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.

The Federal Supreme Court (STF) unanimously suspended the legal provision that established the “presumption of good faith” in the gold market. This instrument allowed gold to be traded in Brazil only based on the sellers’ information about the origin of the product. The court decided to follow the individual decision issued by justice Gilmar Mendes on April 4th.

The measure was considered by the Court as one of the main legal loopholes for laundering gold extracted from indigenous lands and environmental reserves. It is expected that the decision will make illegal gold trafficking more difficult and protect the environment and indigenous people.

A study by the MapBiomas project reveals that 75% of the deforestation that occurred in Brazil since 2019, during the government of Jair Bolsonaro, had evidence of illegality. According to the study, most cases (58%) occurred in areas that should be protected by law, such as reserves and permanent preservation areas.

The data indicate an increase in environmental degradation, since the rate of illegal deforestation was about 60% in the previous administration, of Michel Temer. Furthermore, the analysis indicates that the Amazon region concentrated 73% of illegal deforestation in the analyzed period, with illegal logging being the main activity associated with deforestation. The study reinforces the importance of strengthening public policies for environmental protection to prevent the continued degradation of the environment in the country.

The heavy rains that struck the state of Maranhão in recent weeks have affected more than 35,000 families in 64 municipalities, resulting in six deaths. The situation led the state and federal governments to declare a situation of emergency. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was in the state on Sunday (9), accompanied by Governor Carlos Brandão and a federal entourage, to visit areas affected by the floods and promised resources to help the affected families.

During a speech on the 100 days of the government, President Lula said that the proposal includes transportation, social infrastructure, digital inclusion and connectivity, urban infrastructure, water for all, and energy transition. Among the planned measures are the holding of auctions for contracting solar and wind energy, the expansion of Transpetro’s fleet of ships, and the resumption of Petrobras’ leading role in investments.

Extreme climate events occurring in states of the Legal Amazon region have affected more than 40,000 people. The Acre River reached 16.84 meters in the state capital, Rio Branco, almost three meters above its overflow level, which is 14 meters, leaving 2 thousand people homeless and about 3,800 displaced.

In Rondônia, the Federal Public Ministry (MPF) gave the National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples (FUNAI) a deadline of 72 hours to inform what measures have been adopted to help the Karipuna indigenous people, who have been homeless for more than a week after the Jaci Paraná River overflowed and flooded a large part of the Karipuna Indigenous Land.

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.

Eletronuclear, a subsidiary of Eletrobras, Brazil’s electricity company, is facing a public civil suit after the Angra 1 nuclear plant in Angra dos Reis. in Rio de Janeiro state, leaked radioactive material into the sea in September 2022. About 90 liters of radioactive waste escaped from valves during a maintenance process and was carried by rain into Itaorna Bay.

Eletronuclear took three weeks to notify the regulatory agency about the incident, which happened on September 16. The company denied the leak in a statement, but the Federal Prosecutor’s Office believes that Eletronuclear tried to hide the incident. The Court ordered the company to publicly disclose information about the incident and the measures to contain the damage, and to make a full assessment of the damage within 30 days and not to conceal or manipulate information about what happened. It is not yet known whether the accident may cause harm to the environment and to the population.

Deforestation in the Matopiba region, comprised by portions of the states of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia, may jeopardize the water supply of at least 373 cities, according to a study released on Wednesday (22) by the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (Ipam) and MapBiomas. The analysis published with Agência Pública brings data on five river basins, and indicates that the flow of rivers in the Cerrado, the Brazilian  may fall by up to 34% by 2050 due to the loss of native vegetation.

The basins of the Tocantins, São Francisco, Parnaíba, Itapecuru and Araguaia rivers, which had the highest deforestation rates in 2022, are fundamental for the water supply of urban and rural populations. The consequences for water quality and the risk of water shortages may be even greater than the 373 municipalities pointed out in the analysis.

Data from the National Institute of Meteorology (INMET) indicate that the frequency of extreme rainstorms in Greater São Paulo region has tripled in a decade. Between the years 2001/2010 and 2011/2020, thunderstorms over 100 millimeters went from two to seven days every ten years, while heavy rains over 80 millimeters went from nine to 16 days.

A comparison with INMET’s initial period of analysis, between 1961 and 1970, also shows an expressive increase in the number of days with rainfall above 50 mm and precipitation above 80 mm in the last decade. Thunderstorms above 100 mm were repeated seven times in the most recent period, while in the 1960s, there were no occurrences.

