining along Ghana’s 550 km coastline between August 2022 and February 2023.

“And when you want to translate this into organisms, considering natural mortality and every form of mortality, you are still looking at over 80,000 organisms that could have grown into a lot of cuttlefish,” she tells Dialogue Earth.

In her paper, she estimates the tonnes of lost potential adult cuttlefish could have generated USD 800,000 locally and USD 1.9 million in export.

Beach seining happens throughout the week on 315 landing beaches in Ghana, with most communities only pausing on Tuesdays. Apart from during closed seasons, “there’s fishing as long as the weather is good. Therefore, we are discarding many organisms,” says Akwetey.

Complicating the issue, many of the animals found in the study were attached to plastics. Clams had attached themselves to bottles, lids or polythene. Eggs were attached to plastic debris of all kinds as well as found in the sand.

“Fish, clams etcetera typically cling to rocks, macroalgae, reefs and other organisms … However, if we do not have a lot of [these] in the marine ecosystem, these organisms will attach to other things,” Akwetey says.

Ghana seeks to protect fish, and fishers

Ghana’s fish populations have long been under pressure from illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. The problem reached such levels that the EU issued a second yellow card warning to the country in 2021, saying it might restrict trade with Ghana if things do not improve.

Straightforward overfishing has also been a problem. Ghana first implemented a ban for trawlers in 2016 that was extended in 2019 to include artisanal fishers. Last year, industrial trawlers were banned for all of July and August, semi-industrial inshore vessels for July, while artisanal canoe fishers were exempted. In January of this year, the government announced it was again considering exempting artisanal fishers, who have long complained about its impact on their livelihoods.

Ocloo says there is always a “bumper harvest” after the closed season, but artisanal fishers like him struggle when they are part of the closure. Although he believes it should be maintained to protect fish stocks.

Seth Kedey, public relations officer of the Ghana National Canoe Fishermen Council, says there are more efforts afoot to protect fisheries and those who rely on them in the district of Keta where he works.

“Here in Keta, we place moratoriums on new canoes to reduce overfishing and protect juveniles and marine biodiversity,” he tells Dialogue Earth. “We are in a discussion with the government to declare a portion of the marine area as a marine protected area.”

Reducing bycatch could also help Ghana’s ocean life. But while fishers at Dzelukofe landing beach are aware of the impact, their peers elsewhere in Keta and in the Central region’s Cape Coast are less so.

Akwetey suggests awareness-raising campaigns could be a win for fishers and the environment.

Fishers know it is illegal to harvest sea turtles and return them if they are trapped in their nets, she points out. “Let’s employ the same strategy to persuade them to put the bycatch back into the ocean.”