"Mercury rising: Why Bolivia remains South America’s hub for the toxic trade", 14 November 2022

...Bolivia, however, has done almost nothing to regulate it. The import and export of mercury is still legal — it’s treated like any other substance at customs — as is its distribution inside the country...The country has in recent years led the world in mercury imports, ahead of China, India, Russia and the United Arab Emirates, according to an October U.N. Human Rights Council report...

Much of the mercury that stays in-country moves north from La Paz to mining concessions in and around Madidi National Park...[,]...the heart of illegal gold mining in the country...Leaders of the Leco Indigenous People and Original Communities of Larecaja group (PILCOL) in the mining town of Guanay said that, in some areas of La Paz department, they’ve seen as much as 2 metric tons of mercury being dumped into rivers on a weekly basis, poisoning marine life and preventing the communities from fishing...

The Ministry of Mining and Metallurgy and the Mining Administrative Jurisdictional Authority (AJAM), charged with overseeing safe mining practices in Bolivia, declined several requests for comment for this story.

Conservationists point to the Bolivian government’s failure to implement the Minamata Convention, an international treaty regulating mercury use, as the root of the problem....Bolivia went on to ratify the convention in 2016, it didn’t implement any regulations within the required three-year window...