Mining code changes undermine biodiversity conservation in Brazil

Abstract

Protected areas (PAs) are vital for the conservation of Brazil’s biodiversity (Barber et al. 2014). However, they are at risk of a downgrade in legal status due to economic pressures on natural resources (Bernard et al. 2014; De Marques & Perez 2014; Pack et al. 2016). Mining is one of the most urgent environmental threats in Brazil (Ferreira et al. 2014; El Bizri et al. 2016), with plans in place for a 10-fold increase in the number of mining projects in c. 8 years. If all were developed, the Brazilian territory occupied by mining would increase 23-fold in the near future. Currently, 12 697 projects covering 98 × 105 ha are planned within PAs. Licensing and exploitation of 53% of this land will depend on the approval of three bills that intend to authorize mining in areas where it was formerly forbidden. Here, we analyse the potential consequences of the approval of these new policies for conservation. Brazil has a number of legal categories for land protection, including strict PAs, sustainable-use PAs and indigenous lands. Mining is only permitted in some sustainable-use PAs (named APAs and ARIEs from their initials in Portuguese; see Supplementary Material, available online). Today, 1195 mining projects covering 1.6 × 105 ha are established in these areas, while 367 projects covering 4.2 × 105 ha are working in PAs where mining is theoretically not allowed (Figs 1 and 2). The large impacted area in lands regulated as mining free has various explanations. For some PAs, the law allows mining works to continue when they were approved prior to the establishment of the PA (IBAMA 2004). For the others, diverse misinterpretations of current law have led to improper mining concessions and subsequent judicial battles (Ricardo & Rolla 2006). In addition to direct habitat loss and the frequent destruction of caves (Ferreira et al. 2014; Sayuri et al. 2015), mining causes a range of secondary impacts. The massive migration of workers to low-populated areas, as well as the infrastructure associated with the project, further increases habitat loss and opens up intact wild areas to illegal forest colonization and exploitation (Laurance et al. 2009). Mining activity itself also has an impact beyond its frontiers: rivers downstream may be polluted (Castilhos et al. 2015) and threatened by environmental accidents, such as the mining dam collapse that devastated the Doce River and the Southeast Brazilian coast in November 2015 (Escobar 2015). Finally, mining has often resulted in social problems and conflicts with nearby communities (Hilson 2002; Haslam & Tanimoune 2016), such as the confrontation between miners and the Cinta Larga indigenous tribe (Rolla & Ricardo 2013).