Multimedia Site: Mined Amazon (Portuguese)

The threat that the mining sector poses to the Amazon is not something new, but it is undeniable that in the current federal government that threat has become closely aligned with state policy. Environmental inspection agencies have been dismantled, a bill to exploit indigenous areas has been presented to Congress, and the president and his ministers speak openly of "monetizing the forest." The result of these measures was burnings, record deforestation, and a historic advance in mining over areas that should be federally protected.

As a counterpoint to a policy that aims at chaos, we have opted to inspect the government in a systematic and organized manner. Thus Mined Amazon was born, a tool created by InfoAmazonia to monitor thousands of mining applications that threaten the peoples of the Amazon. To this end, a map shows in real time new requests filed with the National Mining Agency (ANM) that overlap with 385 indigenous lands and 49 integral protection conservation units of the Brazilian Legal Amazon.

Whenever a new request is filed over these areas, the bot profile @amazonia_minada sends a tweet with the name of the request's owner, the threatened area, the type of ore and the status of the process.

Besides the systematization and visualization of the data, we investigate the information. Four reporters found out who are the owners of these requests, the companies, their interests and how this affects Amazonian communities. This work will be published in InfoAmazonia and in partner publications in the coming weeks.

To the readers, researchers and journalists, we wish that they take advantage of the material that we have organized and that they can amplify even more our alert about the gravity of these mining requests. Feel free to suggest corrections, clarify doubts or make partnerships: [email protected].

Hugs from the the Mined Amazon team.

Brazil, November 13, 2020.

The Mined Amazon Team

Hyury Potter, general coordination and reporting
Juliana Mori, data visualization
Fernando Eckstein, programming development
Eduardo Goulart de Andrade, reporter
Naira Hofmeister, reporter
Pedro Papini, reporter

The Mined Amazon project is supported by the Rainforest Journalism Fund, in partnership with the Pulitzer Center. In 2019, the project received an innovation grant from the International Center for Journalists in partnership with The Wall Street Journal.

To view the multimedia page in Portuguese, click here.