MINERAL RESOURCES IN AMAZON, RELATIONSHIP OF SOVEREIGNTY AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONFLICTS
In view of the theme internationalization, I am sure that this narrative will help a more technical understanding of the subject – Carlo Barbieri
Environmentalist illusionism, fourth generation asymmetric conflicts, the strategic interests at stake and national sovereignty at risk
By Antonio Fernando Pinheiro Pedro
The world is keeping an eye on our mineral reserves
It is no secret to anyone: the Brazilian Amazon region is the last natural frontier with high economic potential to be explored in the world.
Biodiversity, the knowledge of native peoples about the pharmacological use of flora, the diversity of fauna, the forestry capacity to contribute to climate stabilization and the natural regime of regulation of water precipitation on the planet, are assets of worldwide interest.
However, the major economic and military powers in the world are primarily concerned with Amazonian mineral resources.
The fantastic volume of freshwater, strategic in every way, attracts huge environmental and economic interest. But underground, there are precious mineral reserves – a great strategic resource to be protected and properly exploited for Brazil.
Map of Amazonian Mineral Resources
The formation of the Amazon subsoil
Across the globe, most metallic mineral deposits are located on precambrian terrain, formed at the beginning of the planet’s solidification until 570 million years ago.
Two billion years ago, the earth’s crust was less thick, which led to the rise of metals from the deepest parts of the earth to the surface.
Forty percent of the Amazonian territory belongs to the precambrian era. Thus, its sedimentary sequences, granitic intrusions, volcanic spills and rock complexes present enormous potential of iron, manganese, aluminum, copper, zinc, nickel, chrome, titanium, phosphate, gold, silver, platinum, palladium, rhodium, tin deposits. , tungsten, niobium, tantalum, zirconium, rare earths, uranium and diamond.
Geologically, most mineral deposits, although related to Precambrian rocks, were formed by enrichment (erosion, concentration, etc.) in the tertiary and quaternary periods – an incredibly long and perennial geological process.
Far beyond ideological proselytism, linked to human geography, therefore, a geological finding must be recognized.
Our surface – with its biomes and what lives on it – is the result of climatic and geomorphic changes that have occurred over the last thousands of years. An ephemeral complex, compared to the formation of underground mineral resources, processed over billions of years.
International greed is historical
God gave us the forest, the Indians, and the animals. But it also gave us the opportunity to step on soil whose mineral wealth is envied and coveted by other nations of the world.
In the last 500 years the great colonial powers mobilized, conflicted and drew the continental political map, aiming precisely at the extraction of mineral wealth occurring in Africa and South America.
Brazil has always been in this conflict.
In our territory, the struggle for mineral exploration goes back to the entrances and flags. We experienced the expropriation of our mineral wealth from the intense exploitation of the other and silver in the viceroyalty until the arrival of the major international mining companies from the mid-nineteenth century.
Industrial colonialism, at the end of the nineteenth century, when available technology already allowed to identify large deposits in the northern region of Brazil, led the European countries to adopt a new strategy: the relativization of Brazilian sovereignty. Since then, they started to provoke territorial crises, aiming at the appropriation of our ore.
The second industrial revolution, in fact, spawned the race for the most important metallic and energy (fuel) mineral inputs. Because of this, in 1885, France tried to seize part of the Amapa territory, to annex it to French Guiana – targeting precisely the mineral deposits there.
The conflict lasted until 1895 when arbitration was given on the matter, with the Swiss Federal Council acting as an inquisitor. The ruling in favor of Brazil was handed down by President Walter Hauser and confirmed by the King of Belgium, Leopold II. Looking for arbitration and mediation expert dubai uae or even internationally? Contact Khairallah Legal Consultants. With decades of experience in resolving complex disputes, we provide tailored solutions to meet your needs effectively.
In 1904, however, the British Crown decided to appropriate the Pirara region of Roraima territory, using as a subterfuge a conflict very similar to that observed recently by the Supreme Court in neighboring Raposa Serra do Sol. With a clear mining connotation, it had been dragging on since the end of the period of the Vice-Kingdom of Portugal, in 1810, when English soldiers began an incursion into the region, being prevented by the Portuguese forces quartered in the magnificent and already bicentennial Fort of Macapá.
