ANDRANOTSIMATY, Madagascar — On an August afternoon, a conspiracy of golden-crowned sifakas made their way across Andranotsimaty, a settlement inside Loky Manambato Protected Area in Madagascar. There are other kinds of gold here too. It was here that Roméo Richard Mananjara hit pay dirt in 2017. Gold-rich soil he collected near his family’s well yielded 10 grams, or a third of an ounce, of the precious metal. Soon, miners from near and far poured into the area. Two years later, this corner of Madagascar became the focus of a proposed gold-extraction project led by a player from far beyond Malagasy shores: the French luxury giant Chanel. The plan was to buy gold from artisanal miners operating inside Loky Manambato. A 2019 report commissioned by Chanel and shared with Mongabay by French accountability platform Climate Whistleblowers called it an “innovative” approach to sourcing gold from “environmentally-delicate settings.” In this case, the setting was a 500-square-kilometer (193-square-mile) chunk of Loky Manambato — a fifth of the protected area. Chanel shared a statement with Mongabay suggesting Loky Manambato was one of the “research projects” undertaken by the company “to study the possibility of setting up new supply chains, in line with the ethical, social, and environmental principles it defends.” It did not respond to specific requests for comment about the project. In 2020, the Malagasy government banned gold exports. Chanel says it never actually sourced any gold from Loky Manambato, but conservationists argue that a multinational’s attempt to make a protected area a…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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