Brazil to open Amazon reserve for mining
Brazil’s government has opened a massive national reserve to commercial mining in a move critics dubbed the “biggest attack on the Amazon in the past 50 years.”
A decree from President Michel Temer published Wednesday announced that the National Reserve of Copper and Associates (RENCA) would immediately be abolished so that the area could be explored.
The reserve has been protected since 1984 and covers 47,000 square kilometres — nearly the size of Nova Scotia. About a third of the reserve will be opened to miners.
The move comes as the country has been struggling to escape a crushing economic crisis that has seen unemployment rise above 12 per cent.
Mining and Energy Minister Fernando Coelho Filho said the move could help drag the country out of recession. “The objective of the measure is to attract new investments, generating wealth for the country and employment and income for society, always based on the precepts of sustainability,” Filho told the newspaper O Globo.
There is no information regarding the value of the gold and other minerals — tantalum, iron ore, nickel and manganese — within the reserve, but the ministry has said it believes an “unparalleled” project can be forged.
That hasn’t stopped some of the world’s largest mining companies — particularly those from Canada, the U.S., Australia, and South Africa — from showing interest in exploring the region in the past, according to O Globo.
The RENCA reserve encompasses nine protected parks, forests, biological and ecological reserves and Indigenous lands between the Para and Amapa states. The Waiapi tribe — with a population of about 900 — live there. Their lands, and the parks and forests, are still protected under the decree.
“The decree is the biggest attack on the Amazon in the past 50 years,” Opposition senator Randolfe Rodrigues said. “Not even the military dictatorship dared so much.”