Brazil: Mura Indigenous group fear potash exploration projects by Brazil Potash and Oxycer Holding may affect their health and livelihoods; incl. company's comments
"Ukraine war: Global fertiliser crunch pressures Brazil’s Amazon", 16 May 2022
...Now with the Ukraine conflict in its third month, and as potassium prices have tripled in the past year over fears of looming shortages amid sanctions and logistical bottlenecks, long-held interests in mining huge reserves of potassium in the Brazilian Amazon are being revived...
But local Indigenous and environmental groups, for their part, fear ramping up potassium mining in the Amazon will pollute local rivers, destroy land and lead to the loss of traditional fishing, hunting and subsistence agriculture...
In 2010, Canadian firm Brazil Potash, owned by Toronto-based merchant bank Forbes & Manhattan, began drilling for potassium in and around lands where Mura people live...
The company plans to build Latin America’s largest potassium mine in the region, as well as a highway, an industrial plant, power lines and a port to transport the fertiliser. But the project stalled in 2016 and its licence was suspended following a complaint by public prosecutors that the Mura were not adequately consulted...
“The company, or its interlocutors, exerted pressure and coercion on Indigenous and riverine people in the region, in order to sell their land/possessions and territories of traditional use to the company,” reads an excerpt of a document sent to Amazonas Federal Court that was signed by prosecutor Fernando Merloto Soave and seen by Al Jazeera. The document cited field visits from the end of March.
Brazil Potash denies the accusations.
“All of the acquisitions were made legally, according to Brazilian law,” said chief executive Adriano Espeschit. “Brazil Potash is an ESG [environmental, social, and corporate governance] company … Regarding the mining impacts, we have already completed exhaustive studies”...
This April, the Oxycer Holding Company, based in the southern state of Parana, made 14 requests to Brazil’s National Mining Agency to research for potassium on Mura Indigenous lands, according to data seen by Al Jazeera...
The company declined to comment on the matter when contacted by Al Jazeera...