“We cannot talk about development without talking about conflict and violence,” Brazilian environmental activist Gabriela Sarmet told The Politic, “Behind every development comes a trail of destruction.”
Over the last five centuries, mining has left environmental carnage across Brazil. Gold, iron, and other ore mines proliferated throughout the country. But in recent years, this mining has taken on a new dimension. Partially as a result of the world’s aim for a green energy transition, lithium mines have sprung up across the country.
Today, Brazil is the fifth largest producer of lithium. 85% of these reserves are located in the Jequitinhonha Valley, a small area in the state of Minas Gerais in Southeastern Brazil. Despite being rich in lithium, it is the least developed region in the state of Minas Gerais. Only 1.4% of Minas Gerais’ gross domestic product (GDP) came from this region in 2019, despite more than 5% of its population living in the Valley. Brazilians from outside the region call it “Misery’s Valley.”
The environmental activist Djalma Ramalho said in a public audience regarding the lithium mining impacts that “Mining began in the Jequitinhonha Valley in search of gold, in search of diamonds, and today it is advancing in search of lithium to supply batteries for electric cars that will certainly not be used in the Jequitinhonha Valley, for a future that is certainly not the future of the people of the Jequitinhonha Valley.”
Any discussion of mining in Brazil cannot leave out colonialist legacies. Colonialism in Brazil ended in 1822, but its extractive economic structure remained. The name Minas Gerais, for example, translates to General Mines, a nod toward not only this state’s historical reality, but that of Brazil as a whole. When the Portuguese arrived in Brazil, mining was one of their most important economic activities. Mining remains an important part of the country’s economy, representing 4% of Brazil’s GDP.
Yale Assistant Professor Santiago Acosta, who specializes in Latin American environmental theory, underscored the colonial legacy behind Brazil’s mining industry. “The global sort of reconfiguration between the global north and global south that happened during a long period across centuries, resulted in the global south configured as the purveyor of natural resources, and the global north as the receivers of the good and great benefits of modernization.”
Sarmet engages in her environmental activism with these colonial influences in mind. “The reason there was an industrial revolution was because our countries were colonized and extracted every last drop. The way we humans exploit nature is rooted in colonial invasions and their violence. And in this extractivist model, everything becomes negotiable. Even life,” she said.
In the last decade, lithium has become a strategic mineral for the green energy transition, as it is a key component in the lithium-ion batteries that are used in energy storage systems and electric cars. This method of storing energy reduces the carbon emissions from transportation. In response to growing demand for green technology, lithium’s consumption has increased considerably in the last few years. Analysts estimate that global lithium demand could increase 3.5 times between 2023 and 2030.
The aim of the energy transition is to reduce carbon emissions by shifting the global energy system from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. However, lithium is a non-renewable resource, and it is experiencing a greater increase in demand than in supply. Many estimates warn of future shortages. Furthermore, lithium consumption also produces significant pollution. Studies show that the lithium recycling rate is less than 15%; some even argue that this number may be closer to 5%.
“We cannot solve our environmental problems with the same mentality and tools that brought us here,” Sarmet argues. “The generation of renewable energy depends on the extraction of non-renewable resources, many of which have no recycling technology.”
But in Brazil, public opinion about the mining industry is far from unanimous. Mining companies are an essential component of Brazil’s economy. Mining companies promise to create hundreds or thousands of jobs in their extraction regions. And they keep these promises.
Data from the government of Minas Gerais show that the lithium project in the Jequitinhonha Valley has already attracted $900 million and generated more than 10,000 direct and indirect jobs.
“States are not so innocent. They often participate in the same kind of dynamics, where instead of giving power to the people or the communities or to the indigenous communities, they keep those lands under the control of the state, either to exploit them by the state or to rent them. It’s basically what they do when a foreign company is extracting something in that region, they are renting that place and the state is charging,” Acosta said.
Activists also note that mining employment usually lasts between two and five years, while the resulting environmental impacts persist for decades. “If you compare the duration of a mine with the quality of the work and the working time offered, it’s something that’s totally not worth it,” Sarmet said. Besides, the jobs created by mining companies are subject to dangerous working conditions.
