Giovana Figueiredo
November 26th, 2024
LSE
MSc Development Management student Giovana Figueiredo reflects on the Mariana dam environmental disaster and the subsequent UK court case.
Nine years ago, in the city of Mariana, Brazil, a dam owned by the mining company Samarco collapsed and released a huge amount of toxic muck that spread to more than 3 Brazilian states. Nineteen people were killed, thousands were displaced and many families lost everything – their houses, family members, material goods, and dignity.
The crime impacted the livelihoods and spiritual practices of traditional people, especially the Krenak. Ailton Krenak is a prominent indigenous leader, philosopher, and environmentalist who has recently become the first Indigenous intellectual to join the prestigious Brazilian Academy of Letters (ABL). When I was packing to move to London to start my Masters in Development Management at LSE, I included his last book “Ancestral Future” (Futuro Ancestral in Portuguese), aware that I would need some decolonial content as a relief from my long academic reading lists! Ailton is an aspiration for environmentalists and climate activists like me and has strongly influenced modern ideas about development.
At that point, I had no idea I was about to witness the trial of what has become one of the biggest environmental crimes in Brazilian history, happening in London.
In October 2024, the UK Courts initiated a trial against BHP, an Anglo-Australian company that formed Samarco’s joint venture, along with the Brazilian company Vale. At the time of the collapse, BHP’s headquarters was in London, where the biggest amount of their revenues were filed.
A law firm is leading the legal process, representing more than 70.000 people, and brought some victims to participate in the beginning of the trial, which I had the opportunity to attend. Leaders from the Krenak and Pataxó indigenous peoples, quilombolas (descended from escaped African slaves) and other impacted populations came to London to claim justice.
In a mix of grief and nostalgia, as I have previously worked with indigenous peoples and traditional communities in Brazil, I found myself hearing stories of mothers who lost their sons, wives who lost their husbands and a people who lost their river. For the Krenak people, the Rio Doce was part of their family, and a crucial symbol of their ancestrality, as Ailton shares in one of his books. Now they say, the river is dead.
Some call it a natural disaster. I call it an environmental crime. Disasters usually combine natural events with social vulnerability, which creates risks for people with low capacity to respond and low levels of resilience (although indigenous people have been resisting invasion for more than 500 years in Brazil).
Crimes are accountable. Due to environmental racism and climate injustice, indigenous and traditional people don’t have their basic rights assured, and access to the legal system is seldom effective. They are the most impacted by the effects of the climate crisis and their vulnerability is sustained by an unequal society raised under colonial values.
In October 2024, a few days after the start of the trial in the UK, the companies signed an agreement with the Brazilian government for R$132 billion ($23 billion) in compensation under the legal process in Brazil. However, the law firm Pogust Goodhead, representing more than 700.000 Brazilian people and claiming more than $36 billion, argues that the English litigation will continue. The legal process in Brazil is slow and these people see in London’s trial an opportunity to seek justice and reparation.
Despite the awful reason that brought them to London, people do have hope. They expect BHP to be accountable and to respond to the crime that changed the history of a whole territory. The process in London will last twelve weeks, and a decision is expected to be released around May 2025. Victims argue that happiness is not for sale and that their lives will never be the same. The material impact might eventually be compensated, but the intangible damage will never be repaired. Maybe the Krenak people have lost their river forever.
The views expressed in this post are those of the author and in no way reflect those of the International Development LSE blog or the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Featured image: Cai Santo on Flickr.
About the author
Giovana Figueiredo
Giovana is a climate activist, internationalist, and political scientist with over nine years of experience in public policy analysis and sustainability. Her career is shaped by the pursuit of impactful solutions to urgent global challenges such as the climate crisis. She has coordinated international cooperation projects focused on sustainable development across South America and has advised local governments in designing and implementing climate policies. For the past four years, she has concentrated on promoting climate justice for local communities and traditional peoples in the Brazilian Amazon, working with both grassroots and international NGOs such as the Foundation for Amazon Sustainability (FAS) and Hivos.
