The report  Pure Dynamite: how Bolsonaro’s Government (2019-2022) Mineral Policy Set Up a Climate and Anti-Indigenous Bomb released on March 27 by the Mining Observatory and Smoke Signal, has been generating debate and resulted in public hearings in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

The document, which analyzed the Brazilian mineral policy during the Bolsonaro government, pointed out the existence of illegal favoring to the mining industry, and called into into question the system of self-licensing and mineral exploration in indigenous lands.

The report was featured in more than 350 media outlets, including Agência Brasil, TV Brasil and Miriam Leitão’s column in O Globo, generating reactions from both environmentalists and the mining industry.

On Thursday, April 27, the House of Representatives held a public hearing on the report’s findings, stocking the debate on the Brazilian mineral policies. Participating in the hearing were Daniel Pollack, Superintendent of Revenue at the National Mining Agency (ANM), Maurício Ângelo, Founder and Director of the Mining Observatory, and Rebeca Lerer, founder and coordinator of Smoke Signal.

“There has been a shock indoctrination, with fake news and disinformation, in addition to deregulation (of legislation), equipping of social control institutions, demobilization of control bodies, and criminalization of social movements. We saw a mix of tactics to advance a predatory land use agenda, whether for mining or agriculture, which resulted in increased violence and deforestation,” said Lerer.

The hearing participants contributed with questions about the situation of miners, the proper destination of CFEM (Financial Compensation for Mineral Exploration) resources in the municipalities, and the impossibility of pointing an example of “sustainable mining”. You can watch the public hearing on Youtube.

On Wednesday, May 10, the Federal Senate hosted a debate on the “Pure Dynamite” report and examined the 4 years of climate and anti-indigenous activities carried out by the government of Jair Bolsonaro. The event was attended by several experts, including Maurício Angelo of the Mining Observatory, André Elias Marques, Ombudsman of the National Mining Agency, and Suely Araújo, former president of Ibama and senior public policy specialist at the Climate Observatory, as well as the remote participation of Rebeca Lerer, coordinator of Smoke Signal, and Juliana de Paula Batista. representing the Socio-environmental Institute (SISA).

The main focus of the debate was “mineral denialism” and self-licensing in the mining sector on indigenous lands. In addition, it was discussed that mining represents only about 1% of Brazilian GDP, consumes 11% of electricity, and employs only 200,000 people, many of them in high-risk, outsourced activities. Environmental licensing was another highlight, with pressure from mining companies and industry to include mining in the Licensing Law (PL 3729). The influence that mining companies have on the licensing process was seen as a problem, as they have encouraged dams in an imminent state of disruption throughout the country. The full debate is available on the Senate website.

Opposition senators celebrated the reading of the request for the establishment of the CPI [Parliamentary Inquire Comissions] of NGOs in the Federal Senate this week. The collegiate will be responsible for investigating the actions of non-governmental organizations operating in the Amazon, with investigative powers similar to those of judicial authorities. The expectation is that the CPI will be used to persecute and criminalize the actions of civil society, as was done in an institutional manner by the Bolsonaro government.

To create memory and help elaborate on the tragedy of mineral policy under the Bolsonaro government, The Mining Observatory [Observatório da Mineração] and Smoke Signal [Sinal de Fumaça] have launched the bilingual report “Pure Dynamite: how Bolsonaro’s Government (2019-2022) Mineral Policy Set Up a Climate and Anti-Indigenous Bomb” an independent production that brings a timeline of the mineral sector and details the dismantling of regulatory bodies, rights violations, scandalous agreements and other measures adopted by the former government to satisfy the mineral market lobby in the country and the world.

In its thorough and investigative work, Observatório da Mineração closely followed the work that Bolsonaro’s government undertook at the national and international levels to dismantle public policies and sell mining and metal goods. Investigations have shown that his administration promoted legal and infralegal changes that benefited large mining companies, caused the criminal networks of illegal mining to soar, and made institutions such as the Ministry of Mines and Energy and the National Mining Agency totally subservient to vested financial interests. Smoke Signal Socio-Environmental Monitor, which has recorded facts and movements related to Brazilian socio-environmental policies over the last four years, joined Observatório da Mineração to produce this unprecedented report.

