The Brazilians taking a UK mining project to court
By Ione Wells
In a small community deep in the remote, lush mountains of Bahia, Brazil, Catarina Oliveira de Silva points down at what used to be a lake.
“After the mine started extracting there, waste came down. It fell into the spring. It buried this entire lake. Three metres of silt and ore sludge.”
Catarina says dust from this mine covered crops she owned, including coffee bushes and banana trees, until she could not produce them anymore.
She and her husband had also taken out a loan in 2015 for a business where people could pay to go angling in the lake.
“Our project went down the drain,” she says.
Catarina and her family live in a traditional Quilombola community, descendants of Afro-Brazilian slaves whose rights to their land and way of life are protected under Brazilian law.
Now, their fight against a UK-owned mining company is set to move to a top court in London.
Brazil Iron, a self-described “sustainable” mining company, is accused of damaging the environment, health, crops and water supplies of local communities near its Brazilian mine.
