Brazilian Amazon's Death By 1,000 Cuts Part Two - Mining For Dummies, Anywhere, Everywhere

When President Michel Temer issued a presidential decree in August 2017 to open up the vast 4.6 million hectare (17,800 square mile) RENCA preserve in the northern Amazon to mining, he met with a firestorm of criticism. RENCA (the National Copper and Associated Reserve) is in Amapá, Brazil’s most northern state, where it borders on Pará. The military set it up in 1984, not to protect the rainforest but to stop transnational mining companies from plundering the country’s resources. But RENCA’s establishment served conservation needs anyway. Almost all of it (95 percent) is protected today, with seven conservation units and two indigenous reserves. Only 0.3 percent has been deforested, making it one of the Amazon’s most intact rainforests. So it wasn’t surprising that environmentalists were outraged by Temer’s sudden move.

The roar of national and global disapproval caused a federal judge to annul Temer’s decree, ruling that Brazil’s 1988 constitution did not permit the preserve to be abolished by the president, but only through legislative action. Now, with the ruralists more powerful than ever in Congress and Bolsonaro running things, observers say it is only a matter of time before the government teams up with mining interests to have another go. Indications are, according to Mongabay sources, that they are preparing to act early in 2020.

RENCA is a tantalizing prize. The mineral wealth lying beneath its pristine forests is mind-boggling, with estimated reserves of gold, iron, phosphate, titanium, manganese, niobium and tantalum. “Studies carried out in the 1970s said that [RENCA’s] minerals were worth US$1 trillion,” Senator Lucas Barreto, a chief advocate of opening up the preserve, told the El Pais newspaper. “Imagine how much that is in today’s values.”

EDIT

The Bolsonaro administration has already weakened IBAMA and ICMBio, Brazil’s two main environmental protection agencies, and it has also taken steps to render FUNAI, the country’s indigenous affairs agency, virtually inoperative. Even though weakened in recent years, FUNAI had continued to provide invaluable support to indigenous communities and slowly carried on demarcating indigenous reserves. All that is ending now. A serious blow for the agency was Bolsonaro’s decision in July to appoint Marcelo Augusto Xavier da Silva, a former police officer with strong connections to agribusiness, as FUNAI president. Many indigenous leaders were horrified at the time, fearing that his appointment would sound the death knell for the agency. Today it seems their fears were justified.

EDIT

https://news.mongabay.com/2019/12/bolsonaros-brazil-2020-could-see-revived-amazon-mining-assault-part-two/