Brazil minister unveils remodeling of Mariana compensation deal
Brazil’s Minister of Environment Joaquim Leite has reiterated that the agreement on the compensation for the environmental and economic damage resulting from the rupture of the Mariana dam, in Minas Gerais state, which occurred in November 2015, is in its final stages of negotiation. Among the chief measures is the creation of two funds.
One of the funds should operate at state level, to be maintained by the governments of Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo. The focus will lie on infrastructure, especially basic sanitation: water, sewage, solid waste, and urban drainage.
The other fund will work at the federal level—the Rio Doce Entrepreneur Fund, managed by Brazil’s development bank BNDES—and should boost green entrepreneurship in the region, with interest rates slashed to zero and payment deadlines and grace periods much longer than in the market. Here, emphasis is placed on economic development. The country’s state-owned lender Caixa Econômica Federal should also join the efforts, with an approach directed at micro and small investors in projects aimed at paying for environmental services, waste treatment and recycling, carbon credits, clean energy, green hydrogen, and bioeconomy.
Negotiations
According to the minister, meetings are taking place at the National Observatory on Environmental, Economic, and Social Affairs of High Complexity and Great Impact and Repercussion of the National Council of Justice. Leite assured that talks are going well and the proposal from Samarco, Vale, and BHP Billiton brings extra resources in “very significant values”—billions of reais—with deadlines for disbursement that meet the minimum requirements. The conditions outlined by the corporations have been accepted by the federal government and await approval from the states and their prosecutors and public defenders. “We are in the process of concluding this re-negotiation in order to bring in effective values and change the reality of that region,” the minister declared in an interview with Brazil’s public broadcasting company EBC.
The situation is still critical throughout the 700 kilometers of river Doce, the minister noted. Many victims have not returned to their homes and are still to receive compensation for damages. Fish are still contaminated, and the economy continues debilitated, he added. “I think we have to take a close look at the victims, the fishermen, at all the economic activities that existed and were affected by this tragedy, and somehow make the necessary amends, especially with regard to the environment,” he pointed out.
Minister Leite said he hopes this may come to be the “largest environmental agreement in the world.”
Disaster
The collapse of Samarco’s iron ore tailings dam, in the municipality of Mariana, released an avalanche of tailings that reached river Doce and flowed to its mouth in Espírito Santo state, causing 19 deaths and significant social, environmental, and economic impacts.
