"Major Victory to Halt Mining in the Heart of the Brazilian Amazon", 5 December 2024

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...

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 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...

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...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....