Braskem, the company responsible for the biggest ongoing urban tragedy in the world, in Maceió, Alagoas' capital city, shed light on a contradiction in the discourse of global mining, agribusiness and livestock giant companies that make huge profits from activities science classifies as “villainous” of climate.
While these big private companies call themselves “sustainable”, the essentially polluting and predatory character of Braskem’s business also boosts illegal deforestation and serious human rights violations, besides contributing to global warming.
With the tragedy in the city of Maceió, the distance between their rhetoric and actions became so obscene that the company gave up participating in COP28, this year’s UN Climate Conference. Company representatives would lecture about “carbon neutrality” and “climate change impacts.”
Besides Braskem, Brasil de Fato identified five other carbon-emitting megacorporations in the Brazilian Stand at COP28 who arrived at Dubai with a troop of lobbyists and one goal: guarantee to the world that they are solving the problems in their production chains.
These companies have even partially or fully recognized the damage caused by their production chains and guarantee they are spending a lot of money to mitigate the territorial and climate impacts.
Even so, their sustainability programs have flaws or insufficiencies that encourage accusations of greenwashing, which means using green marketing techniques to mask harmful environmental effects.
Vale, Cargill, JBS, Marfrig and Norsk Hydro
A repeat offender of serious environmental crimes, the mining company Vale discussed in Dubai the “plurality of agents” in the energy transition. However, the panel did not include populations affected by the company’s activities. Activists interrupted the discussion and denounced Vale’s “demagogy”.
Two giant companies in animal protein production, JBS and Marfrig, were also invited to speak about “sustainable livestock farming," despite having many cases of illegal deforestation and invasion of Indigenous lands in their production chains.
The list of multinationals proud of their green agendas at COP28 also includes Cargill, the world’s largest agribusiness company and owner of brands such as Pomarola and Liza.
Cargill is expanding its transportation infrastructure in the Brazilian portion of the Amazon, creating more demand for soybeans and cattle and encouraging pressure from land grabbers on protected areas. An example is Ferrogrão, a railway corridor that will cross Indigenous lands, conservation units and isolated peoples, emitting almost 75 million tons of carbon, according to a study by the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC, in Portuguese).
Norwegian mining company Norsk Hydro celebrates its “pioneering transition to green aluminum." In Pará state, where Indigenous and Quilombola peoples are affected by the bauxite mining without prior consultation, the company is not seen with the same enthusiasm.
Check out below the complete “dirty record” of the companies abovementioned.
Activists interrupt Vale’s panel and highlight the company’s hypocrisy
Two leaders from the Network of Black Voices for Climate (Rede Vozes Negras pelo Clima, in Portuguese) who protested by interrupting Vale's panel at COP28, talked to Brasil de Fato. They said the mining company and other such companies went to Dubai to sell sustainability, but are actually destroying the environment.
Born in Regência, Espírito Santo state, one of the regions most affected by the Vale tragedy in Mariana (Minas Gerais state), Luciana Souza sees the actions of multinational companies as “a huge hypocrisy, a fallacy."
“These companies go into our territories, pollute our rivers and seas, contaminate our water, and take away our communities’ right to work and produce food. Then, they come here to the Brazilian Stands to talk about sustainability. Sustainability for whom?”, Luciana Souza asked.
Camila Aragão, from the Network of Black Voices for Climate, also participated in the protest that blocked Vale executives in Dubai. “It is crucial for us to be here and occupy this space, but - wow! - What am I doing here? I ask it to myself all the time. Because I feel powerless in real negotiations, in real decisions," she said.
JBS: illegal cattle raising and deforestation
With a net profit worth R$15.5 billion in 2022, JBS is the world’s largest producer of animal protein. At COP28, company representatives participated in the panel “Pathways for Sustainable Food Systems in Brazil”.
In Brazil, agriculture and cattle raising were responsible for a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions last year, a rate that already reached 70% in previous years.
In addition to emissions from livestock farming, the sector contributes to global warming by encouraging livestock farming in areas of illegal deforestation in the Amazon. Deforestation is the activity that contributes most to Brazil's climate footprint.
According to an audit by the Federal Public Ministry (MPF, in Portuguese) released in December 2022, JBS slaughtered 93,734 animals of “dubious provenance”. According to the same data, JBS was at the top of the ranking of slaughterhouses with the largest number of irregularities in the slaughter of animals in Pará state. JBS challenged the MPF methodology used in the calculation.
