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A controversial project to mine Brazil’s vast indigenous territories in the Amazon, to be presented at the South American country’s Congress in October, has revived a long-dragged confrontation among authorities, environmentalists and local communities.
The bill, which aims to revoke Brazil’s indigenous groups “inalienable rights” over their lands, granted by the 1988 constitution, would allow mining in a vast area that covers nearly 13% of the country, or an area almost twice the size of Spain.
In an interview with local radio station Folha AM, Edio Lopes, the congressman who proposed the new regulation, said the country can no longer afford the lack of a mining law to control the production of a variety of minerals found in the area, including gold, iron ore, nickel, diamonds and rare earths.
Citing Australia as an example, Lopes said the proposed law could translate into important benefits for the Indians.
“The largest iron mine in an existing Aboriginal community in Australia, Rio Tinto’s Tom Price, generates about $170 million in royalties a year, from which the local received 0.5%,” he told Folha AM.
He added that aboriginals represent 9% of Rio Tinto’s 25,000-strong workforce in Australia, where it is the largest employer of indigenous people.
Lopes’s bill is a revamped version of a proposal presented to Brazil’s Congress in 1996, which despite being approved by the senate but never passed the lower house.
Last month, the State Council on the Environment passed another controversy-charged ruling on gold mining in the Amazonas State. The decree, which limits but doesn’t outlaw the use of mercury, has had scientists and activists up in arms since then.
According to Executive Secretary of the Brazilian Agency for Technological Development of the Mining Industry (ADIMB), Onildo Marini, the issue of logging the Amazon region for mineral exploration, is considerably less harmful than the use of mercury in gold mining.
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This indigenous territories in the Amazon needs to always be protected and perhaps treated as an untouchable area to maintain it’s vast integrity to it’s community and legacy. Let’s always protect the amazons and indigenous people interest without exploiting them both for the almighty dollar.
brian bobke
keeps the shareholders and the ones with deep pockets happy.
MrMine
This is not good news for the indigenous peoples. Money for land means they will be wiped out or relegated to city & towns in poverty.
The leaders get the money- the common man … nothing.
Look what happened to the natives in Northern Canada. So many years have passed & they are still living in shacks in the far North; the billions in government money grabbed by the elders now living in condos in the big cities. Depravity, drugs, alcohol; you name it- the native peoples of the Amazon will end up like my native peoples of Canada.
Nothing is ever learned hence history is repeating itself now in the Amazon.
jimk
It is their country. They destroyed the Matto Grasso, damming their great rivers, gut mine with poison. It is simply history repeating. They possess one last place of which there is no other comparable and politics will destroy it too. The real value to be realized no more.