In addition to exposing the sophisticated articulations made between the mining market lobby, transnational companies and the federal government behind closed doors in the National Congress, the publication also brings a brief summary of the first measures adopted by Lula’s government and a list with 20 initial suggestions for the recovery of public governance and the reduction of negative effects of mining in the country. 

Click here to read our report in english. Also available in portuguese.

With a little over a month to the 2022 presidential elections in Brazil, the monitoring initiative Smoke Signal launches “The Amazon and the Future of Brazil: a guide – An examination of the region’s nine states between 2018 and 2022”, an independent production started from a survey of the main events of the socioenvironmental agenda in the four years of Bolsonaro’s administration in all states that make up the region known as “Legal Amazon” in Brazil.

The material was written based on an active listening process carried out between May and July 2022 with the collection of 19 testimonials from people working in the territories covered by the guide. Communicators, researchers, indigenous and community leaders, and activists were heard. The interviews directed the research and, combined with the best available data, resulted in a qualified and thorough report on the region that occupies almost 60% of the national territory. 

The Guide presents an overview of what the Brazilian Legal Amazon is, contextualizing the reader with geographic and socioenvironmental information and the main political and economic drivers of forest destruction and violence. It brings a selection of data produced by relevant scientific institutes and civil society organizations from the region, and a survey of emblematic cases, violent deaths and indicators of the growing threats faced by native peoples in these areas.

The publication also details the movements of the National Congress in this scenario of dispute over land and environmental resources, highlighting four bills in progress in the federal houses and the behavior of state governments and their parliamentary caucuses regarding the so-called Destruction Package, a series of legislative proposals that profoundly change the use and management of land in the country. Moreover, the guide organizes timelines with the main events monitored by Smoke Signal over the past four years, mapping the main fake news and disinformation campaigns related to weakening environmental protections promoted in each of the states. Finally, it highlights critical areas and high-impact projects for the populations and biodiversity that will likely continue to be the subject of political bargaining after the elections. 

A new annual report by the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) points to the increase in violence against indigenous people in Brazil, associated with the dismantling of inspection and assistance bodies for the native population. In 2021, there was a 180% increase in cases of invasion, illegal exploitation and damage to the patrimony of Indigenous Lands in the country compared to 2018, reported the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo. There were 305 episodes, against 109 recorded in 2018.

Regarding cases of violence against the person, the number jumps to 355 in 2021, the highest since 2013, when the organization changed the methodology used for counting cases.

The publication “Violence Against the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil – 2021” highlights how the advance of crimes against the indigenous population has a close relationship with the socio-environmental policies of the federal government. “FUNAI, the official indigenous agency, has become a regulatory agency for criminal businesses in demarcated or demarcated territories. land grabbing and the subdivision of Union lands – after all, indigenous lands are assets of the Union […]”, says an excerpt from the article by Lucia Helena Rangel, CIMI Anthropological Advisor, and Roberto Antonio Liebgott, missionary and Coordinator of CIMI’s Regional South, in the document.

The investigative journalism agency Repórter Brasil launched the second edition of the tool that monitors how Congress representatives are positioned in relation to the environment agenda and rural workers. The “Ruralômetro 2022” shows that 68% of the representatives voted against the environment. 

That means that these are representatives who “presented bills and voted on legislative changes that harm environmental inspection, favor predatory economic activities, to make labor legislation precarious, to make access to social benefits difficult and to stop agrarian reform, among other setbacks pointed by socio-environmental organizations”, says the story that presents the project.

To measure the “rural fever” of parliamentarians, the tool gave each representative a score, ranging from 36⁰C to 42⁰C. The more aligned with the work of the ruralist caucus, the higher its temperature.

The evaluation was based on the analysis of 28 roll call votes and 485 bills presented in the current legislature.