An exclusive investigation by Repórter Brasil revealed that, between 2018 and 2022, JBS purchased almost 9,0000 heads of cattle raised on farms belonging to a group of deforesters in Rondônia state. In this case, the company acknowledged that its own employees had connived in the scheme.
Marfrig: “sustainable cattle” in Indigenous lands
While activists protested at COP28, Marfrig Global Foods met with a select group of guests at a luxury hotel in Dubai. The meeting, revealed by the Brazilian newspaper Exame, served to present to authorities and civil society organizations the company's commitment to "low-carbon livestock farming, 100% tracked and free from deforestation".
Indeed, it is a commendable initiative, especially for a well-known socio-environmental "dirty record" company like Marfrig. The company has a record of purchasing meat grown on indigenous lands, just like JBS. An example of this is the Apyterewa case in Pará, the most deforested Indigenous land during the Bolsonaro government.
As revealed by Repórter Brasil in 2020, big multinational meat companies, such as Marfrig, have among their direct or indirect suppliers livestock farmers who illegally raise cattle in protected areas of the Amazon rainforest. The company said the criteria for purchasing cattle would be updated from July that year.
In another journalistic investigation, the Brazilian website O Joio e o Trigo discovered that a farm supplying Marfrig produced on land belonging to the Mỹky people in the northern area of Mato Grosso state. The meatpacking company said it only considers indigenous lands those already ratified as such, which contradicts the definition of Indigenous land present in Brazil’s Constitution and adopted by bodies such as the National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples (Funai).
Vale: Brumadinho and Mariana are unforgettable tragedies
Vale is behind two of the most serious socio-environmental tragedies in Brazil, Mariana and Brumadinho, both in Minas Gerais state, killing 270 people and affecting more than 350,000.
The report of an independent investigation commission hired by the mining company revealed that Vale knew, at least since 2003, about the fragility of the dam that burst in Brumadinho. Despite being alerted, Vale did not remove administrative facilities from the risk area, exposing its employees to a flood of tailings.
In Mariana, toxic mud from the Fundão dam caused a humanitarian crisis. Cities along the Doce River suffered water shortages after their sources were polluted with toxic mud. All economic activities that depended on the river, such as fishing, were made impossible.
In the case of Brumadinho, the mud released by the dam collapse affected people who lost their homes and had to move as a consequence of the tragedy.
Cargill: soybeans and cattle raised in the Amazon at any cost
Cargill is the largest grain trader in the world and the largest private company in the United States. Cargill's revenue in the last fiscal year was US$177 billion.
In Brazil, the company builds ports and railways to transport soybeans and other grains in the Amazon region. As a consequence, pressure on Indigenous and Quilombola territories increases.
According to complaints made to Brazilian authorities and revealed by journalistic investigations, soy farmers are attracted by the multinational's infrastructure, which contributes to expanding the agricultural frontier into preserved areas of the Amazon rainforest and increases cases of pesticide poisoning.
In September this year, the Labor Court condemned Cargill, at the trial court level, for slave and child labor practices on its suppliers' cocoa plantations in Brazil.
In addition, the company is working to build Ferrogrão, a railway project that aims to connect the state of Mato Grosso to Pará, in Brazil. The objective is to transport soybeans and corn from Mato Grosso and export them to China.
A study by the Federal University of Minas Gerais highlighted that the Ferrogrão railway will cross several Indigenous territories in the Xingu River Basin, which could result in the loss of more than 230,000 hectares of forest to deforestation in Indigenous territories in the state of Mato Grosso until 2035.
The construction of Ferrogrão would encourage farmers and ranchers located in the state of Mato Grosso to expand production, thus increasing demand for land.
Norsk Hydro: denounced by Indigenous people in Pará state
Hydro is a Norwegian multinational that mines bauxite in the Amazon. In recent years, the company has been exposed as a booster of conflicts among the populations of Pará state, where most of its operations are located.
The list of environmental liabilities includes the leakage of waste into springs through a clandestine pipeline, which was discovered in the city of Barcarena, in the metropolitan region of Belém.
Furthermore, Indigenous and Quilombola populations say company employees are threatening them. In a public letter released in October, residents of Acará Valley, in Pará, denounced the situation.
“Hydro has been repeating its neocolonial and violent methodology against the people of the Acará Valley. The communities were not consulted about the constant and intrusive circulation of company employees who drive their pickup trucks at high speed on the access roads to Indigenous villages and quilombos, putting our families at risk,” reads the letter.
Edited by: Rebeca Cavalcante
