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Introduction
I teach environmental impact assessment and environmental management at the University of São Paulo since 1990. My current research interests include applying an ecosystem services approach to Environmental and Social Impact Assessment, Biodiversity offsets, Ecosystem services, Assessing cumulative impacts, Mine closure planning, Sustainability in the extractive industries and Land use and land cover changes in mining regions.
Additional affiliations
December 2017 - February 2018
January 2009 - January 2010
July 2005 - present
Education
September 1985 - February 1989
September 1984 - June 1985
Institut National Polytechnique de Lorraine
Field of study
- Mining
March 1980 - June 1984
Publications
Publications (223)
The crises of climate change and biodiversity loss are interlinked and must be addressed jointly. A proposed solution for reducing reliance on fossil fuels, and thus mitigating climate change, is the transition from conventional combustion‐engine to electric vehicles. This transition currently requires additional mineral resources, such as nickel a...
Slide presentation given at the IAIA Conference 2024 https://2024.iaia.org/
Major disasters involving tailings storage facilities (TSFs) in Canada (2014) and Brazil (2015 and 2019) shed light on the absence of disclosure of risk information of such structures. Subsequently, the conveners of the Global Tailings Review developed the Global Industry Standard for Tailings Management, that encouraged ample dissemination of info...
Controversies about Environmental Licensing have been featured in the public agenda as the National Congress advances a policy reform being debated since 2004. In the National Council for the Environment, given its legal attributions, the Environmental Licensing rules and possible changes have been discussed since the first meetings. Through the an...
Resumo O Licenciamento Ambiental tem ocupado a agenda pública com debates acerca de uma ambicionada reforma legal que tramita no Congresso Nacional desde 2004. No Conselho Nacional do Meio Ambiente, dadas suas atribuições legais, discutem-se o regramento do Licenciamento Ambiental e possíveis alterações desde as primeiras reuniões. Por meio da anál...
A AAAS é uma forma de Avaliação Ambiental Estratégica (AAE), um tipo de avaliação de impacto empregado internacionalmente para políticas, planos e programas. Estabelecida por uma portaria interministerial de 2012, a AAAS deve ser utilizada para subsidiar decisões de oferta de blocos para exploração e produção de petróleo no Brasil. A AAAS foi compa...
Evaluating the outcomes and tracking the trajectory of biodiversity offsets is essential to demonstrating their effectiveness as a mechanism to conciliate development and conservation. We reviewed the literature to determine the principles that should underpin biodiversity offset planning and the criteria for offset evaluation at the project level....
The purpose of this investigation was to evaluate the efficiency of a wetland that occurs on the premises of a lead industrial plant located in Santo Amaro da Purificação, Bahia, as a measure to control contamination from a slag dam contaminated with heavy metals. Initially, an annual survey was proposed with weekly sampling of rainwater and surfac...
The application of the mitigation hierarchy (MH) to mining projects is challenging in situations of locational overlap between endemic flora and mineral deposits. We review flora surveys conducted in connection with the environmental impact assessment of several iron ore mining projects in an area of high degree of endemism in Eastern Amazon to dis...
Based on the volume of tailings releases and the distance they travelled, the Fundão Dam failure in southeast Brazil (Mariana, Minas Gerais state) was the largest ever environmental disaster in Brazil’s mining industry, and one of the world’s most serious. As they dispersed downriver, the tailings accumulated along the riverbanks and reached the Ri...
Based on the volume of tailings releases and the distance they travelled, the Fundão Dam failure in southeast Brazil (Mariana, Minas Gerais state) was the largest ever environmental disaster in Brazil’s mining industry, and one of the world’s most serious. As they dispersed downriver, the tailings accumulated along the riverbanks and reached the Ri...
Mining and associated infrastructure have been driving land use changes, affecting important biodiversity values and ecosystems services. To balance these impacts, some mining companies implement biodiversity offsets and conservation actions. By simulating a counterfactual land use scenario, this study quantifies the cumulative impacts on biodivers...
Evaluating how well a mining company is prepared to close an operating mine can help in managing the risks of not achieving closure goals and intended future site conditions. Considering international best practices recommendations, we developed and tested a procedure to evaluate, during the operational phase, the preparedness of companies to close...
If the scale of the project matters for project impact
assessment, in cumulative impact assessment, it the
scale of issues that is important. This is one of the key
messages from the 47 authors of this new volume in the
series ‘Research Handbook on Impact Assessment’ that
features concepts, examples and challenges of cumulative
impact assessment (C...
Growing demand for minerals is increasing pressure to open protected areas (PAs) for mining. Here we develop spatially explicit models to compare impacts among five policy scenarios to downgrade combinations of PA to allow mining in the Brazilian Amazon. We found downgrading (opening) the region’s entire PAs network to develop an additional 242 min...