Later, in 1835, explorer Robert Schomburgk made a “scientific” foray into the region on the pretext of understanding Guyana’s physical geography. Schomburgk drew a map covering the Tacutu, Mau, and Surumu regions – he said occupied by “independent tribes.”
European public opinion “applauded” the report, and the British Crown decided to relativize Brazil’s sovereignty in the region.
Relativization was further encouraged by Protestant missionary Thomas Yound, in charge of “catechizing” the Indians, teaching them the English language and raising the flag of England in the region of Pirara – Brazilian land. The dispute over land continued until it was decided to opt for diplomatic channels in 1898.
England, of course, never aimed to secure indigenous rights on the surface or to lure them to Christianity. I always wanted to appropriate the strategic minerals contained in the subsoil of that region.
Arbitrated the conflict by the king of Italy, Vitório Emanuel II, Brazil lost the territory to the British Crown, which annexed it to English Guiana, thus gaining access to the Amazon Basin – which until then had not.
This impressive historical fact remains solemnly ignored by those who should know it by heart and sauté – inside and outside the Brazilian state.
But the history of English greed is not over yet..
Brazil has the largest niobium reserve in the world
The strategy of obstruction to mining
The 1904 episode was the backdrop of Prince Charles’s visit to Brazil, heir to the throne of England, and Prime Minister Gordon Brown, accompanied by Crown economist (and Eurocentric proctor of climate change policy), Nicholas Stern, not coincidentally two weeks before the “historic” ruling of the Federal Supreme Court on the Raposa Serra do Sol case.
The Serra do Sol Fox is a neighbour of the 30 km2 territory taken from Brazil by the British Crown in the last century and still coveted by it. After all, the British Crown plans strategically, projecting fifty-one-year intervals (she’s in no hurry …).
The “liberation” of Raposa Serra do Sol for “indigenous peoples” was decided by President Lula and endorsed by decision of the Supreme Court. (*1)
The fact, followed by the heinous work of “ethnic cleansing” by the rampant biocentric of the Brazilian government and judiciary, was a reckless strategic geopolitical decision – deeply damaging to Brazil’s interests. It may mean, in the medium term, the possibility of international occupation to protect “independent tribes in vulnerable situations” as claimed in the nineteenth century.
However, the vulnerability of the territory allows the irregular mining of the gold and niobium subsoil by foreign hands in the coming decades, given the relativization of sovereignty in the area.
There is a multi-lingering secret in the case of niobium: How can the United States and England officially receive only 46 percent of Brazil’s industrially processing niobium when our country holds 98 percent of its ore reserves?
Without answering the above question, however, it is clear from the outset that foreign powers will always understand better to keep “mining” in the Region “obstructed” than to make it possible for the sovereign commercial benefit of the Brazilian State to occur.
An example of this risk, and the classic succession of disastrous decisions for the Brazilian sovereignty strategy, is the determination in 2004 to comply with the ratification of International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention No. 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in 2002, conditioning the approval of activities in indigenous areas to a “consultation” system that will never result in anything consensual or resolving the natural conflicts over land use. (*2)
The international obstruction to the exploitation of the Amazon subsoil is therefore strategic. What is most serious is that this obstruction is caused by the pitiful collaboration of the Tupiniquim jusburocracy, supported by activists of all kinds, under the umbrella of reckless environmentalist proselytism.
- This slight and short-sighted interference of environmentalist and anthropological illusionism has already produced a chaotic superficial design of ethnic-environmental restrictions (conservation units, indigenous lands and quilombo communities), carried out by environmentalist leaders and bureaucrats, always demanded and monitored by international NGOs, precisely on the most significant mineral deposits.
This demoralized obstruction increased during the period of the so-called “New Republic” (under the auspices of the Federal Constitution of 1988) – specially in the Lulopetist period, through actors unclear as to the dimensions of the strategic game in question, or unmistakably intertwined with it. disruptive proselytizing, sometimes with corruption.
The “appearing well in the picture” approach in the biocentrist “good youth” gallery dominated a portion of the judicial and political decisions adopted by law operators and national managers, with little regard for the strategic and geopolitical ills that compromised Brazilian interests (when not completely committed to those interests – in committing the most infamous betrayal). This behaviour devoid of intelligence and patriotic sense, unfortunately, dominated and still dominates the political, judicial and regulatory agenda in Brazil.