After the Federal Police confirmed the murder of indigenous activist Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips, protests by employees of the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) took the country by storm. Of the 52 units of the agency, 42 hosted demonstrations during the national strike of the category. The group demands the resignation of the president of FUNAI, Marcelo Xavier, the deepening of the investigation into the death of Bruno and Dom, and more security in the Javari Valley (AM), where the crime occurred.

On the same day and in alliance with the movement of public employees, the indigenous movement occupied the streets of São Paulo and Brasília in protest against the postponement by the Federal Supreme Court (STF) of the vote of the “Marco Temporal” [Temporal Landmark], a trial that could define the future of indigenous lands demarcation. The trial was scheduled to resume on the 2nd, but Minister Luiz Fux, president of the STF, announced its postponement indefinitely.

Bruno Araújo Pereira, an indigenista [an indigenous expert], who’s a member with the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI), and a British journalist, Dom Phillips, disappeared last weekend on the way from the riverside community of São Rafael to Atalaia do Norte, in the Javari Valley in the Amazon, on the border with Peru. According to information from the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Javari Valley (Univaja), which was in contact with the missing, Bruno is under constant threats from loggers, illegal gold diggers, and fishermen in the region.

According to Amazônia Real, Bruno and Dom were the victims of an ambush. An indigenous source interviewed by the portal reports that “around 4 a.m. on Sunday (5), the expert and the journalist warned that they were going to talk with “Churrasco”, president of the São Rafael community association. Days before, they had already crossed paths with another group in a 60 HP boat, a motor considered unusual for navigating narrower waterways (boreholes and streams). This group that crossed paths with them made a point of showing that it they were armed and intimidated them”, says the report.

The news mobilized various indigenous and environmental organizations, which drew attention to the vulnerable context of the region and called for a speedy search. Reports from the region indicate that the government was slow to take action and sent insufficient teams, denying even the support of a helicopter. The Army, in a note, said it had the means to help but was “awaiting an order from the higher echelon”. The search has been carried out largely by indigenous people and Univaja.

Two army officers have been identified as the responsible for a network of 14 fake profiles and nine Facebook pages, as well as 39 Instagram accounts, used for attacking NGOs and environmentalists and spreading lies about the Amazon and environmental issues in Brazil.

The information was shared by the company in its quarterly report on threats made by users. “We cannot share many details of how our investigation reached the military. The more we share, the more these networks are able to hide. We use technical and behavioral signals,” Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of global security policy, told the newspaper Estado de S. Paulo.

Six Brazilian civil society organizations presented to the international community a denunciation of the risks involved in the bill 191/2020, which authorizes the economic exploitation of indigenous lands.

In the speech read at a meeting at the United Nations by Gustavo Huppes, from the NGO Conectas, also representing the Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), the Maíra Institute, Kowit and the Climate Observatory, the group stated that the proposal “is a direct attack on indigenous peoples and an outright violation of the constitutional right to their territories and the international obligations assumed by Brazil, such as ILO Convention 169.”

Bill 191 had its urgency regime approved by the House of Representatives on March 9 and it might go to a vote without going through the House committees, in the first half of April.

The Federal Supreme Court (STF) has set aside March 30 for the trial of seven lawsuits with socio-environmental themes, signed by opposition parties. According to the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, the initiative to close a “green package” is led by the ministers Cármen Lúcia and Rosa Weber, with the support of the president of the STF, Luiz Fux. The movement comes after the Act for the Earth, which brought together, on March 9, artists, activists, indigenous leaders, along with thousands of people, in front of the Esplanade of the Ministries in Brasilia (DF), against the set of bills being considered in Congress that threaten the country’s environmental policy.

The actions are about fighting deforestation and fires, protecting the Amazon, air quality standards and environmental licenses. With the exception of ADI 6148, filed by the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), which questions the resolution of the National Council on the Environment (CONAMA), all the actions have opposition parties as authors, with the support of NGOs that participate as amicus curiae (friend of the court), offering subsidies for a technical opinion on the agenda.