Habitat loss and fragmentation are ecological impacts of development projects known to have severe effects on mammals’ populations. Here, we study the role of connectivity assessment in
Environmental Impact Assessment, focusing on its contribution to determining appropriate mitigation, in particular, biodiversity offsetting. For that purpose, we an...
A compensação por perda de biodiversidade é um mecanismo que visa contrabalançar os impactos inevitáveis de certos empreendimentos – de setores como mineração, energia e infraestrutura – com a conservação de ecossistemas, hábitats, espécies e diversidade genética. Por meio de um convênio de pesquisa firmado entre a Anglo American Minério de Ferro B...
Biodiversity offsetting is a mechanism that seeks to compensate for the inevitable impacts of projects in sectors such as mining, energy and infrastructure through conservation of ecosystems, habitats, species and genetic diversity. A research agreement was signed between Anglo American Minério de Ferro Brasil and the Escola Politécnica of the Univ...
Environmental, health, and safety management is a core function in many mining operations, where poor performance is a factor of significant risk for corporations. Since the 1970s, the scope of issues of concern has evolved from local to global and from a focus on the health and safety of workers to the risks to communities and ecosystems. Companie...
In the context of compounding health, environmental, and climatic crises, Brazil may witness two of its most important environmental policy instruments, environmental licensing and impact assessment, be severely weakened. On May 13, 2021, the Chamber of Deputies passed a new General Law of Environmental Licensing,
ignoring the concerns of civil so...
Achieving global sustainability objectives such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals or Aichi Targets, including remaining within planetary boundaries, necessitates proactively avoiding a proportion of the environmental impacts otherwise expected to result from economic development. Quantifying these “avoided” impacts is important for monitoring...
New legislation that requires “decharacterizing” or decommissioning tailings storage facilities (TSFs) has motivated this review of “decharacterization” methods and techniques for and their environmental impacts. Out of 105 papers, published since 1983, that describe solutions or discuss challenges to closed TSFs, regarding geotechnical and geochem...
Developing conservation strategies to mitigate cumulative impacts requires the understanding of historic land use and land cover changes at the regional scale. By using a multisensory and multitemporal approach, we identified the major changes driving cumulative impacts on native vegetation in northeastern Amazon. Comparing two regions, one with mi...
Tiering in impact assessment has been advocated for mainstreaming environmental goals into different levels of planning. Likewise, the ecosystem services concept has been receiving increased attention for its potential contribution to the difficult mission of integrating the fragmented views of society's dependence on nature when taking decisions a...
Although biodiversity offset policies have been expanding worldwide, little is known about
their potential to compensate impacts on ecosystem services. This article aims at
proposing and discussing criteria to plan and evaluate compensation of impacts on
ecosystems services. By analyzing international best practices guidance related to
ecosystem se...
The occurrence of caves represents a challenge for planning development projects.
Caves often harbor endemic or endangered species and are subject to a differentiated
protection regime. Reconciling the conservation of these protected spaces and economic
activities is challenging for mining, given its locational rigidity and the consequent limitatio...
Indicators to monitor biodiversity loss are usually related to habitat and/or vegetation
types, and very little has been done in Brazil with regard to fauna, despite the process of
defaunation, that is drastically reducing vertebrate species richness. This article
analyses whether the indicators used in monitoring programs of an iron mine respond t...
Volume I
RESUMO 9
INTRODUÇÃO 13
CAPÍTULO 1: CONCEITOS E TERMINOLOGIA 16
CAPÍTULO 2: PANORAMA INTERNACIONAL 19
CAPÍTULO 3: METODOLOGIA E PROCEDIMENTOS DE TRABALHO 23
CAPÍTULO 4: BARRAGENS A SEREM DESCARACTERIZADAS 27
CAPÍTULO 5: OBRAS DE DESCARACTERIZAÇÃO 35
CAPÍTULO 6: IMPACTOS AMBIENTAIS E SOCIAIS 50
CAPÍTULO 7: DIAGNÓSTICO SOCIOAMBIENTAL 57
CAPÍ...
This is a study of governance related to the Fundão or Mariana Disaster that occurred on 5 November 2015, affecting over 600kms of the Rio Doce and associated coastal and marine areas in the states of Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo, Brazil
Biodiversity offsets are increasingly required as a condition to develop new projects in the context of the mitigation hierarchy. There is widespread understanding that conservation and restoration measures are necessary to maintain the supply of ecosystem services, but the relationship between biodiversity offsets and ecosystem services affected b...
Loss and fragmentation of forests and other natural vegetation directly and indirectly caused by mining is a matter of growing concern, especially in tropical ecosystems. The cumulative impacts of such loss and fragmentation – not only in the mine footprint, but also resulting from development of infrastructure as associated facilities – is hardly...
The catastrophic failure of two large dams in Minas Gerais prompted new legislation that determined all upstream tailings storage facilities (TSFs) to be decommissioned in three years (up to February 2022). Out of 56 such structures, 50 are located in the Iron Quadrangle. Their spatial concentration raised concerns that undertaking simultaneous dec...
