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Mining giants say no to new projects on Indigenous land

Some of the world’s biggest mining companies have withdrawn requests to research and extract minerals on Indigenous land in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, and have repudiated Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s efforts to legalise mining activity in the areas.

The Brazilian Mining Association (Ibram), which represents about 130 companies, conducted an internal survey of its members earlier this year, said Ibram president Raul Jungmann. For the first time in decades, none of the companies had current research or mining applications for gold, tin, nickel, iron and other ores in Indigenous areas.

Members of the association, which accounts for 85% of Brazil’s legally produced ore, include mining giants Rio Tinto, Anglo American and Vale.

Rio Tinto confirmed that it had retracted its applications for research concessions in 2019. Anglo American did the same in March 2021. Vale withdrew its requests for research and mining concessions over the past year.

The collective retreat comes as Bolsonaro insists that Indigenous

territories contain mineral resources vital to bringing prosperity to both the nation and native peoples.

Brazil’s constitution states that mining can only take place on Indigenous lands after getting informed consent, and under laws that regulate the activity. More than three decades later, such legislation still hasn’t been approved.

Bolsonaro has repeatedly said that the nearly 14% of Brazil which is within Indigenous territories is excessive, and that foreign governments are championing Indigenous rights and environmental preservation as a gambit to eventually tap the mineral wealth themselves.

More recently, in March, he pressured Congress for an emergency vote on a bill to finally regulate the mining of Indigenous lands. He said the emergency vote was necessary because the war in Ukraine threatened crucial supplies of the fertiliser potash from Russia to Brazil’s vast farmlands.

Critics have argued that the bill’s primary purpose is providing legal cover for thousands of prospectors. The activity has mushroomed in recent years amid repeated promises of regulation from Bolsonaro’s government. The prospectors’ sites destroy riverbanks, contaminate waterways with mercury, and disrupt Indigenous peoples’ traditional ways of life.

In March, while Bolsonaro’s parliamentary base tried to speed up the bill’s progress, thousands of Indigenous people and their allies protested in front of Congress. They soon found an unlikely ally – Ibram, which in the past had kept a low profile.

Jungmann said his association had decided to become more open and transparent following two mining accidents in Minas Gerais state in 2015 and 2019, which killed hundreds of people and contaminated waterways, and because of mounting pressure to adopt friendlier socioenvironmental practices.

World

en-nz

2022-05-22T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-05-22T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/283016878319251

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