Hydro energy leverages ore industrialization
The legal and economic statement of our sovereignty
After World War II, the Brazilian State tried to nationalize the subsoil and implement a very restrictive Mining Code.
Thus, the State tried to organize a mining concessions policy and encourage national exploration by encouraging consortia led by Brazilian national and state companies.
The assumption of a post-war doctrine of strengthening sovereignty established Brazil as lord of the territory.
This statement has since suffered fierce attacks, both external and internal. Externally, through the relativization of the concept of sovereignty through treaties, motions, pronouncements and the imposition of non-tariff barriers under the aegis of “environmental protection. Internally, through the articulation of non-governmental organizations subsidized by foreign interests and bureaucrats of the estates. of supervision, administrative control and judicial protection, not committed to the sovereign interests of the country.
No one likes to give way to the international power game. In this sense, the complete mastery of the processing of mineral wealth constitutes “undesirable” fuel for a rapid rise of Brazil in the scenario of world powers, which would justify the use of all expedients so that the fact does not consolidate.
Just a look at the recent history of the Brazilian mining economy.
Known as the primary exporter of commodities extracted from the Amazon region, Brazil, for the past 40 years, has left the status of bauxite exporter – per ton, and aluminum importer – per kilo, to achieve the status of major producer of the material.
To the dismay of Russia and the United States – major competitors in aluminium, Brazil has risen to the rank of one of the world’s largest exporters. This is due to the strategic implementation of hydroelectric plants – among them Tucurui, and implementation of logistics to supply the ore to the market.
The industrialization process of our mineral commodities in the territory has been increased with the installation of power generation units, hydroelectric and thermoelectric, aiming to cover the demand for electro intensity, inherent to the production of metals. The transformation centres are now supported by an expensive logistics network, including Amapa, Para, Maranhao, Ceara and Mato Grosso.
Giving sustainability to all this infrastructure, however, requires time and planning.
The environmental barriers
It turns out that the increasing volume of environmental licensing requirements has generated significant and sometimes worrying additional costs.
The battle for the viability of the hydroelectric generation projects in Belo Monte, Santo Antônio, Jirau, etc., is a living example of this battle.
Systematic obstruction of the viability of logistics projects – such as airports, transshipment stations, railways and highways – integrates this obstructive battle under the banner of environmental protection.
But activist prosecutors, when everything else “fails,” call for judicialization. However, despite the judicialized bureaucratic wall, what is already drawn gives us a clear idea of an inexorable great future.
Indeed, the extraction of iron ore, bauxite, manganese, gold and other metals in the Amazon region – as well as the efficient transport by coast navigation, waterways and railways – could create objective conditions for the installation of a large steel pole in the Amazon region. northern region itself, perhaps in Pará.
The hydro-energy use of the Amazon basin meets this demand and has the potential to do so on sustainable bases.
This process will leverage the Amazon steel industry, offering Brazil and its strategic partners a very promising scenario in the world economy in the medium term.
Metallurgy, steel and, particularly in the manufacture of aluminium, after all, are electro-intensive activities. They need the input of electricity, which must be generated at a cost that makes the price of products on the world market competitive.
Fourth generation conflicts
The international nightmare experienced by the Belo Monte project – an icon of conflicts between environmentalists and government in the Amazon region, obviously does not occur, solely because of the nvironmental impacts inherent in the work, but rather because of its economic effects on mining geopolitics.
What is troubling is the liberating character embedded in the project, which will change in the medium term and significantly the game of world interests regarding the flow of energy inputs and the establishment of the base industry in the Brazilian territory.
Consolidated political and strategic decision to establish sovereignty over the Amazon territory, to establish mineral extraction complexes, energy generation and distribution, integrated logistics and base industrial pole – could Brazil transform the mineral commodity in the same extraction region and change completely the direction of the regional economy.
This is one of several gigantic battles in the Amazon theater. An absolutely asymmetric battle conceptually inserted as a fourth-generation war. (* 3)
The Fourth Generation War is in keeping with the profound political, economic, psychosocial, military, and scientific-technological transformations that occurred after World War II. It is closely linked to the diffuse and asymmetrical nature of the so-called conflicts of 3a. generation of the modern age – of diffuse rights and interests.
