Mariana Dam Disaster

Leo Docherty Excerpts

Thursday 22nd June 2023 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Leo Docherty)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on securing this debate. I am grateful for his contribution and for those of the hon. Members for Slough (Mr Dhesi), for Falkirk (John Mc Nally) and for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton), and I will address their question. I am standing in for the Minister with responsibility for South America, my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (David Rutley), who is in North America as I speak, but I am pleased to be here on his behalf.

This November marks the eighth anniversary of the worst environmental disaster in Brazilian history, the bursting of the Mariana dam. We have heard a moving evocation of the human impact and the scale of it in the state of Minas Gerais. The dam failure released some 60 million cubic metres of toxic waste, which claimed 19 lives, wrecked towns, villages and livelihoods and deeply affected indigenous communities, as has been discussed at length. The flow of waste travelled 600 km to the Atlantic ocean, destroying water supplies, natural habitats and livestock, with effects that are still being felt today. I add my condolences to those that have been expressed in the Chamber today to all those affected, particularly the families and friends of those who died.

There is, understandably, much interest in the compensation made available to those affected by the catastrophe. As has been mentioned, there is an ongoing legal case against the mining company BHP—it operates in Brazil through a company called Samarco, which managed the dam. It is not appropriate for me to comment on matters pertaining to those legal proceedings, but I can share with the Chamber how the UK has been working to promote the safe management of tailings dams in Brazil since that calamitous disaster.

In 2016, the trade and investment team at the British consulate general in Belo Horizonte, the state capital of Minas Gerais, took responsibility for the mining sector. From day one, it prioritised the promotion of improved technology, governance and safety standards for tailings dams. The consulate has held annual public events to showcase UK innovation and expertise in this field to Brazilian stakeholders, including from private companies, the Government, academia and civil society organisations. Those efforts have raised awareness of the critical need to improve safety standards, and they generated discussion among key players about how best to do so.

A further calamity took place in Minas Gerais state in 2019, when the collapse of the Brumadinho dam killed 270 people. In the aftermath, the Department for International Trade supported an initiative led by the Church of England Pensions Board to publish the world’s first global industry standard on tailings management to improve safety worldwide. The initiative was a collaboration with Sweden, the International Council on Mining and Metals and the United Nations. It included input from communities affected by the Brumadinho disaster, plus leading international experts and Government and mining company representatives. In 2021, the British consulate general in Belo Horizonte held workshops in partnership with the Brazilian Government and the United Nations environment programme to promote this new global standard in Brazil. More than 1,000 participants joined the online workshops, convening leading figures from the Brazilian mining sector, academia and civil society.

Also in 2021, the British embassy in Brasilia signed a memorandum of understanding with the prosecutor’s office in the state of Minas Gerais to collaborate on technology and transparency standards for the management of tailings dams. That led to the launch in May 2022 of the world’s first independent tailings dam monitoring centre in Brazil, in collaboration with the UK Government, using British satellite monitoring systems. That was an important moment with potentially global implications. The centre applies British satellite monitoring systems, in partnership with the UK’s satellite applications catapult, to monitor a growing number of tailing dams in Brazil, thereby improving safety and transparency in their management. The learnings and best practice developed at the centre are playing, we hope, a trailblazing role in raising global safety standards and reducing the risk of similar disasters.

The Mariana dam and Brumadinho catastrophes must not be forgotten. They should serve as stark and tragic reminders of how critical it is that we work together to improve safety standards across the globe. I was interested in the question posed by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Leeds North East, on ecocide law. I will not pre-empt any judgment of my colleague the Minister for the Americas, but I will ask that he write to the hon. Gentleman with an update on his judgments about the utility or otherwise of such ecocide law. We are reassured by the work that has already begun, with the UK at the forefront in collaboration with Brazil and working alongside the Brazilian Government to increase safety in these sorts of environments together with international partners.