Mining firms step back from Brazil’s Indigenous territories
RIO DE JANEIRO — Some of the world’s biggest mining companies have withdrawn requests to research and extract minerals on Indigenous land in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, and have repudiated Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s efforts to legalize mining activity in the areas.
The Brazilian Mining Association (Ibram), which represents around 130 companies, conducted an internal survey of its members earlier this year, according to Raul Jungmann, its president.
For the first time in decades, none of the companies have current research or mining applications for gold, tin, nickel, iron and other ores in Indigenous areas, he said.
Neither the survey nor its results have been reported previously.
Members of the association, which accounts for 85% of Brazil’s legally produced ore, include mining giants Rio Tinto, Anglo American and Vale. The AP contacted all three companies. Rio Tinto confirmed it 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 last year.
Around two-thirds of the applications were filed with the federal mining agency before the government officially demarcated them as Indigenous territory, according to a study conducted by geologist Tadeu Veiga, a consultant who also teaches at the National University of Brasilia.
The collective retreat comes as Bolsonaro insists 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 was pushing to change that even before he became president, as a fringe lawmaker.
During his 2018 presidential campaign, he said deposits of the metallic element niobium, found under Indigenous lands, could transform Brazil into a mining powerhouse, but the proposal fell by the wayside after he took office.
Available resources of niobium, used as an alloy for steel, are more than sufficient to supply the world’s projected needs, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Bolsonaro has repeatedly said the nearly 14% of Brazil that 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.
In March, he pressured Congress for an emergency vote on the bill drafted and presented in 2020 by his mining and justice ministries to regulate the mining of Indigenous lands.
To Bolsonaro’s chagrin, lawmakers have declined to put the proposed mining law to a vote.