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.

BAt least 22 people have died in 8 Brazilian states due to lack of planning for the rainy season between November and the first week of December. Around 22,800 people have been displaced, while another 3,171 are homeless due to the raings. The survey was done by CNN based on data released by the state Civil Defenses. 

The states of Santa Catarina, Paraná, Sergipe, Espírito Santo, Bahia, São Paulo, Minas Gerais, and Rio de Janeiro suffer from landslides, floods, and power outages as a result of atypical rainfall volumes and planning neglect from the authorities for the extreme events that increase in frequency with climate change. 

The month of November was marked by unusual weather episodes for the period, with atypical cold at the beginning of the month, followed by heavy rain, anticipating the summer rainy season. The forecast for the month of December is that storms will maintain a high volume and temperatures will rise throughout Brazil.

A survey by the Natural Disasters Observatory showed that, in the last 10 years, the deaths caused by lack of prevention to excessive rainfall and its consequences in Brazil totaled 1,756. The lives lost by floods until September this year already reached 457, which represents more than 25% of the total deaths in the decade. 

• At the end of 2021, the state of Bahia suffered another climate emergency.
• In February and March 2022, Petrópolis and the mountains regions of Rio de Janeiro were hit by an atypical amount of rain. 
• In April, it was the turn of the state of São Paulo. 
• In June, torrential rains hit Pernambuco state. 

Despite this, Bolsonaro cut 99% of the budget allocated to natural disasters for 2023. The Ministry of Regional Development has reduced the budget for emergency disaster mitigation from R$2.8 million to a meager R$25,000. For the execution of projects and works of slope containment in urban areas, there was a cut of 94% of the resource, from R$ 53.9 million to R$ 2.7 million. “The amount that was destined was already small compared to the amount necessary for mitigation works. So, what was already too little, became even less,” points out Professor Pedro Luiz Côrtes from USP’s Institute of Energy and Environment.

In addition to avoidable deaths, climate collapse also brings significant economic losses. A survey by Swiss Re estimated losses from extreme weather events occurring in 2022 worldwide at $260 billion.

In the August 31st edition of Brazil’s Official Gazette, the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA, Brazil’s Land Agency) published Normative Ruling 128, which, in practice, makes the process of demarcation and titling of quilombola [Afro-Brazilian traditional communities] territories more difficult.

The National Coordination of the Articulation of Rural Black Quilombola Communities (CONAQ) denounces that the measure “makes it unfeasible to enforce” the quilombola constitutional right to their territories by bureaucratizing the expropriation of properties in ancestral territories.

For the organization, Normative Ruling 128 is one more among a serie of attacks by the Bolsonaro administration against the quilombola population: “While still a candidate, the then-president promised to withdraw rights from the quilombola populations and has been fulfilling his promise since the first days of his term.”

President Jair Bolsonaro said that the war between Russia and Ukraine offers “a good opportunity” for the Congress to approve the bill 191/2020, which authorizes mining and other large enterprises on indigenous land. He argued that with the international conflict, Brazil may have difficulty continuing to import fertilizers from Russia and Belarus, which are among the main suppliers and account for about 85% of the fertilizers used in large-scale agriculture.

“Now then, with this international crisis and given the war, Congress has signaled to vote this project in an urgency regime. I hope that it will be approved in the House as early as March and in 2 or 3 years we will be able to say that we are not dependent on potassium imports for our agribusiness,” declared the president, as reported by the website Poder 360. The Minister of Agriculture, Tereza Cristina, denies the risk of shortage.

In an article on the occurrence, the Amazônia Real portal traced the history of PL 191 and the exploitation of potassium in the Amazon region by private initiative.

The people of quilombo [a traditional Afro-Brazilian settlement] Vila Palmares, located in the municipality of Acará, state of Pará, have suffered threats from security guards and employees of the company Agropalma SA, a palm oil supplier of the multinational Nestlé. They are claiming the traditional territory from which they were displaced in the 1980s. The report is from the investigative journalism platform the o joio e o trigo.