In 2022, the non-governmental and non-profit association Rede Sementes do Xingu [Xingu Seed Network] has reached 15 years of activity in forest restoration through the collection and marketing of native seeds of different species. So far, they have totalled 292 tons of collected seeds and 7.4 thousand hectares recovered. Besides the collection and distribution of seeds, the group’s objective is to value the autonomy of traditional peoples and cultures.

Formed by indigenous peoples, family farmers and residents of towns located in Amazon and Cerrado savanna territories in the state of Mato Grosso, the Network has 568 collectors distributed in 21 municipalities, including 16 rural settlements and 26 villages from three indigenous lands.

Last year, in partnership with the Socio-environmental Institute (ISA), the story of the Xingu Seed Network was told in the virtual reality documentary “Forest Makers”, which was previewed at the 26th United Nations Climate Conference (COP26).

On the “anniversary” of “Day of the Fire”, a coordinated effort by land owners in 2019 to burn down forests, the Socio-environmental Institute (ISA) launched a platform that tracks alerts of environmental crimes in Indigenous Lands (TIs) and Conservation Units (UCs) of the Legal Amazon region. The Alerts+ Panel automatically cross-references “all available databases on fire, deforestation and mining” in the biome. The information can be accessed in Portuguese, English and Spanish.

The idea is that the data generated can be downloaded in the format of maps, tables and graphs to contribute to a qualified debate about Amazon and its threats, in counterpoint to the negationism and fake news propagated by the government.

For over a month now, indigenous organizations denounce that armed illegal gold diggers are attacking the indigenous population of the Yanomami Indigenous Land, in Roraima state. According to the Socio-environmental Institute (ISA), even after a Federal Court ordered the government to keep armed security agents in the Palimiú community, the troops did not remain in the territory.

On June 5, according to the Hutukara Yanomami Association (HAY), the Maikohipi community was the target of tear gas bombs thrown by illegal gold diggers. The bombs can only be used by the public security forces and are sold under army control. 

Three days later, the Yanomami and Ye’kwana Indigenous Health Council denounced that criminals arrived at the Walomapi community shooting at the indigenous people. Dario Kopenawa Yanomami, vice president of HAY, told the Amazônia Real website said that there’s a feeling of panic in the region. “The threats are growing stronger. The whole Palimiú region is at risk. There are a lot of gold diggers. They are going up and down intimidating people, taking pictures, cursing, brandishing weapons. Something has to be done and it has to be done urgently. The people are afraid”, said Kopenawa.

In an unprecedented move, a youth group sued Minister Ricardo Salles and former Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo due to the climate goals presented by the Ministry of the Environment to the Paris (MMA) Agreement at the end of 2020.

Contrary to what MMA claimed, the “new goals” of reducing by 43% the emission of greenhouse gases by 2030, actually allows the country to emit 400 million tons of greenhouse gases more than expected, according to an analysis by the Climate Observatory (OC). The “trick”, as the maneuver is being called in the press, occurs because the ministry used the same reduction percentage established five years ago, without considering the change in the calculation basis used.

According to Paulo Busse, the lawyer of the OC that represents the young activists, the goal of the lawsuit “is to make Brazil correct the current climate goal, which is lower than the original one and assume a more ambitious commitment that is faithful to the Paris Agreement and the Federal Constitution.”

A change in Normative Instruction 21 (12/18/10) published by the environmental agency ICMBio altered the rules of the National Action Plans for the Conservation of Endangered Species, weakening the participation of civil society in the process.

According to an article on the O Eco website, the Technical Advisory Groups (GAT), created to evaluate and monitor the action plans and that previously had members from academia, NGOs and civil society associations, will now have “only public agents of the federal public administration up to a limit of five members,” says the article. The text also mentions possible “guests” in the composition, but does not clarify how this choice will be made, nor if the participation of academics and members of civil society will be mandatory or optional.

In partnership with the Instituto Escolhas [Choices Institute], Senator Fabiano Contarato (Rede) forwarded to Congress a bill that discusses new mechanisms for monitoring and controlling commercial transactions that currently allow “gold laundering”, an operation that transforms illegally mined ore into apparently legal resources.

