BY SOPHIE EGAR & JOSEPH BOUCHARD
Sophie Egar is an M.A. candidate at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). As a Volunteer Researcher at Iracambi Rainforest Research and Conservation Center during the summer of 2023, Sophie Egar researched environmental licensing for the mining sector in Southeastern Brazil. She interviewed local people, academics, activists, NGOs, and former government officials. This article is largely informed by those interviews.
Joseph Bouchard is a freelance journalist covering geopolitics in Latin America, with reporting experience in Colombia, Bolivia, and Brazil. His articles have appeared in The Diplomat, The National Interest, Mongabay, and East Asia Forum. He is an MIA candidate at Carleton University in Ottawa.
Brazil’s President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva won last year’s contentious election on a bold climate agenda. Yet, Lula’s actions on climate have been lackluster, even outside the Amazon. Beyond the Amazon region lies Brazil’s Atlantic Rainforest. Despite the remarkable biodiversity and ecological importance, less than 10 percent of the Atlantic Rainforest’s original cover now remains. Located within this region is Minas Gerais, a state with deep ties to the mining industry. While mining in this state has been profitable, its success has not been achieved without substantial detriment to the environment. Nor have the local communities shared equally in the generated wealth and power. The Brazilian government has contributed to the negative impacts on local communities through its poor helmsmanship of mine licensing.
Brazil’s principal regulatory body for the mining sector is the National Mining Agency (ANM). Its budget has been continually cut, rendering it no longer capable of adequately carrying out its monitoring functions. The problem of lax monitoring is due to regulatory failures at not only the federal level, but also the state level. Although the state mining regulations in Minas Gerais are more stringent than federal regulations, pressure from the mineral sector led to the enactment of several regulatory changes in 2016. These industry-backed changes made the licensing process faster and more prone to socio-environmental abuse.
An examination of the area surrounding the Serra do Brigadeiro State Park illustrates the environmental and societal impacts that mining has had in this region. While the park has not yet been mined, the near-complete deforestation of the surrounding area portends its future if the mining industry is permitted to encroach into this valuable territory. The risk of encroachment arises from the Brazilian Aluminum Company’s (CBA) interest in conducting bauxite mining throughout the Atlantic Rainforest. Lara Clemente from the Iracambi conservation NGO in Serra has explained that, “if we let CBA take Serra do Brigadeiro, it is actually removing a whole island, one of the few islands, of environment and biodiversity from the whole state of Minas Gerais.”
Bauxite mining causes permanent environmental damage. When bauxite is removed from the land, the clay soil leftover stymies reforestation and conservation efforts. Moreover, after bauxite extraction, the ability of the water table in river basins to retain its moisture is drastically reduced, causing less water to flow into the river systems. Additionally, the mining causes soil erosion that pollutes the water. For rural families whose livelihoods are rooted in agriculture, the consequences can be devastating. Bauxite-free soils have a much lower capacity to retain nutrients, and therefore generate poorer crop yields. If farming families cannot profitably maintain their agriculture, they may have no choice but to leave their ancestral homes.
Additionally, when CBA rents locally owned land, its mining activities are continuous and intrusive. For years at a time, families live alongside roads made dusty from heavy trucks and the noise caused by drilling machines. Locals are often misled about their rights to privacy and fair compensation.
Stakeholders within civil society emphasize the urgency for a higher caliber of technical evaluations for mining activities, and a more participative process during the prospecting of grants and environmental licenses. This problem was highlighted by José Carlos Carvalho, who played an important role in Brazilian public administration. He served as the Federal Minister for the Environment, Secretary for the SEMAD, President of the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Sustainable Natural Resources, and as Secretary to the Ministry of the Environment at the Federal and State levels.
The government requires companies like CBA to submit reports that monitor and evaluate the technical, scientific, and socio-environmental matters of their activities. However, miners are in charge of monitoring, and it is all too common for reports to include poor analyses. If reports are inaccurate or fabricated, the government has no way of checking. Central to this problem is that Brazil’s government agencies are not empowered with the resources to regulate.
The reports contracted by the mining companies tend to ignore community input. On the rare occasion where communities successfully petition for a public town hall, the proceedings are described by locals as a farce. In one municipality just outside the State Park, individuals received just three minutes each to voice their discontent. The time allowance of the mining company? Thirty minutes. Moreover, this particular town hall meeting was held virtually. The rural communities affected have poor internet connection; their voices could barely be heard, whilst the mining company sat — in person — beside the meeting's president.