According to José Joaquim dos Santos Pimenta, resident of Vila Palmares and president of the Association of Quilombola Remnants of the Balsa, Turiaçu, Gonçalves, and Vila Palmares communities of Acará Valley, the company “sent a boss alongside the security guards of SegurPro to take pictures and check documents and chassis of our motorcycle and cars”. The population also claims that they were threatened by armed and hooded men circulating through the territory.

Heavy storms that are falling since the end of November have left a trail of destruction in the state of Bahia, especially in the southwest and south regions. In all, 629,398 people were affected, 434 were injured and 24 died as a result of the rains. So far, 136 cities remain under a decree of emergency situation.

In a two-day interval, two large dams broke in the state, aggravating the situation of the riverside populations. The first was in Vitória da Conquista, on December 25, and the second in the municipality of Jussiape, in the Chapada Diamantina region, on December 26.

On vacation, President Jair Bolsonaro denied the humanitarian aid offered by Argentina to the victims, and also compared the tragedy to the economic effects of the restrictive measures against Covid-19 adopted by governors and the “people of Bahia”, in reference to the state government, led by the PT’s Rui Costa.

Pressured by the Federal Justice, via a lawsuit filed by the Federal Public Prosecution, President Jair Bolsonaro signed a decree that paves the way for the land title of the Pedro Cubas quilombola [Afro-brazilian traditional community] territory, in Vale do Ribeira, São Paulo.

The quilombo, which is home to 59 families, is located in Eldorado — Bolsonaro’s hometown. Since his time as a congressional representative and presidential candidate, Bolsonaro has made several attacks against traditional communities: he has already declared that quilombola “don’t even serve to procreate” and that traditional territories exist to “hinder Brazil”.

During his government, the titling of quilombola territories reached the lowest mark in history.

A study conducted by the Institute for Energy and Environment (IEMA) estimates that 212,791 residents of rural settlements, 78,388 indigenous people, 59,106 inhabitants of conservation units (UCs) and 2,555 quilombolas [Afro-brazilian traditional communities] living in the states of the Legal Amazon have no access to public electricity. According to georeferenced methodology developed especially for the survey, in total there are 990,103 excluded, which corresponds to 3.5% of the local population.

The survey, conducted between 2019 and 2020, points out Acre as the state with the highest percentage of people outside public electricity coverage, with 10%, followed by Amazonas (3.9%) and Amapá (3.1%). By total number of people, Pará is at the top of the list, with 409,593 in the dark.

“Access to electricity is fundamental for several reasons: it helps conserve vaccines and medicines; it makes it possible to study at night; it allows for the conservation of cooled food and water pumping; it is fundamental to have access to the internet and telephone; and, in addition, it can provide tools to preserve the local culture” says the IEMA’s technical note.

In a suit by the National Coordination of Articulation of Rural Black Quilombola [Afro-Brazilian traditional communities] (Conaq) in the Federal Supreme Court (STF), Justice Edson Fachin diverged from the rapporteur of the case, Justice Marco Aurélio, and voted for the suspension of eviction actions against traditional communities during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Filed in September 2020, jointly with the PSB, PSOL, PCdoB, REDE and PT parties, the Argument of Noncompliance with a Fundamental Precept (ADPF) 742/2020 requires the Union to create and implement a national plan to combat the Covid-19 pandemic in quilombola communities. The requested deadline was 30 days, however nothing has been done until now. “After almost a year of the pandemic (…), the State still has not prepared unified measures to prevent families, especially from vulnerable groups such as quilombolas, from being expelled from their territories during the serious epidemiological crisis that the country is going through,” says a note from the Pastoral Land Commission on Fachin’s decision.

Victims of federal government neglect, indigenous and quilombolas [Afro-brazilian traditional communities] organizations have pointed out serious flaws in the vaccination plan against Covid-19 executed by the Ministry of Health (MS), which began on January 20.

