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19-04-2023
LONDON: A London-listed company has been mining gold in the Amazon rainforest without approval from the Brazilian land agency or the consent of nearby Indigenous communities, according to an investigation by the Guardian and partners.
Serabi Gold has been blasting 4.5 metre-wide tunnels and trucking ore from the Coringa project site in Para state. But interviews with land agency officials and documents seen by the Guardian, Unearthed and Sumauma indicate that ownership of the area is disputed and the land was allegedly occupied by illegal land-grabbers.
The case illustrates the ethical quagmire of land and mining regulations in Brazil, which are often contradictory and subject to widely different interpretation from government to government, and bureau to bureau.
Serabi says it is fully compliant with the Brazilian legal mining framework, and is in the process of an impact study with the local communities, after which it is confident that the full installation licence will be granted.
The Coringa mine is located in an area known as Terra Nossa. Until 2003, this was a part of Bau Indigenous land, where the Kayapo Mekragnoti people live. In 2006 the government land agency Incra set aside this part of the Baú land for settlement by small-scale family farmers but, as is often the case in the Amazon, grileiros a slang Portuguese term that can be translated as “land grabbers” had already been operating in the area, and one of those who claimed a plot there without authorization, according to Incra, was Benedito Gonçalves Neto. “Benedito simply appropriated the land and said that it was his. So much so that we have an [ongoing] administrative process at Incra to take back these areas,” said Antônio José Ferreira da Silva, an Incra official who wrote a 2017 report about the unauthorized mining.
The settlement went ahead in other parts of the area, but in 2016 a Canadian mining company called Chapleau, which is now wholly owned by Serabi as of December 2017, struck a deal with Neto, according to Incra. In return for a one-off payment of R$21,428 (£3,420), monthly payments of R$1,428 (£228) and royalties from any ore extracted, the company was given the right to use the land as it wished, including mining, deforestation and construction of buildings and tailings ponds. “From the signing of the contracts Chapleau effectively controlled the areas, acting as an enclave in the settlement project,” Incra noted in the 2017 report.
The mine started exploratory production last year and Serabi reported 1,013 ounces (28.7 kg) of gold from Coringa. In future, it aims to extract more than a tonne of gold, worth $70m (£56m) each year. But this is happening against a complex and confusing backdrop. It appears that the company is operating with no approval from the land agency, without the consent of nearby Indigenous groups and without the payment of a fee to those who have made a rival claim to the property.
Incra is currently analyzing a request from Serabi to operate in the area, but the agency confirmed in an email that “to date, Incra has not authorized research and mining operations in the Terra Nossa settlement”. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
