For centuries, gold and diamonds brought fortune seekers to Brazil’s Jequitinhonha Valley. As a global lithium rush draws them here again, some local people fear the mistakes of the past are being repeated – this time in the name of clean energy.
In Jequitinhonha’s main town Araçuaí, city legislators passed a bill in May to sharply reduce the size of a protected environmental area (APA) called Chapada do Lagoão, which sits on lithium reserves and overlapped areas where foreign mining firms hope to produce the light, silvery metal used in rechargeable batteries.
The bill’s supporters said the borders of the APA, which stretched over 24,000 hectares (59,000 acres) and held more than 130 natural springs, needed to be brought into accordance with city limits.
But critics suspect lithium was the real reason for shrinking the protected area, where residents including Indigenous people and descendants of enslaved people – “quilombola” communities – have been protesting to stop mining firms from moving in.
City councillor Danilo Borges, who voted against the bill, told Climate Home News, just 86 hectares (212 acres) of the protected area had overlapped with the urban boundary – a tiny part of the 58% reduction that was eventually approved.
“There are known mining rights interests overlapping the territory (and) there was no free, prior, and informed consultation with the traditional communities living in the area,” he said. “The debate was neither open, nor honest, nor transparent with the people.”
In response to Climate Home’s request for comment, the government of Minas Gerais, which coordinates Jequitinhonha’s lithium boost, highlighted the economic benefits from the industry, with 6.3 billion reais ($1.13 billion) in new investments and 3,900 new jobs in the region.
COP host bets big on lithium
Brazil, the host of November’s COP30 climate conference, has significant reserves of lithium – used to make batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) and power storage technology vital to the green energy transition – and could rapidly ramp up its 2% share in global production as new projects come online.
While Brazil’s reserves are dwarfed by those of neighbouring Argentina and Bolivia – whose lithium resources are among the world’s biggest – the Jequitinhonha Valley alone sits on 85% of them.
With global demand for the metal seen rising eight-fold by 2050, the number of permits granted for lithium projects in the valley has risen sharply in the last three years.
Mining research group Observatory of the Valleys and the Semiarid Region has mapped a rise from fewer than 50 in 2022 to more than 300 by the middle of this year.
That follows a federal decree signed in 2022 by far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro that cleared the way for foreign mining companies to extract and export lithium, sweeping aside previous rules that had sought to prioritise domestic production. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, from the Workers’ Party (PT), has left the decree in place.
Big push from state authorities
People who support lithium mining say it could bring much-needed economic benefits and jobs to Jequitinhonha, one of the most impoverished parts of Brazil’s Minas Gerais state.
In early July, Araçuaí hosted a lithium mining event attended by major investors and inaugurated by the Minas Gerais Governor Romeu Zema, who trumpeted the “socioeconomic development” goals of the Lithium Valley Brazil project he launched at the Nasdaq in New York in 2023.
In a written statement sent to Climate Home, the government of Minas Gerais highlighted the economic benefits of the project, saying that new jobs have allowed for a sudden growth in new businesses.
The state government also noted that the cities of Araçuaí and Itinga collected 200% more revenue since the projects started. State authorities said they are working to invest more in “urban infrastructure and public services, especially in health, education, and social assistance”.
The Minas Gerais state also said they remain “open to conducting technical visits” to indigenous communities and listen to their needs.
But green campaigners, Indigenous rights groups and other critics, who say they were not invited to this month’s event, blame the lithium rush for bringing new problems to the area – threatening traditional ways of life and water sources in the already semi-arid region, and causing housing costs to soar.
Pointing to the environmental destruction wrought by past mining booms, they want Lula’s government to put concerns about transition metals mining on the COP30 agenda.
Around the world, 54% of transition minerals projects are located on or near their ecologically sensitive lands, according to a study published last year in the One Earth journal.
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‘Devastation bill’ passed by Congress
Anti-mining campaigners are also on alert about draft federal legislation that they have dubbed the “devastation bill”, which was passed by Congress early on Thursday.
They say the legislation would sweep away environmental and social safeguards by allowing mining companies and other businesses involved in so-called national interest activities to self-license in sectors that are classed as less polluting.
“That is certainly the case for lithium and other energy transition minerals, considered strategic. Mining them is deemed low- or medium-polluting activity, making them eligible for self-license,” said Mauricio Ângelo, executive director of the Mining Observatory, an investigative journalism entity.
There is concern in Lula’s government about the bill’s potential impact, with senior figures from the Environment Ministry and Ibama environment agency warning it could lead to “irreversible” damage. Lula, who has not spoken publicly about it, could veto all or parts of the legislation, though Congress could challenge that.
Transition minerals front line
About 30 km (18 miles) northeast of the town of Araçuaí, Canadian company Sigma Lithium opened a mine in 2023 where it is producing 270,000 metric tonnes of lithium oxide concentrate per year.
Sigma Lithium’s CEO Ana Cabral has hailed the Grota do Cirilo mine as an example of environmentally friendly mining, producing net-zero lithium without using drinking water supplies, and creating thousands of jobs, including for people from Jequitinhonha.
But on the edge of the mine, residents of the small community of Piauí Poço Dantas are unimpressed by such assertions.
“Life here used to be good,” one elderly man told Climate Home News last year at his home in Piauí Poço Dantas, asking not to have his name published. He complained about dust from the mine, and said the cracks on his walls had been caused by the force of blasting from the site.
Sigma Lithium did not respond to a request for comment.
Just transition or ‘sacrifice zones’?
High-profile projects like Sigma’s have put the Jequitinhonha Valley on the front line of campaigners’ fight for mining laws that better protect the environment and local people, including Indigenous communities, in Minas Gerais – one of Brazil’s top mining states.
Public outcry forced Zema’s state administration to scrap two measures, a resolution in 2022 and a 2024 decree, which had sought to restrict the rights of local communities to prior consultation on projects that affect them.
Whether or not the new federal bill on environmental licensing comes into effect, campaigners say existing legislation that governs mining is inadequate and outdated, in particular the 1967 Mining Code.
“It falls way short of ensuring that mining activities will be sustainable or benefit local communities,” said Juliano Bueno, technical director at Arayara International Institute, a Brazilian NGO.
His organisation and other NGOs around the world are calling for robust international treaties to prevent predatory mining becoming a major obstacle to a just transition to renewable energy.
Multilateral governance of these minerals is an urgent international issue, but there has been little progress, advocates say.
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In Chapada do Lagoão, residents of the environmental protection area say the lithium rush has brought a steady flow of strangers, measuring and taking notes on their land.
“They simply trespass, carry out their surveys whenever they please. In many cases, only after completing their research do they inform the landowners,” a middle-aged woman living in a quilombola community within the APA told Climate Home, asking not to be named.
Without stringent controls on the lithium mining industry, the green energy transition will simply end up dealing another blow to communities harmed by past mining booms, said Edson Krenak, an Indigenous rights activist and advocacy coordinator at the Cultural Survival nonprofit.
“For us Indigenous peoples, this has been the case for centuries: in the name of modernity and development, it is our territories that continue to be turned into sacrifice zones,” he said.
This story was edited to include a statement by the government of Minas Gerais that was sent after publication.