Regarding the indigenous population, the ministry announced that only “indigenous who live in villages” are among the priority groups contemplated in the first phase of vaccination. The Indigenous Missionary Council (Cimi), said that the criteria shows institutional racism by defining as indigenous only “people who live in villages of homologated indigenous lands,” ignoring people from urban contexts, which add up to almost half – 46%, according to data from the 2010 Census – of the country’s indigenous population. “The term used by the Minister of Health, ‘indigenous villagers’, takes us back to the period of the military dictatorship that represents discrimination, where the government intends to define arbitrarily who is and who is not indigenous […]. The National Vaccination Plan, therefore, needs to recognize the extension of this priority group and reach it in its entirety,” declared Roque Paloschi, president of Cimi, in a note released by the organization. In addition to racist typification, the indigenous population also fights against misinformation and fake news regarding immunization, stimulated by the firing of messages via Whatsapp and negationist discourses by evangelical pastors.

The quilombolas, on the other hand, which had previously been included in the groups contemplated in the first phase, do not have a stipulated date to receive the vaccines. Under the pretense that there are not enough doses to vaccinate the entire contingent of priority publics, the Ministry of Health declared that “there was a need for a replanning within the priorities initially listed” leaving the quilombola population unassisted. The coordinator of the Chamber of Indigenous Populations and Traditional Communities of the Federal Public Prosecuttion (6CCR/MPF), Eliana Torelly, sent a letter to the Ministry of Health requesting a position on the change, in which she points out that the decision was reflected in the state plans, leaving quilombolas at the mercy of conflicting and inaccurate information.

Since the beginning of November, the state of Amapá has been experiencing a power blackout that affects 13 of the state’s 16 municipalities, aggravating the vulnerability of the 258 quilombola communities [Afro-brazilian traditional communities] identified in the state, according to a number estimated by the National Coordination of Rural Black Quilombola Communities (Conaq). “If it is already bad in the city, worse in the community. There are people who are hungry, there are people who are sick, there are people who cannot drink water, there are several adverse situations,” the National Coordinator of Conaq, Núbia Cristina, reported to the organization’s website.

The quilombolas have suffered from the cutoff of the water supply — with no energy, no water pumping — and the consequent contamination by the consumption of non-potable water, obtained out of artesian wells and rivers, as residents told the Jornal de Brasília. The storage of food has also been compromised, spoiling meat and other items, and the blackout has made it difficult to buy food from local traders, with prices rising.

The blackout has also aggravated the Covid-19 pandemic among the quilombola population. Without access to ambulances, which do not reach the quilombola territories, the community has mobilized itself to transport contaminated people to health centers, without any kind of protection.

The critical situation experienced in the communities has also killed an important local leadership, Sérgio Clei de Almeida, president of the Quilombos Association of San Francisco de Matapí. The 50 year old leader died on November 18, trying to re-establish the electricity supply to the community of Torrão do Matapí.

Since March, studies and surveys by researchers and civil society organizations have been issuing warnings about the extreme vulnerability of the indigenous population when facing the Covid-19 pandemic. The environmental devastation promoted by the burning and deforestation, which reached record levels in 2020, is pointed out as a significant risk factor for indigenous health, by increasing the risk of contagion and bringing territorial instability.

Reporter Brasil brought to the public an unprecedented survey of the NGO Global Forest Watch that points to the devastation promoted by more than 115 thousand outbreaks of fire in several Indigenous Lands since the beginning of the year until October 29. According to the report, out of the more than 724 TIs contemplated by the report, in several states, 61% registered fires. Local leaders and experts point out the lack of structure to fight the fires – used by farmers to clean the pasture – and denounce the abandonment of the National Indian Foundation (Funai). Indigenous Land Parque do Xingu, in Mato Grosso State, is among the most affected in 2020, with 10,502 outbreaks of fire. “Our reality is not good at all. We’ve lost many leaders, our people are dying [from Covid-19] and, to make matters worse, our house, which is our pharmacy and our supermarket, is on fire,” reported Watatakalu Yawalapiti, the region’s leader, who is home to 16 ethnic groups in 500 villages.

