THE LULA ADMINISTRATION enacted the National Critical and Strategic Minerals Policy on September 16, establishing a framework for a sector that is expected to become increasingly important in the coming years.
The idea is relatively simple and makes sense: Brazil should not limit itself to extracting minerals from the ground and exporting them as raw materials. The policy seeks to encourage mineral processing, transformation and industrialization in the country, adding value to supply chains and seeking to ensure that mineral wealth also becomes an opportunity for technological and industrial development.
The law provides financing mechanisms and tax incentives and creates a council linked to the Presidency of the Republic to coordinate the policy. It also establishes social and environmental criteria for selecting projects, calls for traceability, dialogue with affected communities, prevention, mitigation and compensation of impacts, and even creates a Low-Carbon Mineral Certificate.
This is a legislative framework developed together with the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate that sought to connect several different priorities, from economic development to sustainability, and from extraction to industrialization.
But, at least at first glance, the final design is unlikely to reassure communities and social movements rooted in the territories where these minerals are found.
ASSINE NOSSA NEWSLETTER
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A first concern relates to governance. The policy concentrates considerable power in the federal government and gives society a fairly limited role.
The National Council for the Industrialization of Critical and Strategic Minerals will be linked to the Presidency of the Republic. Its core will consist of 15 ministers, along with representatives of states, municipalities, the private sector and universities. Civil society does not have a permanent representative with voting rights.
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