"Environmental justice and corporate social irresponsibility: the case of the mining company Vale S.A", December 2021

...After the Vale’s tailings dam failure in Brumadinho (Minas Gerais) in early 2019, a group of researchers and activists from around the world produced a thematic map in the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice (EJAtlas) including 30 cases of environmental conflicts in which Vale had a prominent role. In this paper, these cases are analysed in light of Vale’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) discourses and practices, aiming to explore the contradiction of high CSR standards in the company and in other large multinationals in the mining sector coexisting with many socio-environmental conflicts. The analysis indicates that the company’s performance contrasts with its CSR discourse and that, even when Vale considers its performance both responsible and exemplary, the company reproduces environmental injustices and is therefore rather practicing Corporate Social Irresponsibility...

In recent years, the social irresponsibility of the mining company Vale SA (hereafter, Vale) has become globally recognized after the failure of two major mining tailings dams in the towns of Mariana and Brumadinho, located in the mining region of the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The failures, which occurred respectively in late 2015 and early 2019, are among the greatest tragedies in the history of global mining, both concerning the extent of environmental, social, and health impacts and for having caused almost 300 deaths...

...This paper contributes to the literature on CSIR by taking into account grievances and claims from the communities affected by Vale..

This paper examined the apparent contradiction of high CSR standards in large multinationals in the mining sector coexisting with many socio-environmental conflicts, and how CSR measures can be turned into means for further profit generation...

...[T]he adoption of such initiatives, in several cases analysed, contributes to reinforcing or producing new environmental injustices. The social groups marginalized by CSR practices in the cases analysed are, in general, vulnerable populations and indigenous peoples, whose lives and livelihoods are threatened by environmental degradation and expansion of mineral extraction...

...Vale’s practices aimed at education, culture, labour training and other “social investments” are articulated around a particular notion of “local development” or “territorial development”, which assumes the uprooting and detachement of communities from their territories and livelihood...

...[T]his paper shows that the costs of investments in environmental conservation or reductions in carbon emissions often fall on local communities and produce new environmental injustices. These contradictions, however, do not resonate in the evaluations and indicators of institutions that inform investors, in which Vale often appears very well placed...

...In this sense, the visibility of these actors and their claims is an important step for corporations to be held accountable for their socio-environmental liabilities, and also for them not to continue to systematically transfer socio-environmental costs to third parties...