Although the fire from the fires does not directly affect the communities, its impact on health will be felt, points out the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation. The research “Covid-19 and burning in the Legal Amazon and Pantanal: cumulative aspects and vulnerabilities,” released by the Deutsche Welle on November 12, warns about how the coexistence of the increase in burning and the presence of Covid-19 can further aggravate the health situation of the indigenous peoples. “The large occurrence of burnings, which has reached record numbers in 2020, combined with low humidity in the Amazon region and Pantanal, may worsen the impact of the epidemic of Covid-19. The particulate material and toxic gases generated by the burning of biomass reach long distances, and can affect large cities in the North and Midwest regions, as well as river-dwellers populations, quilombos and indigenous lands hundreds of kilometers away from the sources of fire. The particulate material has a great inflammatory potential, which can aggravate the cases of Covid-19, being also a gateway for respiratory infections,” says the technical note of the study. The document highlights that one of the priority areas for strengthening the health system and control of fires is precisely that of the “arc of deforestation,” especially in northern Mato Grosso State, where TI Parque do Xingu (MT) is located, and in the southeast of Pará State.

Alongside with the fires, deforestation on indigenous lands, caused by gold diggers, miners, and illegal loggers, grows exponentially, increasing the risk of Covid-19 spreading in the villages, points out another study, prepared by the Instituto Socioambiental [Socio-environmental Institute] (ISA) and released in September. According to the organization, in the Trincheira-Bacajá, Kayapó and Munduruku indigenous lands, in southwest Pará, deforestation increased, respectively, 827%, 420% and 238%, between March and July 2020. The regions are among the seven most invaded lands in the Legal Amazon, together with the Karipuna and Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau (Rondônia State), Araribóia (Maranhão State) and Yanomami (Amazonas and Roraima States). As a response, the cases of the diseases shoot up in the territories, says ISA.

In the most recent survey made by the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB) about the impact of Covid-19 among the indigenous peoples of the Amazon, until November 9, 28,241 confirmed cases of the disease were registered, 643 suspects and 695 deaths, in 133 peoples.

A civil society critical analysis of the first proposals of the government for the environment concluded that its approach to the presented ministerial reform was the most radical since 1990, and that 40 years of struggle to advocate, approve and implement Brazilian social and environmental policies and safeguards were at stake. “The Ministry of the Environment not only lost political leverage but also is now under the direct influence of economic interests from other sectors of Bolsonaro’s administration. This indicates that the environmental agenda is not a priority to this government; they are trying to destroy the Environmental Ministry without being held accountable for it”. 

The first provisional measure (MP 870/19) edited by Bolsonaro’s government introduced a ministerial  reform and  marked  a clear move  to drain out the Ministry of the Environment’s political role, institutional capacity and funding.  It also set the tone for the government’s narrative on the issue in the months to come. 

Among the consequences of the MP are: the attempt to transfer the responsibility to identify, define limits and demarcate indigenous and quilombola lands from the Ministry of Justice to the Ministry of Agriculture; the National Foundation for Indigenous People (FUNAI) would also be transferred from the Ministry of Justice to the Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights; the Brazilian Forestry Service (in charge  of registering and monitoring rural properties) would be transferred from the  Ministry of the Environment to the Ministry of Agriculture; the closure  of specific secretaries and expert areas at Ministry of  the Environment to deal with climate change and deforestation.

On the very same day that his government presented a provisional measure to transfer the responsibility to demarcate indigenous lands from the Ministry of Justice to the Ministry of Agriculture, Bolsonaro tweeted: “More than 15% of the national territory is demarcated as indigenous and quilombola land. Less than 1 million people live in these isolated places in real Brazil, explored and manipulated by NGOs. Let’s together integrate these citizens and value all Brazilians”.

Bolsonaro steps back and says his government will not merge the ministries of Agriculture and Environment. He lets the  press know that he will pick an environmental minister who is not  a ‘shiite’- meaning extremist, radical  environmentalist, and that “Brazil  is the country that protects the environment the most.”

During his campaign to become president, candidate Jair Bolsonaro announced plans to merge the Ministry of Agriculture with the Ministry of Environment to end “fights” between the two agendas and to make the life of the agribusiness sector “easier”. Analysts saw the announcement as a clear threat to environmental safeguards and policies.