Brazilian judge annuls Belo Sun’s land rights contract, delivering a major blow to the company’s plans to build Brazil’s largest open-pit gold mine
December 5, 2024 | Ana Paula Vargas and Ana Carolina Alfinito | Eye on the Amazon
In the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, Indigenous and riverine communities are celebrating a landmark victory. Last week, a federal court voided Belo Sun’s contract granting the Canadian company land rights in the region, in a major setback to its plans to carve Brazil’s largest open-pit gold mine into the banks of the Xingu River.
This pivotal decision reinvigorates the more than decade-long struggle led by frontline communities against Belo Sun’s “Volta Grande” mega-mine, which threatens to cause irreversible harm to a territory already devastated by the Belo Monte mega-dam.
Since 2012, Amazon Watch has fought alongside our partners in the region to shut down the company’s plans and to protect this sacred ecosystem and the communities who steward it. As part of our Mining Out of the Amazon campaign and In collaboration with our partners, we co-founded the Volta Grande do Xingu Alliance. We have organized a wide range of tactics, including legal strategies, national and international advocacy mobilizations, communication campaigns, and critical data collection and research. As we come together to celebrate this major victory, we also remain vigilant and steadfast in our movement for environmental justice.
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By annulling a highly-contested contract issued in 2021 by Brazil’s National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA), the recent ruling denies Belo Sun access to mine public lands originally designated for agrarian reform. The move reigns in Belo Sun’s reckless and unlawful efforts to subvert Brazilian land policy for their own ends, effectively halting the advancement of the Volta Grande project. This retribution comes in a symbolic place and time, as Brazil’s Pará state prepares to host next year’s UN Climate Conference (COP30).
The victory springs from a 2022 lawsuit by Brazil’s Federal Public Defender’s Office (DPU) and the State Public Defender’s Office of Pará (DPE/PA) that sought to cancel Belo Sun’s land concession over glaring irregularities.
The ruling affirmed that the illegal concession of these land reform plots to Belo Sun would have established a dangerous precedent in Brazil, jeopardizing land reform settlements across the Amazon. It shows that family agriculture and social justice – the pillars of land reform – will not be sacrificed for destructive transnational mining. It also reveals that INCRA, which is responsible for ensuring that families have access to land and agrarian reform policies, had abandoned its institutional mission. The deal contradicted INCRA’s mandate to allocate land for agrarian reform rather than for mining exploitation. INCRA cannot legitimize land grabbing. A mining company must not override agrarian reform, food sovereignty, or protection of the Amazon.
Following the court’s decision, Belo Sun must reinitiate its negotiations with Brazil’s federal government to obtain access to its desired mining site in a profound setback that sent its already meager share price beneath 3 cents per share. The ruling also impacts other lawsuits filed by Belo Sun. Without formal access to land, lawsuits by the mining company against settlers, such as repossession claims and criminalization complaints alleging invasion, are likely to lose their merit.
“This ruling represents the restoration of legal security in lands usurped by Belo Sun,” said Ana Laide Barbosa, of the Xingu Vivo Para Sempre Movement. “It determines that granting land designated for food production under agrarian reform policies to Belo Sun is illegal. This agreement, signed under the Bolsonaro administration, jeopardized the lives and futures of farmers in the region. Under President Lula, we expect INCRA to comply with the court’s decision and allocate the recovered land to landless farmers seeking a place to plant, live, and protect what remains of the Amazon.”
Vigilance
For over a decade, Belo Sun has remained determined to force its Volta Grande mine upon the communities of the Xingu.
In its official response, the Canadian mining company downplayed the ruling and referred to INCRA as its partner, claiming it would “work with INCRA to resolve this issue.”
Despite the fact the company no longer holds a land concession, the court stopped short of annulling its project’s environmental licensing process, meaning a successful appeal could put the mine back on track.
Amazon Watch and the members of the Xingu Alliance will remain vigilant and maintain our work in the region by increasing the pressure on INCRA to uphold its institutional commitment to agrarian reform and food sovereignty, not mining exploitation.
The Volta Grande do Xingu Alliance, the Xingu Vivo Para Sempre Movement, local communities, environmentalists, and human rights activists urge INCRA to strengthen land reform in the region. It is crucial for the agency to register the families settled within the Ressaca Land Reforms Settlement (PA Ressaca), settle landless families, and advance public policies that enable Indigenous and traditional communities to produce and live with dignity.
As world leaders gathered at COP16 to discuss plans to safeguard global biodiversity this past October, we launched a new phase of our campaign. Echoing the calls of the Indigenous-led struggle for their land rights, ancestral territories, and traditional ways of life, the Volta Grande do Xingu Alliance sounded alarms, reminding the world that “our land is to plant and protect!”
At the same time that the Brazilian Amazon is reeling from unprecedented firesand droughts exacerbated by the climate crisis, the country is receiving increasing international praise as a global climate leader as it prepares to host COP30 in Belém. President Lula’s government has pledged to protect the Amazon and combat poverty, recently celebrating the creation of the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty during the G20.
Against this backdrop, it is highly questionable that INCRA, an agency under the Ministry of Agrarian Development and Family Farming, would prioritize a foreign mining company over the needs of families working to produce food and the communities whose lives have been dedicated to protecting the Amazon forest and the rivers.
This recent federal court decision annulling Belo Sun and INCRA’s contract is a crucial step toward justice, underscoring the resilience of the communities of the Volta Grande do Xingu. Amazon Watch will continue to stand in solidarity with our partners in the region, amplifying their fight to protect their ancestral land, livelihoods, and the heart of the Amazon.
