“Mining giant rides roughshod over Amazon indigenous people for potash”, 13 May 2021

...Potássio do Brasil (PDB), a mining company controlled by the Canadian giant Forbes & Manhattan, has signed an agreement with the Chinese construction company CITIC to build a potash exploration complex in Autazes, 110km from Manaus (AM), in the Brazilian Amazon...As part of this joint investigation, Diálogo Chino and InfoAmazonia found the contract among a series of documents that PDB sent to the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), the US government agency in charge of the financial markets where the mining company hopes to raise US$50 million in investment. PDB’s plans to exploit potash in Autazes have already been blighted by local conflicts. As a result, a conciliation hearing in 2017 led the company to sign an agreement with the Federal Public Ministry...That decision included the suspension of environmental licensing until the completion of a consultation with the Mura people...It also established that the company would provide financial support for the indigenous people to draw up their consultation protocol...The Autazes Potash Project...intends to extract a total of 770 million tons of potash…[,]... essential in the production of fertilizers…A 2018 study by researchers from Brazil and the US, meanwhile, shows that the Autazes complex poses risks to the soil, the area’s geological structure, vegetation, aquifers and even its surface drainage...Because of the risks associated with the work, the agreement stated that the environmental license would not be granted until the consultation with the Mura people had been concluded…The consultation was to begin in 2020 but was suspended because of the Covid-19 pandemic…PDB...responded that it had held "several rounds of consultations"...PDB did not respond to a May 7 request for comment on the series of legal breaches…