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News > Latin America

Pressure to Expel Brazil Miner Vale From UN Pact Over Dam Burst

  • Luciano Siani, Chief Financial Officer of Brazilian miner Vale, claimed Vale was not aware of the dam risk report in a press conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil February 12, 2019.

    Luciano Siani, Chief Financial Officer of Brazilian miner Vale, claimed Vale was not aware of the dam risk report in a press conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil February 12, 2019. | Photo: Reuters

Published 12 February 2019
Opinion

The call for Vale to be expelled from the United Nations Global Compact, an agreement encouraging companies to adopt sustainable and socially responsible policies, is a symbolic step that signals growing international pressure on the company.

A group of international non-governmental organizations on Tuesday demanded that Brazilian miner Vale SA be excluded from the United Nations' corporate responsibility pact, after a mining dam burst that killed an estimated 300 people.

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A letter signed by more than 15 charity groups said that Vale failed to take proper safety measures at a tailings dam at its Corrego do Feijao iron ore mine in Minas Gerais state. The dam ruptured on Jan. 25, releasing a torrent of mud that buried workers and nearby communities.

Vale declined to immediately comment but has previously said the dam had all necessary safety certificates and was declared sound by an independent auditor in September.

The NGOs said the dam burst in the town of Brumadinho amounted to a "serious violation of human rights" and "grave environmental damage," contravening the accord.

They said Vale should have done more to prevent the disaster after a similar incident in 2015 at Vale's Samarco joint venture with BHP Group killed 19 people and devastated a major river, Brazil's largest-ever environmental catastrophe.

"The Brumadinho disaster shows that favoring profit over safety has been Vale's standard operating procedure," the letter said.

Organizations that signed the letter include Greenpeace Brasil, MiningWatch Canada and the Global Justice Clinic of New York University.

Sao Paulo's stock exchange on Tuesday also removed Vale from its ISE sustainability index.

A report, dated Oct. 3, 2018, classified the dam at Brumadinho in the state of Minas Gerais as being two times more likely to fail than the maximum level of risk tolerated under internal guidelines.

The dam’s annual chance of collapse was registered as 1 in 5,000, or twice the tolerable “maximum level of individual risk,” according to the report.

It raises questions as to why the independent October audit guaranteed the dam’s stability and why the miner did not take precautions, such as moving a company canteen that was just downhill from the structure.

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