The Volta Grande do Xingu, in the Amazonian state of Pará, is under imminent threat. After the inauguration of the Belo Monte Hydropower Plant in 2016, this territory is undergoing unprecedented levels of socio-environmental destruction. With support from the federal and state governments, the Canadian mining company Belo Sun is moving forward with its plans to install an open-pit gold mine in the region called the Volta Grande, or “Big Bend,” Project (PVG) by displacing and threatening the lives and homes of the traditional communities who live there.
A large part of the Volta Grande Project sits within an agrarian reform settlement called Projeto de Assentamento Ressaca (PA Ressaca). The settlement was created in 1999 and is home to hundreds of families who live off the land and the river, cultivating small-scale farms, producing manioc flour, and harvesting açaí or other traditional products from the forest. Belo Sun’s attempts to remove these families from the land where it plans its mining operations threatens to erase their history and rights.
Civil society resistance and Amazon Watch support
Local communities and organized civil society from Brazil and abroad have been responding to these aggressive attempts to hand over agrarian reform land to the international mining company. Supported by the Movimento Xingu Vivo (MXV), communities are organizing in local networks to resist and denounce the illegal encroachment of Belo Sun within their territories. Amazon Watch is supporting local guardian groups through the Amazon Defenders Fund and by providing legal support to their organizations.
We have also been working with public authorities, and especially with the Federal Public Defender’s Office, to develop legal responses to measures by Belo Sun and the federal agency responsible for executing Brazil’s agrarian reform policy with a mandate to foster the rights of settled families known as the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA). In late 2021, the Defender’s Office filed a lawsuit seeking to ensure that Belo Sun and INCRA would not try to remove settled families from their plots of land. And we are currently working on supporting the preparation of a lawsuit that requests the annulment of the contract signed between Belo Sun and INCRA.
Belo Sun affirms that 1,439 hectares within the PA Ressaca – or 22 land plots– will be directly affected by mining operations. This number has changed significantly over the past years and there are no estimates as to what the broader, direct, and indirect impacts of the Volta Grande project will be on the settlement as a whole. As of today, only those families that are within a 250 meter radius of project infrastructure – the mining pits, the reservoir, the tailings dam – are considered to be affected. The remaining families, which will have their livelihoods significantly altered, access to water curtailed, and community ties breached, are not being considered in the licensing process. A recent study published in Nature Magazine shows that mining in the Brazilian Amazon drives deforestation up to 70 km beyond the stated boundaries of a mining lease, revealing the absurdity of the 250-meter radius criteria applied by Belo Sun.
Since 2014, Belo Sun has aggressively tried to buy off land from settled families. The families signed those land acquisition contracts under intimidation and with misinformation by Belo Sun. Many were told that the mine would be licensed one way or another and that if they did not sell the land, they would be forced to leave without compensation. These land purchases are illegal and are currently under Federal Police investigation.
In 2018, INCRA eliminated over 100 families from the PA Ressaca, claiming that they had abandoned their plots of land. All 22 of the land parcels that Belo Sun needs to install its project overlap with land previously held by families on this list.
More recently, Belo Sun has been negotiating with INCRA – which is legally the owner of the lands of the PA Ressaca — on how the agency will be compensated for the damages caused to the land. The negotiations were based on the premise that there were no families in the directly affected land parcels, which is not true. Settled families were not involved or consulted in the process. In November 2021, Belo Sun announced it had signed a contract with INCRA through which it was allowed to use 1,439 hectares of land within the PA Ressaca for gold mining for 20 years, after which the land will be given back to the agency. The contract states that Belo Sun will compensate INCRA for damages to its property by donating a plot of land in the state of Mato Grosso, purchasing equipment for the agency, and giving it shares in Belo Sun’s profits.
Volta Grande’s history of devastation
The Volta Grande do Xingu is a territory marked by a struggle between two worlds. Situated in the Xingu river basin, in the Amazonian state of Pará, the Volta Grande do Xingu – which literally means “the big bend large turn of the Xingu” – receives its name from the path traced by the Xingu River after it passes the city of Altamira, when it makes a sharp turn towards the south before shifting direction and heading north again to meet the Amazon River.
The Volta Grande has for centuries been inhabited by myriad traditional communities who live along the River, on its islands and by its creeks. Indigenous peoples, campesinos, fishing communities, and other traditional communities form a dense mosaic of peoples which traditionally occupy this vast territory, living off the land and the river and maintaining – always through collective struggle – their way of life. They are also the stewards of a well-preserved patch of the forest, a diverse and complex ecosystem. The Volta Grande houses biodiversity only found in this region.
The inauguration of the Belo Monte Hydropower Plant (UHE Belo Monte) in 2016 violently upended traditional life within this territory. Belo Monte redirects the Xingu River away from the Volta Grande, reducing the availability of water and fish in the region, and curtailing the economic and political autonomy of its people. Belo Monte represents the world of so-called development, large infrastructure, and highly capitalized economic extraction which threatens traditional livelihoods in the Volta Grande.
And it is precisely in this territory, which is undergoing unprecedented levels of socio-environmental destruction, that yet another megaproject is being planned by Belo Sun. The potential of Belo Sun’s ambitions is dangerous and destructive. Recently, the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office issued a recommendation that no megaprojects should be licensed in the Volta Grande until the impacts of Belo Monte are better understood and mitigated. The licensing of the PVG directly violates this recommendation.
Amazon Watch will remain engaged alongside other civil society organizations in national and international networks that are working to denounce the practices of Belo Sun, both in Brazil and abroad. The International Alliance for the Volta Grande do Xingu has been monitoring, registering, and reporting to Canadian authorities and the media on the legal problems involved in the PVG. It has also mapped and reached out to Belo Sun’s investors, such as the Royal Bank of Canada, who must be held accountable for the company’s violations. Alliance members have begun studying ways to seek legal redress against Belo Sun in Canadian jurisdiction.
Throughout 2022, these activities will be woven together into a broader national and international campaign for Life in the Volta Grande do Xingu. We’ll call on you to use your voice and act in solidarity with the peoples of the region to stop Belo Sun’s plans. Together we can end its complicity in the destruction of the Amazon.
