This is the first in a new series of IDS seminars spotlighting Brazil’s development challenges and global role in the context of the country’s G20 Presidency. It will focus on the Cerrado, Brazil’s most important agribusiness region and a key mining frontier which is rapidly becoming a globally important front line in the struggle against deforestation and biodiversity loss.
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As it prepares to host COP30 next year, Brazil is attracting global recognition for its success in reducing deforestation in the Amazon. However, this success has been marred by a rapid increase in the pace of destruction in the central Brazilian savannah belt, or Cerrado.
A recent IDS Bulletin co-produced with the University of Brasília highlighted how the Cerrado is witnessing a collision between one of the world’s most important agribusiness frontiers and a diverse mosaic of territories where traditional communities are defending crucial sociobiodiversity and water resources.
Mining is also a historical and current threat to biodiversity and livelihoods in the region, especially in the territories located within the region known as the “Iron Quadrangle”, one of the largest concentrations of mineral resources on the planet. Socioenvironmental impacts of mining in the region include but are not limited to the risk of further failures of iron ore tailings dams like those that that caused two of the biggest socio-environmental disasters in Brazil’s history, in 2015 and 2019.
The pressure coming from the mining sector is now increasing further as the Northern part of the region has also become a new frontier for the extraction of ‘transition minerals’ like lithium, which places heavy demands on scarce water resources. Coupled with pressure on land and water resources from large-scale renewable energy projects in the region, this dynamic risks turning the semi-arid Northern part of Central Brazil into a ‘sacrifice zone’ for the green transition at the same time as other areas of the Cerrado are consumed by export-oriented soy and cattle production.
This seminar will bring the findings from ongoing IDS research on land politics, traditional territories and agrifood systems in Brazil together with insights from a Sussex Sustainability Research Programme collaboration with communities resisting mining and from ethnographic work with vazanteiros (traditional floodplain communities) who are resisting a dam project on the São Francisco, the region’s most important river.
Highlighting the links between local, regional, national and transnational dynamics, it will examine the prospects for reversing the current trend of rising deforestation in this critical region and the central importance of Brazilian traditional peoples’ knowledges and territories in the struggle against climate change and biodiversity loss.
Speakers
- Alex Shankland, IDS Brazil Initiative convenor and Sussex Sustainability Research Programme Fellow
- Mauro Toledo, State University of Montes Claros (UNIMONTES) and IDS Visiting Researcher
- Bruna Viana de Freitas, IDS alumna and coordinator of the Sussex Sustainability Research Programme initiative in support of communities resisting mining in Minas Gerais state, Brazil
- Makota Kidoiale, Kilombo Manzo Community Leader, located at the foot of the Serra do Curral, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais; Professor and Master of Traditional Knowledge Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG).
Chair
Lídia Cabral, IDS Rural Futures Cluster Convenor and Brazil Initiative researcher.
How to attend
Covid-19 protocol
The wearing of masks is voluntary, and we encourage those who would like to wear masks to do so. Surgical masks are available in many of the meeting rooms and from the reception counter.
If you are planning to attend an event and would like to request that others wear a mask, you can either contact us in advance at [email protected], or speak to an IDS representative on the day.
We also ask that when requested by colleagues or others in a meeting or event to wear a mask, please treat the request with respect and put a mask on.
If you are feeling unwell or have any Covid-19 symptoms, please do not come into the IDS building.
Accessibility
This event is in the IDS Room 221 which is on the 2nd floor of the IDS Building. If you need to use the lift, then press 2. If you have any accessibility needs for this event, then please email: [email protected]
Privacy
This lecture will also be streamed on the platform Zoom. View Zoom’s privacy settings.
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