Organizational Irresponsibilities or Absence of Territorial Governance? Reflections on Environmental Management in the Minas-Rio Project

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse social and organizational dimensions of the environmental licensing and implementation process of the mining project Minas-Rio, discussing methodological and managerial frailties highlighted by the accumulation of reports regarding irregularities, socioenvironmental conflicts, and flaws in the venture’s masterplan. This situation reveals authoritarian systems of business management and territorial governance, which fail to sustain local development, subjecting families to the disruption of their traditional livelihood. In 10 years (2007-2017) following the case, qualitative methods - participative techniques - were used to collect data, allowing the comprehension of the environmental licensing processes, negotiations and conflicting clashes between actors. It was observed that tools for public corporate planning did not prove to be able to guarantee the management of the impacts on water resources: watercourses had springs and stretches trapped and communities declared themselves affected by the water drying and pollution, being assisted only with precarious supply solutions.