A report prepared by FUNAI, Brazilian indigenous agency, pointed out that 46 landing strips on Yanomami lands in the Amazon region need maintenance to ensure transportation of the sick and emergency aid to those affected by illegal mining. However, military personnel responsible for the Army’s operation in the region refuse to carry out repairs.

According to the report published by Agência Pública, the military justifies their refusal by alleging that FUNAI did not correctly report the maintenance needs of the landing strips. Furthermore, the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPF) has been pressuring the responsible authorities to resolve the impasse.

Meanwhile, President Lula traveled to Roraima to participate in an assembly of indigenous people and discuss actions to defend the rights of native peoples.

A landslide in Manaus, Amazonas state capital, last Sunday (12) hit 11 houses in the Jorge Teixeira neighborhood, in the east of the city, which caused eight deaths. The tragedy caused by heavy rains led Mayor David Almeida to declare a state of public calamity.

According to a study by the collaborative network of NGOs MapBiomas, Manaus is the city with the largest expansion of urbanized areas in precarious settlements in Brazil. The study points out that the region where the tragedy occurred was not registered as a risk area, although it was within a precarious settlement delimited by IBGE.

MapBiomas highlights that human actions have caused major changes in the environment, which led to extreme concern among scholars and environmental defenders. Since 1985, urban occupation in risk areas in Manaus has increased by about 1,319 hectares, equivalent to 10,000 football fields. Manaus concentrates more than 36% of all risk area occupation in the state.

The temporary commission of the Brazilian Federal Senate to monitor the humanitarian crisis in Yanomami Indigenous Land approved its work plan last Wednesday (8/3). According to the rapporteur of the commission, Senator Dr. Hiran (Progressistas-RR), more than 19,000 gold miners have left the area since the eviction operation began last February. The president of IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency, Rodrigo Agostinho, also supports this: “We have removed almost 80%, 90% of the gold miners.”

The Senate commission also requested information on the funds released by the Amazon Fund and invited indigenous and environmental organizations for public hearings. Meanwhile, federal forces continue anti-gold mining actions and have already applied penalties of over R$10 million.

The Minister of the Environment, Marina Silva, visited Yanomami Land on Saturday (4) to see firsthand the actions implemented by IBAMA to curb illegal gold mining. She went to the inspection base in the Palimiú community, where armed gold miners fired at agents, and flew over regions invaded by the garimpeiros. She was astonished by what she saw in the territory: “The degradation is immeasurable,” she said.

The Brazilian agriculture and cattle-raising sector ended 2022 with a retraction of 1.7% when compared to 2021. The information is from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), which released on Thursday (2) the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) report for the 4th quarter and for the whole of last year.

“Soy, the main product of Brazilian farming, with an estimated drop in production of 11.4%, was the one that most pulled down the result of Farming in the year, being impacted by adverse weather effects,” explained Rebeca Palis, coordinator of National Accounts at IBGE, in a note.

A study published in Nature magazine proved a clear correlation between deforestation and reduction in rainfall. The researchers found that as more and more forest is removed from tropical areas, the less local farmers will have rain for their crops and pastures. The article raises fears that the degradation of the Amazon is reaching a critical point, after which the rainforest will no longer be able to generate its own rain and the vegetation will dry up.

In response to the largest storm ever recorded in Brazil on the northern coast of São Paulo state, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Marina Silva, and the Minister of Science, Technology and Innovations, Luciana Santos, proposed on Tuesday (21) to design an emergency plan to adapt to extreme weather events in 1,038 municipalities, which are home to 57% of the country’s population. The measure aims to facilitate access to resources for infrastructure works, such as slope containment and drainage, recovery of riparian forests, creation of civil defense and education plans for climate risk and resettlement of residents in vulnerable areas.

Before this, the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) had already announced on Monday (20) a series of actions to reduce the impacts on the population of the northern coast of São Paulo, victim of the lack of prevention and hit by the biggest storm in Brazil’s history.

