SEI expert briefs Brazilian Senate on sustainability in the mining and energy sectors

At a hearing held in the Federal Senate on 4 December, SEI Research Fellow Toby Gardner discussed the findings of a recent Science article on legislative threats to Brazil’s environmental protection record. Also at the hearing were the article’s lead author, Dr Joice Ferreira of the Brazilian Environmental Research Corporation Embrapa, and Dr Mercedes Bustamante, a co-author and former director of Brazil´s Science and Technology Ministry. The hearing included high-level Brazilian policy-makers, Senate advisers and business leaders in the energy and mining sectors.

The article, published in November, highlights the risks to Brazil´s globally important ecosystems from mining and dams if proposals currently being debated by the Brazilian Congress go ahead. “Brazil’s environmental leadership at risk”, written by a group of Brazilian and British researchers including Dr Gardner, warns that new legislation could pose a serious threat to Brazil’s widely praised network of protected areas, opening up large swathes of protected Amazon forest and other sensitive ecosystems to mining and hydropower development. In particular, it highlights a proposal being debated in the Brazilian Congress that could open up 10% of strictly protected lands to mining.

The study also warns that the proposals for minimizing and mitigating the environmental damage of large-scale development projects are so inadequate that even if only a fraction of these mining concessions were to be approved then the combined direct and indirect impacts could be enormous, especially in Brazil´s most threatened ecosystems.

“Beyond the conservation and stewardship of its own biodiversity and environmental resources, so crucial to the well-being of its citizens, Brazil plays a vital role in motivating and supporting the adoption of more sustainable development trajectories around the world,” said Toby Gardner, who has worked in the country for more than a decade. “I really hope this briefing in the Brazilian Parliament will help to stimulate a much-needed dialogue on the critical role played by Brazil’s ecosystems in securing a more sustainable development pathway.”

Watch video of the opening of the hearing, the presentation by Joice Ferreira, and an intervention in the debate by Toby Gardner (all in Portuguese).

Read about the article “Brazil’s environmental leadership at risk” published in Science 346(6210), and a press release about the article.

Read “Brazil’s environmental record hangs in the balance” by Toby Gardner, published by Thomson Reuters.