Detractors also criticize foreign investment in Brazilian mining. This type of contract between the state and foreign companies creates a huge local dependency on mining. There is no interest and no manpower for the development of other economic areas. According to Sarmet, “Mining takes away any possibility of imagining a new future in that territory. In the case of the Jequitinhonha Valley, the entire local economy is now geared towards providing for the contingent of mining workers who are going to work there. The social fabric is completely torn apart by the mining companies.”
The Jequitinhonha River, that gives the name to the valley, is crucial for the current main source of income for its inhabitants: family farming. But it is highly vulnerable to pollution from surrounding mining activity. Meanwhile, “mining has only one harvest,” said Sarmet. She said that while lithium mining promises to bring development to the Valley, its effects on the Jequitinhonha population’s access to land and water deeply harms their main source of income.
Minas Gerais was home to two of Brazil’s largest environmental disasters of the 21st century. Nearly every mining operation has a tailing dam to store waste and water, and both disasters involved dam collapses. The first, in 2015, occurred in the region of Mariana’s city along the main river of Minas Gerais, the Rio Doce. Toxic sludge trapped behind the dam was freed and traveled 370 miles before reaching the Atlantic Ocean. The second accident occurred in 2019, in the region of Brumadinho. The sludge flood reached a village and killed 272 people who were drowned or buried by the mud. Brumadinho is the most devastating work accident in Brazil’s history, according to Sarmet. Of those 272 victims, 130 were direct employees of the mining company and 121 were outsourced employees.
Activists, NGOs, and popular movements use these two disasters as an example of the power and influence of mining companies in Brazil’s politics, arguing the companies are not properly monitored or punished. Nine years after the dam collapse in Mariana, more than 100 families that left their homes because of the tailings avalanche still have not been resettled, and no one has been held criminally responsible for the disaster.
Djalma Ramalho, an environmental activist from the Jequitinhonha Valley, created an organization called “Janelas do Jequitinhonha,” or “Windows of the Jequitinhonha,” to increase transparency around mining activities in the Valley. Djalma has attended government public hearings to denounce the risks of Lithium mining, which, according to him, increased 500% in the region in the last two years. He also underlines public health concerns, saying, “the dust from the mines is already causing respiratory problems in elderly people who previously had no respiratory problems.”
Djalma argues that the Valley’s wealth comes from its culture, including clay crafts, not from its minerals. The Jequitinhonha Valley’s clay crafts are known throughout the country. They are not only important culturally, but also economically.
Notably, this cultural strength exists, in part, because of mining companies, such as the Vale company. Santiago Acosta reflected on the connection of mining companies to art throughout Latin America: “Why would they invest in culture? One way of seeing it is because they need some kind of ideological support for their project of domination and extraction, and that’s a valid perspective. But, I think it’s a bit more than that. I think there’s something that this art is doing that is not only supporting the project, but it’s actually sort of making it happen. It’s art washing. It’s because they want to appear friendlier.”
The opinion of experts, such as Dr. Michael Fotos, a Yale professor of political science and environmental studies, is that cultural and economic investment facilitates a bond between companies and the government which gives them a power that can only be overcome through social organization. Fotos said, “There’s just really no substitute for [social] organization. [Mining companies] have money, they have a reason to spend that money. They’ll spend the money on things that provide a return to their investment, and that includes buying politicians.”
Although there is resistance, the exponential increase of lithium mining in the region seems inevitable due to mining companies’ outsized power in Brazil. In order to counter this corporate power, new social and political organization is necessary. Fotos said, “Democracy is both fragile, but essential. It’s easy for companies to capture politicians in a democracy, but the people have to have some access to politicians to make it work.”
Santiago shared similar opinions, emphasizing the necessity of power distribution: “I see it as a question of power distribution, power of access to decision-making and participation in the shape that governments should take…If you make power more just, more balanced, more accessible to the people from below, the concentration of resources,corruption, and the excessive power of private companies and environmental disasters, would change.”
Sarmet, meanwhile, emphasizes the need for a change of mentality with regard to our global consumption. An energy transition without a change in global consumption patterns will maintain a planet marked by environmental and social exploitation.
“Mining perpetuates global consumption patterns in which we do not focus on the predatory essence of our relationship with nature,” Sarmet said. Failing to critically engage with the impact increased demand for Lithium will have on the people of the Jequitinhonha Valley would be perpetuating the exact kind of harms the green energy transition aims to alleviate.
The interview with Gabriela Sarmet and speech of Djalma Ramalho in a public audience were conducted in Portuguese and translated into English by the author.