The exclusion of communities from matters that impact their lives demonstrates CBA’s failure to comply with its own standards of Environmental, Social and corporate Governance (ESG). In a well-marketed ESG strategy, CBA attempts to portray itself as part of the “climate fight.” CBA touts to investors how they value a participatory process during mining activities. The reality is that local stakeholders are either disregarded or silenced. There are numerous instances where CBA has illegally entered people’s land for preliminary assessments.
On March 20th of 2023, CBA snuck onto the farm of a local dweller named Carla Faccina. “They cut the wire of my fence and created a trail with the machete and everything,” says Carla, “It was clear they had been there before.” After continuing on the trail, Carla spotted the men still inside her terrain and told them they were trespassing on private property. The men ignored Carla. According to Carla, “The path of the trail ended in a pasture of my other neighbor, where there were more than 10 people with overalls and a white CBA truck.” She continued saying, “I was very nervous because no one answered me, everyone just kept looking at each other while I asked about their illegal presence.”
There is no way to verify the ESG certifications’ validity, given that there is no additional information listed. Nor is there a way to check if CBA actually implements these policies. The great part of the CBA’s website dedicated to ESG simply does not always work. When we contacted CBA about these issues, we got radio silence, except for a few slow responses from their Instagram account.
Though there are limited efforts to fight the environmental and social destruction from bauxite mining in Minas Gerais, they should still be highlighted. One of the organizations holding CBA accountable is the Movement for Popular Sovereignty in Mining, better known as MAM. The group’s members “are not against mining,” but “decisions on what to mine, how much to mine, where to mine, and why mine should be made from popular interests in public forums,” says Professor Gustavo Iorio of the Federal University of Juiz de Fora, who collaborates closely with the MAM. This concept is referred to by MAM as “popular sovereignty” over mining. By law, bauxite belongs to the State, therefore, its people should profit from sales and have a voice in how resources are extracted. The present royalty rate (3 percent) is very low: Australia recently raised its rate to 5 percent and there is a good case for Brazil doing the same.
Still, the civil society sector remains relatively small, disconnected, and ideologically divided. The relevant NGOs each have a different focus and they rarely come together to speak with one coherent voice. The rural nature of mining extraction also makes it more difficult to gain public attention. Most large NGOs and regulatory bodies are concentrated in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, or Brasilia.
Civil society must take on a more organized and active approach to lobbying for their own communal interests. An example of legislation they should rally behind is the proposed taxes on big mining companies in Brazil, which would help to limit the power of the mining sector in the country and better distribute profits to the community.
As informed by Elizabete Lino, an Institutional Assessor with the Association for the Defense of the Environment (AMDA), if the MAM and other NGOs need guidance on how to better unite and organize, they should look at the corporate model. It has, nearly without fail, been ruthless in promoting its interests with all relevant parties, including the government, through lobbying efforts. Companies like CBA have a central mission - increasing profits for their shareholders - making it much easier for them to agree on how to advance their interests. The private sector effectively acts as an industrial syndicate for deregulation.
The government should take action by improving its regulation of the mining industry to reform environmental licensing. The government can allocate more resources to the relevant agencies to ensure they have the personnel, equipment, and recognition to work effectively. Each procedure of licensing should be transparent, safe, and science-based. Throughout the process, there could be an emphasis on the standards and enforcement of technical evaluations completed by companies and submitted to the government. International and regional bodies such as the CIDH, UN, and OAS can help guide judicial and corporate-sector reforms.
Pressure, through similar means, should be applied directly to mining companies to enforce more accountability mechanisms for their own commitments on climate. Otherwise, no matter how well-intentioned individual employees may be, companies such as CBA will continue to exploit the ESG system to greenwash their own actions.
These initiatives may not save the Atlantic Rainforest or the livelihoods of its inhabitants in one swoop, but they are big steps in the right direction. They would redistribute the negative consequences of mining away from the people and toward unaccountable mining companies like CBA. Even most Brazilians acknowledge that some mining is necessary for their country’s technological and economic advancement. However, when mining does occur, it must prioritize the wellbeing and the futures of the communities most affected by such extraction. “We have barely any power, especially in local, smaller communities,” says Lara Clemente, the Research Director of the environmental NGO called Iracambi.
If Brazil is to serve as a role model in the global shift to cleaner energy, it must ensure that the benefits of a greener economy are shared widely. The crux of this just transition is meaningful collaboration with local communities.
Photo Credit: Sophie Egar