MSc Development Management student Giovana Figueiredo reflects on the Mariana dam environmental disaster and the subsequent UK court case.
Nine years ago, in the city of Mariana, Brazil, a dam owned by the mining company Samarco collapsed and released a huge amount of toxic muck that spread to more than 3 Brazilian states. Nineteen people were killed, thousands were displaced and many families lost everything – their houses, family members, material goods, and dignity.
The crime impacted the livelihoods and spiritual practices of traditional people, especially the Krenak. Ailton Krenak is a prominent indigenous leader, philosopher, and environmentalist who has recently become the first Indigenous intellectual to join the prestigious Brazilian Academy of Letters (ABL). When I was packing to move to London to start my Masters in Development Management at LSE, I included his last book “Ancestral Future” (Futuro Ancestral in Portuguese), aware that I would need some decolonial content as a relief from my long academic reading lists! Ailton is an aspiration for environmentalists and climate activists like me and has strongly influenced modern ideas about development.
At that point, I had no idea I was about to witness the trial of what has become one of the biggest environmental crimes in Brazilian history, happening in London.
In October 2024, the UK Courts initiated a trial against BHP, an Anglo-Australian company that formed Samarco’s joint venture, along with the Brazilian company Vale. At the time of the collapse, BHP’s headquarters was in London, where the biggest amount of their revenues were filed.
A law firm is leading the legal process, representing more than 70.000 people, and brought some victims to participate in the beginning of the trial, which I had the opportunity to attend. Leaders from the Krenak and Pataxó indigenous peoples, quilombolas (descended from escaped African slaves) and other impacted populations came to London to claim justice.
In a mix of grief and nostalgia, as I have previously worked with indigenous peoples and traditional communities in Brazil, I found myself hearing stories of mothers who lost their sons, wives who lost their husbands and a people who lost their river. For the Krenak people, the Rio Doce was part of their family, and a crucial symbol of their ancestrality, as Ailton shares in one of his books. Now they say, the river is dead.
Some call it a natural disaster. I call it an environmental crime. Disasters usually combine natural events with social vulnerability, which creates risks for people with low capacity to respond and low levels of resilience (although indigenous people have been resisting invasion for more than 500 years in Brazil).
Crimes are accountable. Due to environmental racism and climate injustice, indigenous and traditional people don’t have their basic rights assured, and access to the legal system is seldom effective. They are the most impacted by the effects of the climate crisis and their vulnerability is sustained by an unequal society raised under colonial values.
In October 2024, a few days after the start of the trial in the UK, the companies signed an agreement with the Brazilian government for R$132 billion ($23 billion) in compensation under the legal process in Brazil. However, the law firm Pogust Goodhead, representing more than 700.000 Brazilian people and claiming more than $36 billion, argues that the English litigation will continue. The legal process in Brazil is slow and these people see in London’s trial an opportunity to seek justice and reparation.
Despite the awful reason that brought them to London, people do have hope. They expect BHP to be accountable and to respond to the crime that changed the history of a whole territory. The process in London will last twelve weeks, and a decision is expected to be released around May 2025. Victims argue that happiness is not for sale and that their lives will never be the same. The material impact might eventually be compensated, but the intangible damage will never be repaired. Maybe the Krenak people have lost their river forever.
The views expressed in this post are those of the author and in no way reflect those of the International Development LSE blog or the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Featured image: Cai Santo on Flickr.
About the author
Giovana Figueiredo
Giovana is a climate activist, internationalist, and political scientist with over nine years of experience in public policy analysis and sustainability. Her career is shaped by the pursuit of impactful solutions to urgent global challenges such as the climate crisis. She has coordinated international cooperation projects focused on sustainable development across South America and has advised local governments in designing and implementing climate policies. For the past four years, she has concentrated on promoting climate justice for local communities and traditional peoples in the Brazilian Amazon, working with both grassroots and international NGOs such as the Foundation for Amazon Sustainability (FAS) and Hivos.
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