The proposal creates a public control system over the gold trade to reinforce the tracking of its origin and curb mining in forbidden areas, such as indigenous lands and Conservation Units. In a statement, Contarato lists the main points of the bill and reaffirms the importance of focusing on market surveillance. “The financial sector can help clean up the gold extraction sector in Brazil and prevent illegal metal from entering the market. Demanding certificates of legal origin and environmental compliance is a constitutional imperative and should be an ethical and moral commitment of the national financial sector,” he says.

Faced with the increased search for safer financial assets, such as gold, amid the financial crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the Instituto Escolhas launched, in October last year, the campaign “Where does gold come from?” At the time, the NGO stressed that the ore boom in the international market has stimulated the advance of illegal mining in the Brazilian Amazon, a phenomenon widely denounced by NGOs and indigenous organizations over the past year.

Among them is the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil Network (Apib), which published in 2020 the survey “Complicity in the destruction – III”, about companies associated with the systematic devastation of indigenous territories. Last month, Apib received the resignation of the British mining company Anglo American, one of the companies cited in the document, to cease its activities on indigenous lands in the Amazon. The response was motivated by a petition created by the organization to pressure the company to withdraw applications for copper exploration in Munduruku territory.

A Brazilian Civil Society Organizations Front against the Mercosur-EU Agreement, composed by over 100 organizations, sent an open letter to the president of the Council of the European Union, Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa, and to the ambassadors of the European Union and Portugal in Brazil, Ignácio Ybáñez and Luís Faro Ramos, in which they point out the social and environmental damage that Brazil may suffer if the European Union ratifies the treaty.

They state that the agreement has a “neocolonial characteristic” and stimulates “three important factors of deforestation” in the country, by stimulating the increase in the production of agricultural and mineral commodities and encouraging the expansion of the use of logistic equipment.

“We understand that this Agreement, besides contributing to an escalation of human and social and environmental rights violations, could block Brazil’s development. Therefore, we appeal to the good sense of the international community in order to prevent its ratification.”

At the request of the Federal Public Prosecution (MPF), a Federal Court closed the investigation about the causes of the fires that occurred in September 2019 in the district of Alter do Chão, in Santarém (Pará state), which led to the unjustified arrest of four voluntary firefighters who worked in the region. According to a note from the MPF, there was an “impossibility of determining the authorship of the crime”. “We found that the fire originated in three different locations and reached an area of 1.2 thousand hectares, but we discovered no basic evidence that could lead to the authorship of the crime,” the text says.

In November 2019, following an investigation that pointed to NGOs as responsible for starting the fire, the Pará Civil Police carried out the preventive arrest of the four members of the Alter do Chão Fire Brigade, in addition to carrying out a search warrant at the headquarters of the NGO Saúde & Alegria Project, an organization recognized worldwide for its work in the Amazon. Back then, the civil society received with astonishment and indignation the news and mobilized to prove the activists’ innocence. 

A survey carried out by Ibope, one of the most important research institutes in the country, indicates that most Brazilians recognize the existence of global warming (92%) and attribute it to human action (77%). 72% believe that the phenomenon can harm them and their families, and 88% affirm that it will cause great damage to future generations. The “Climate change in the perception of Brazilians” survey, commissioned by the Institute for Technology and Society (ITS) and Yale University, interviewed 2,600 people over the age of 18 in the five regions of Brazil, between September 24 and October 16, 2020.

The study also reveals that more than half of those interviewed are very concerned about the environment (61%), especially women (68%) and people who identify themselves as being politically in the left (70%). When asked about what would be more important, protecting the environment or promoting economic development, 77% of respondents answered the first option, even if it implies lower growth and job creation. Regarding the fires, which reached record levels in 2020, 77% of the people interviewed attribute the fires in the Amazon to human action, with loggers being pointed out as the main culprits (76%), followed by farmers (49&), cattle ranchers (48%) and gold miners (41%). Indigenous people, pointed out a few days before the beginning of the survey by President Jair Bolsonaro as being responsible for the forest fires, were mentioned by 8% of those interviewed, and NGOs, the target of constant attacks by the government, by 6%.