New ICTA-UAB map identifies socio-environmental conflicts in the World over mining projects
Researchers from ENVJUSTICE- EJAtlas project release a thematic map including Environmental conflicts in the World over mining project
Today is the International Day of Action for Rivers 2019
On the occasion of the International Day of Action for Rivers 2019, the ENVJUSTICE - EJAtlas team at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA) at the Autonomous University of Barcelona releases "¡Esto no Vale! Isso não Vale! Vale S.A. operations and socio-environmental conflicts" a thematic map on socio-environmental conflicts in the world related to Vale S.A. mining and infrastructure projects. These include mining exploitation and tailings dams, such as those that broke in Mariana (2015) and Brumadinho (Jan 2019) leaving behind hundreds of deaths and irreversibly contaminating rivers and lands.
The map shows that the mining company is responsible for a large array of socio-environmental impacts globally. For the international day in protection of rivers, the research team wishes to contribute to the global efforts of environmental justice groups to reclaim justice and to stop corporate impunity. Furthermore, they also urge to reflect on the wider problems generated by a resource extractivist logic as pushed forward by large mining companies such as Vale and their political allies in the pursuit of economic growth and regional development. Such a model not only accentuates dependencies on primary exports in countries of the Global South, thereby deteriorating their balances and terms of trade, but also unevenly distributes the cost of environmental destruction while affected communities continue to face myriad injustices and a constant risk of such dramatic tragedies.
The map is produced by the EJAtlas research group at the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona (Daniela Del Bene, Sara Mingorría, Grettel Navas, Lucrecia Wagner, Raquel Neyra, Max Stoisser), by Yannick Deniau of the Geocomunes collective (Mexico) and by Beatriz Saes (Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil). The text below is by Beatriz Saes.
Data have been co-produced between activist scholars, independent researchers and local activists. This is an ongoing mapping process, as new cases are being documented and will be online as soon as they get in. Authors of case forms are indicated at the end of each case sheet. “The EJAtlas team is grateful to organizations and collectives that exchanged with us information and data and that struggle every day on the ground, in the courts, in their homes.
Special thanks to the Movimento dos Atingidos e Atingidas per Barragens (MAB), International Articulation of those Affected by Vale, Movimento Aguas de Gandarela, FASE, Jubileu Sul Brasil, Movimento pela Soberania Popular na Mineração (MAM), to the research group of Mapa de Conflitos envolvendo Injustiça Ambiental e Saúde no Brasil, Mining Watch Canada, JATAM Indonesia.