Lula flew over areas devastated by landslides and flooding. He also met with the governor of São Paulo, Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicanos), and the mayor of São Sebastião, Felipe Augusto (PSDB), and made the federal government’s structure available to mitigate the damage. Several ministers participated in the audience, including the Minister of Ports and Airports, Márcio França (PSB), who announced R$ 2 million to the Government of São Paulo and the city halls of the northern coast cities, including Bertioga, can help the victims. Lula asked for total priority to the climate emergency, and articulated joint actions between the Ministries of Social Development, Finance, Planning, Transportation and Health. On the 21st, Lula’s government transferred R$ 7 million to São Sebastião municipalitie and the resources will be used to buy food baskets, cleaning kits, personal hygiene, mattresses and fuel. More than 73,8 thousand people will be assisted.

The São Paulo state government, for its part, announced on the 23rd that it will install sirens in the region, in places where there is risk of landslides and flooding. The emergency measure, however, is seen with caution by specialists. They say that the adoption of the equipment needs to occur in conjunction with a series of actions, such as training the population, developing escape routes and conducting recurrent drills.

On February 19th and 20th, an unprecedented amount of rainfall fell over Bertioga, São Sebastião, and Ubatuba in the Northern Coast of the state of São Paulo. Weather stations recorded 692 millimeters of rain from Saturday to Sunday. As of February 27th, 65 people were found dead, 64 in the Vila Sahy neighborhood in São Sebastião, and one in Ubatuba.

Fatal landslides occurred in impoverished areas of the coast, near hillside slopes. Roads were also closed due to landslides. According to the state government, there are 1,090 displaced people and 1,172 homeless.

In 2021, prosecutors filed a lawsuit calling for action regarding the situation in Vila Sahy and described it as an announced tragedy.

Jair Bolsonaro administration released 2,182 pesticides between 2019 and 2022, the highest number for a presidential administration since 2003, according to data from the General Coordination of Pesticides and Related Products (CGAA) of the Ministry of Agriculture.

The survey shows that pesticide registrations have been growing year by year in the country since 2016. It also points out that of the 2,182 pesticides released in the Bolsonaro government, 98 are totally new, which is also an all time high for a government in the historical series; the rest are considered generic, i.e., they are “copies” of raw materials or final products based on ingredients already on the market; of the total releases, 1. 816 are chemical and 366 are biological: the biologicals have low environmental impact and are focused on organic agriculture – under Brazilian law, they are also called pesticides; the registrations of biologicals during the Bolsonaro government also broke a record for a presidential administration.

Last year alone, 652 pesticides entered the market, the highest number for one year in the historical series. The figure also represents a 16% increase over the 2021 total, which had already been a record. Of the 35 released for rural producers, 22 were considered “very dangerous to the environment” by the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama).

The Navy sank the aircraft carrier São Paulo this Friday afternoon (3), which had been sailing for months after being banned from docking in Brazil and abroad.

Ibama – Brazilian Environmental Agency had released, just this Friday, a statement in which it declared that it had asked the Navy for information in order to evaluate alternatives for the protection of the environment in view of the decision to sink the vessel. Some of the environmental impacts predicted by IBAMA for the area where the aircraft carrier was sunk include: disturbances in the filtering capacity and difficulty in the growth of aquatic organisms, release of CFCs and HCFCs gases (which degrade the ozone layer and contribute to global warming ), in addition to attracting invasive species and deteriorating the local marine ecosystem.

According to the Brazilian Public Prosecution Office MPF, the vessel’s scrap contains 9.6 tons of asbestos, a substance that has toxic and carcinogenic potential. The 266-meter hull also contains 644 tons of paints and other hazardous materials.

The aircraft carrier was described by the French NGO Robin des Bois as a “30,000 ton toxic package”. The non-governmental environmental organizations Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd and Basel Action Network shared the opinion that the submergence will cause “incalculable damage”, with “impacts on marine life and coastal communities”, the NGOs said in a joint statement.

In the opinion of the Director of Programs at Greenpeace Brazil, Leandro Ramos, Brazil has failed to comply with at least three international treaties to which the country is a signatory. “If Brazil is taking seriously the task of assuming the leading role in issues related to the environment, this was an excellent opportunity to show that beyond words”, he commented.

Marina Silva tried to prevent this operation, according to Poder 360. However, Lula would have arbitrated in favor of Minister of Defense José Múcio, against the Minister of the Environment.

Justice Luís Roberto Barroso, of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), ordered on Monday (30) the investigation of possible participation of Jair Bolsonaro (PL) government officials in the practice of crimes of genocide, disobedience and breach of judicial secrecy related to the security of indigenous communities.

The decision was made after the minister received information about the situation faced by the Yanomami community, which is suffering from a humanitarian crisis in Roraima and Amazon states.