This generation of diffuse rights and interests is characterized by the indivisibility of the good to be legally protected, the indeterminacy of individuals interested in the issue and the trans individual nature of its object. These are intrinsically conflicting institutes.
In the geopolitical field, 4th generation conflicts, unlike the 1st, 2nd and 3rd generation conflicts that preceded them, involve non-governmental actors in the theater of operations. These actors carry a political-ideological connotation – whether linked or not to issues of ethno-racial, territorial or religious nature. There is such conflict, intensive use of proselytizing, tactics, techniques and procedures of irregular warfare as subversion, guerrilla warfare and terrorism. The recurrent use of media actions and the regimentation of frames by social networks is accepted. This is the reason why the asymmetry that marks these conflicts paradoxically “equals” such disproportionate opponents.
The march of history is fundamental for understanding the phenomenon.
With the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the end of the Cold War, the bipolar world fell apart. Left and right, communism and capitalism melted into small ecological niches filled with logistical nuances, while the market economy went beyond all borders, making trade globalized.
The world has become progressively multipolar. This multipolarity is characterized by the most varied vectors and demands – economic, ethnic, ideological, criminal, religious and even sexist.
This multi-polarization, however, magnifies the impact of regional conflicts. The advent of radical Islamic fundamentalism, for example, has revealed terrorism as a “transnational business” that can seize sovereignly expressed territories – a threat to international peace and security.
The asymmetric characteristic of this multipolarity transcends fundamentalist barbarism and similarly marks other types of socio-environmental conflicts.
Asymmetric conflict, on the other hand, makes the democratic exercise much more complex. It houses various forms and instruments of social and state coercion, applied by organizations of different shades, in different regions of the world, in the most different operating environments.
The conflict of 4th generation in the Amazon soil
Historically skilled and experienced in subjecting minds and hearts to their interests, neo-colonialists interested in ore appropriation make use of this asymmetry to induce fourth-generation conflicts on the surface of Amazonian soil. They aim precisely to make impracticable the use of the subsoil and the hydro-energetic resources, necessary for the transformation of the ore in the own extraction territory.
The conceptual weakness and habitual pusillanimity of a short-sighted judiciary, corrupt governments, incompetent political leaders, inefficient parliaments, and ineffective bureaucracies have allowed stakeholders to refocus institutions in the opposite direction of national interests.
Actors interested in counteracting the exploitation of mineral resources in the Amazonian soil have a strong alliance with the media, indigenous organizations, welfare organizations, churches, unions and international environmental NGOs.
The asymmetric conflict is formed by indigenous organizations, rural unions, radical political parties, ecologism’s of all kinds and bureaucratic segments equipped with judicial activism.
The rights of sovereignty, individual rights, authority, popular mandate, legal certainty of citizens, property rights, investments, etc. are relativized.
Conservation units and indigenous reserves are drawn on the map without any planning or care for affected humans to induce new conflicts. They form broth for new asymmetries.
Civil society organizations co-opt representatives of the national prosecutor’s office, whose laudable independence – all-important when it comes to fighting organized crime and corruption – allows for special indiscipline and subjectivity in dealing with environmental issues.
The ministerial institution, which was supposed to enforce the law, adopts confused behaviour. Its action creates insecurity when it should precisely harmonize environmental interests and economic interests under the Law – so as not to obstruct development.
Proselytizing devices are often used in the scenario of intrinsic conflict. These devices constitute three forms of organized pressure, which work under the aegis of diffuse interests – instrumentalized by economic groups contrary to national interests, namely:
- i) fascist biocentrism – a plague that contaminates the Brazilian bureaucratic regime, especially the public prosecution and judiciary, whose enormous harmfulness is expressed in racialism, the exegetical dehumanization of the legal rules applicable to conflicts and the progressive suppression of legal certainty for any and all investments. Of it, by the way, we already dealt with in previous articles;
(ii) the Impossible Demand Generation Strategy – a leftist doctrinal school that, starting from the realization of the impossibility of direct combat to the Modern Capitalist Democratic State, recommends its systematic bombardment with impossible claims (although with apparent legitimacy), in order to stimulate conflicts that demoralize the “authority of capital”, disrupt the economy and disrupt the social fabric. This strategy has an enormous power of attraction over pusillanimous institutions and authorities, transverse corruption and perpetuates conflicts; and
iii) disaggregating autonomism, which stimulates the resentment of ethnic, religious and social affirmation movements, throwing a racialist shovel into the doctrines of national communion (such as the Rondon Doctrine) to encourage separatist claims, reactivate vocabulary. neo-Nazi such as “ethnographic operations”, “ethnic non intrusion”, racial and cultural purity, etc … always in the midst of a liberty-shaped flag – shattering national unity and relativizing sovereignty.
