The mining industry is using COP30 to brand its operations as not only “sustainable” but also “essential” for the energy transition. Yet, community groups and social organizations warn of the dangers tied to exploiting so-called critical minerals—impacts already felt in Brazil.

“I don’t see the [energy] transition happening without mining,” said Anderson Baranov, CEO of Norsk Hydro, on COP30‘s opening day in Belém.

Excitement about Brazil’s reserves of critical minerals was palpable at the discussion tables in the Blue Zone, the official negotiations area at the UN Climate Conference.

“There’s been a lot of talk that agribusiness is pop, but mining is top. It’s leading the current debates,” Baranov added.

Hydro operates the Alunorte refinery in Barcarena, in the state of Pará—one of the world’s largest aluminum extraction facilities. Aluminum, along with lithium, copper, rare earths, and others, is regarded as strategic for both the technology and defense sectors.

These minerals underpin products like batteries, solar panels and electric vehicles—key to transitioning away from fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas, which significantly drive the greenhouse effect.

“Mining is top, absolutely,” agreed Marco Braga, vice president of Vale’s Novo Carajás Project. Both he and Baranov spoke on a panel hosted by FIEPA, the Federation of Industries of the State of Pará, on Monday (Nov. 10) in the Blue Zone.

Vale, Brazil’s largest mining company, is betting on expanding copper mining in the Carajás region of Pará. “As the world electrifies—with more data centers—you need more electricity and more copper,” Braga said.

Because the federal government classifies these minerals as “strategic,” projects targeting them tend to receive government incentives—financial aid and priority during environmental permitting.

This priority is clear in Pará, where mining projects go to the front of the line during licensing by Semas, the Pará State Secretariat for the Environment and Sustainability. “[The secretariat] gives internal priority to projects containing a strategic mineral component, which also serves the energy transition,” the agency’s deputy secretary Rodolpho Zahluth Bastos told Repórter Brasil.

Mining’s makeover relegates socio-environmental impacts to the background

So far, communities near mining sites have been excluded from industry-led discussions at COP30.

“Indigenous peoples still have no voice in the negotiations,” says Toya Manchineri, general coordinator of the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB). Despite an unprecedented level of Indigenous participation at the UN summit, he laments their absence from official talks. “We are only mentioned. It’s the country representatives and diplomats who have a voice,” Manchineri adds.

Elisangela Soldatelli, coordinator of the Latin America Climate and Energy Program at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, notes that while demand for transition minerals is acknowledged by the mining sector, “what remains hidden are the social, environmental and territorial impacts of these massive mining infrastructure projects in the affected territories,” she says.

A survey by Repórter Brasil found more than 7,700 applications to explore critical minerals in the Legal Amazon, with some ventures proposed next to—or even inside—protected areas and traditional territories.

One such case involves a permit granted to Brasmet by the National Mining Agency (ANM) to mine rare earths inside the Kalunga do Mimoso quilombo in Tocantins and the Kalunga quilombo in Goiás (quilombos are rural Afro-Brazilian communities often founded by former slaves.) The Federal Court has ordered a suspension of all proceedings affecting the territory in Goiás.

Soldatelli also cites lithium mining in the Jequitinhonha Valley in Minas Gerais, where grassroots movements accuse mining companies of violating community rights and breaching environmental laws.

In Barcarena, Hydro has already faced accusations from local communities over pollution of tributaries of the Amazon River. In 2025, Dutch courts began judging a lawsuit brought by the Cainquiama Association—which represents about 11,000 residents of Barcarena and Abaetetuba—alleging contamination and human rights abuses. According to Hydro, Dutch courts rejected all the claims.

Vale, meanwhile, faces a public civil action from the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPF) for contaminating the Xikrin Indigenous people of the Xikrin do Cateté Indigenous Land in southeastern Pará with heavy metals. The MPF blames the Onça Puma nickel mine—operated by a Vale subsidiary in the Serra dos Carajás region and licensed by the state—for the pollution. Nickel is also considered essential to the energy transition. Vale denies any link between its operations and pollution of the Cateté River, saying the issue “has already been extensively analyzed” by the Federal Court of Redenção, Pará.

“The very term ‘energy transition’ has been appropriated by these mining companies, as though it were synonymous with the ‘just energy transition’—a phrase already used by organizations—which we also consider an example of greenwashing,” Soldatelli says.

This story was produced by Repórter Brasil as part of the Socio-environmental Collaborative Coverage of COP30. Read the original article here.