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.
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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.
We are in an election year. If there are concerns about the current government, which is more open to dialogue with civil society, what could happen under a new government aligned with more reactionary sectors of society and business?
Another concern about the policy is its dependence on a range of other policies and regulations that can change, either through government decisions or congressional action.
The approved text establishes that the critical minerals policy must be implemented in accordance with instruments such as the Ecological Transformation Plan and the Climate Plan. This means that an important part of environmental protection does not necessarily lie within the minerals policy itself, but depends on the continuity and implementation of other frameworks.
And there are already signs of how these policies can come into tension.
Reporter André Borges, from Folha de S. Paulo, reported this week that the government is preparing a regulation to waive environmental licensing during the initial stage of mineral exploration, classifying certain activities as low-risk. The measure is being defended as a way to provide greater legal certainty and accelerate exploration for minerals considered strategic. But it shows how pressure to speed up exploration can quickly come into conflict with an environmental protection agenda.
Another issue concerns the climate agenda.
The Climate Plan is currently one of the main references for Brazil’s efforts to address climate change. The National Critical Minerals Policy is formally linked to it, explicitly mentioning it in Article 6. But plans and public policies can be changed, weakened or simply cease to be a priority under a future government.
That is why it is not enough to pass a good law. We need institutions and mechanisms capable of surviving changes in government. Social participation could help, but it was not included in the framework designed by policymakers.
Another point of tension in the minerals policy concerns the lack of knowledge about the impacts that opening new mining areas could generate.
The Energy Transition Observatory, a platform created by Repórter Brasil together with partners, illustrates this problem. The tool cross-references information on mining, renewable energy and infrastructure with Indigenous lands, quilombola territories, protected areas and settlements.
The result shows that the energy transition is not taking place in an empty territory.
There are communities, forests, rivers, protected areas and economic activities that may be affected by the expansion of mining needed to electrify the economy. A survey based on data from the Observatory identified applications for critical mineral exploration around hundreds of Indigenous lands.
This is an issue that needs to be at the center of the debate.
There is no doubt that we need critical minerals. Lithium, copper, nickel, rare earth elements, graphite and other minerals will be essential for technologies associated with the energy transition. They are also strategic for Brazil’s technological and industrial sovereignty.
The country has an opportunity that it should not waste. Instead of simply exporting ore, we can use our reserves to develop industry, technology, research and skilled jobs. The new law seeks precisely to create the conditions for this, including incentives to process and transform minerals within Brazil.
But there is a condition. The energy transition cannot reproduce the old development model in which the benefits remain far from the territories while the costs are borne by those who live there.
It makes no sense to fight climate change by destroying forests, contaminating rivers or putting pressure on traditional communities. Nor does it make sense to replace external dependency with a domestic model of resource exploitation that creates new sacrifice zones.
The idea of mineral sovereignty must also take into account the sovereignty of communities over their territories and their own future.
Brazil needs critical minerals, provided there is real traceability, transparency, social participation, environmental protection and a fair distribution of the benefits.
The energy transition will be one of the greatest economic transformations of this century. The question is whether Brazil will seize this transformation as an opportunity to industrialize and develop the country, or simply open a new frontier for exploiting its natural resources. And, above all, who will pay the price for this transition.
* Marcel Gomes, PhD in Energy Systems Planning from the University of Campinas (Unicamp), is Executive Director of Repórter Brasil. Article translated with the assistance of artificial intelligence.
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