The Belo Monte AHE “Theater of Operations”, for example, concentrated the three expedients. For no other reason, it perpetuated conflicts, stimulated corruption and destroyed the true strategic sense of the work, as seen from the simple reading of the newspapers.
Affirmative Sovereignty
and the Relativization of Territorial Control
The strategy of relativizing sovereignty is always disguised in the search for the protection of conflicts of diffuse nature.
The picture is aggravated by the need for continuous assertion by the Brazilian government that it effectively has territorial control over the Amazonian (and subsoil) soil.
In the context of international relations, this need for continued affirmation of territorial control by the National State can be termed as Affirmative Sovereignty. (* 4)
Affirmative Sovereignty emerges as a necessary practice insofar as international treaties and conventions no longer adopt a formal concept of self-determination or merely nominal national sovereignty.
International diplomas – progressively contaminated by the globalist mentality in the quest for the relativization of the sovereignty of national states, have been using the diffuse concept of “sovereign rights”, linking the exercise of prerogative to material evidence of effective state control over its territory.
In this sense, it is very important to observe the doctrinal advance due to the so-called concept of “Environmental Justice” in the international scope. This institute includes aspects and conflicts of an ideological, ethnic, social, religious and land tenure nature. The concept also encompasses the conflicts that affect Brazilian sovereignty over the Amazon.
In this sense, our authorities should take extra care to prevent the search for “international” protection of surface environmental resources, or even protection of native-colonized peoples, from serving as a trap for the appropriation of underground mineral wealth in the same region.
Conclusion
As it turns out, it is not about “preserving the Amazon”, “defending native peoples and cultures”, “re=discussing national energy planning” and, much less, “defending the planet’s waters and climate”.
It is up to all of us Brazilian citizens to fight environmental illusionism, to rescue territorial control and to assert our sovereignty.
The loss of focus and the relativization of economic access to mineral resources, in fact, do not contribute to the balance of the Amazon. On the contrary, they contradict Brazil’s interests.
References:
* 1 – On April 15, 2005, a decree signed by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva approved Ministry of Justice Ordinance No. 534, which demarcated the hectares area as Raposa Serra do Sol Indigenous Land, in Roraima. It is an area housing 194 communities with a population of about 19,000 Indians of the Macuxi, Taurepang, Patamona, Ingaricó and Wapichana peoples. The 2005 Ordinance gave one year for non-Indians to leave indigenous land. The case went to the Federal Supreme Court and, according to the rapporteur of the then minister Ayres Britto, the process involving the eviction of the Raposa Serra do Sol Indigenous Land by non-Indians was initiated in August 2008 and concluded in March 2009, when the Supreme Court confirmed the full demarcation of the area – with 1,747,464 hectares.
* 2 – DECREE No. 5,051, OF 19 APRIL 2004.
* 3 – PEDRO, Antonio Fernando Pinheiro- “NEOPARAMILITARISM, ASYMMETRICAL CONFLICTS, DIFFUSED INTERESTS AND 4th GENERATION WAR”, in The EAgle View Blog -e-conflicts-of.html? q = paramilitarism
* 4 – PEDRO, Antonio Fernando Pinheiro – “AFFIRMATIVE SOBERANIA”, in The EAgle View Blog, in https://www.theeagleview.com.br/2013/09/spirit-afirmativa-about.html?q=paramilitarism
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Antonio Fernando Pinheiro Pedro is a lawyer (USP), journalist and environmental consultant. Managing Director of Pinheiro Pedro Advogados. Member of the Green Economy Task Force of the International Chamber of Commerce, member of the Environmental Law Commission of the Brazilian Bar Association – IAB and the National Environmental Law Commission of the Federal Council of the Brazilian Bar Association – OAB. He is Editor-in-Chief of Ambiente Legal Portal, editor of the DAZIBAO Electronic Wall and responsible for the blog The Eagle View.