Methods to evaluate the potential to achieve no net loss/net positive impacts on biodiversity at project level and partial results of application to a large iron ore mining in Southeast Brazil.
We develop a framework to evaluate offsets planning and implementation based on three criteria: (i) equivalence, to test if losses and gains of biodiversity are comparable in kind and quantity; (ii) additionality, to evaluate if actions to protect or to restore biodiversity values are undertaken in addition to mandatory measures so that gains at of...
O relatório traz informações e dados selecionados sobre a qualidade física, química e biológica da água e uma visão geral da biodiversidade terrestre, de água doce e marinha na bacia do Rio Doce desde o rompimento da barragem até o momento atual. Também apresenta uma revisão das abordagens integradas já adotadas nas ações de restauração do Rio Doce...
The report contextualises the current status of water quality and biodiversity in the Rio Doce watershed, providing selected data and information on the physical, chemical and biological quality of the water and an overview of the terrestrial, freshwater and marine biodiversity since the dam rupture. A review of the integrated approaches already ad...
Available for download from
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/ANI2M9CXNDMCSEAC88HM/full?target=10.1080/14615517.2021.1910923
Increased prices and political pressure are boosting illegal gold mining in the Brazilian Amazon, threatening forests, indigenous people, and conservation of biodiversity in protected areas. The rate of illegal mining deforestation increased more than 90% from 2017 to 2020, reaching 101.7 km² annually in 2020 compared to 52.9 km² annually in 2017....
Esta pesquisa teve o objetivo de avaliar a eficiência de uma zona alagadiça (wetland) que ocorre nas dependências de uma usina situada em Santo Amaro da Purificação, Bahia, como medida de controle da contaminação proveniente de um barramento de escória contaminada por metais pesados. Inicialmente, foi proposto um levantamento anual com amostragens...
3ª edição atualizada e aprimorada com novo capítulo sobre Impactos Cumulativos
A recent proposal to regulate mining within Indigenous Lands (ILs) threatens people and the unique ecosystems of Brazil’s Legal Amazon. Here, we show that this new policy could eventually affect more than 863,000 km2 of tropical forests—20% more than under current policies—assuming all known mineral deposits will be developed and impacts of mining...
Proposta recente para regulamentação de mineração dentro de Terras Indígenas (TIs) ameaça comunidades e ecossistemas únicos da Amazônia brasileira. Neste trabalho mostramos que essa nova política poderia afetar mais de 863 mil km² de florestas tropicais – 20% a mais do que seria impactado considerando tendências atuais – assumindo que todos os depó...
O conceito de serviços ecossistêmicos tem ganhado espaço em processos de tomada de decisão e na gestão de projetos com potencial de causar significativa degradação ambiental, por explicitar a dependência que a sociedade tem dos benefícios ofertados pelos ecossistemas. Ao mesmo tempo, com o desenvolvimento de novos sensores e avanços tecnológicos, v...
Political pressure to expand mining to protected areas in near-pristine regions urges strategic-level anticipation of the impacts of infrastructure provision necessary to support mining development. Undeveloped niobium deposits in Northwestern Amazon were broadcasted as of primary interest of Brazilian politicians, what called attention to the risk...
Frente às pressões políticas para expandir a mineração para áreas protegidas em regiões prístinas, é premente a antecipação estratégica dos impactos que podem resultar da construção da infraestrutura necessária para desenvolver a mineração. Em particular, o anúncio do interesse de políticos brasileiros em impulsionar a exploração de depósitos de ni...
Bauxite mining has been carried out around Poços de Caldas, Minas Gerais, since the 1940s. Companies operating in the region pioneered land rehabilitation in Brazil, conducted since the early 1980s. Different procedures of recontouring, runoff drainage, soil preparation and vegetation planting were employed. This research aims to evaluate current e...
Mining is a significant driver of deforestation. Not only do mines clear native forests for mineral extraction, they also often establish new infrastructure, which indirectly facilitates new access to land and further clearing. Forest loss and fragmentation have serious effects on biodiversity, yet rarely are these cumulative impacts of mining stud...
Mining companies are expected to return land to a stable, productive and self‐sustaining condition by rehabilitating degraded areas to also deliver social benefits, an essential dimension of sustainable land management. This research aimed to develop a framework for mine rehabilitation planning based on an integrated analysis of the social‐ecologic...
Determining if and why an impact is significant is a key task to inform decisions on the acceptability of a project through Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). Hence, an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) should be coherent in reaching conclusions about impact significance and in reverberating them in recommendations about mitigation. In this...
Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo are actively monitoring the sky and collecting gravitational-wave strain data with sufficient sensitivity to detect signals routinely. In this paper we describe the data recorded by these instruments during their first and second observing runs. The main data products are the gravitational-wave strain arrays, releas...
Este estudo tem como escopo a realização de avaliação ambiental estratégica (AAE) e preparação de correspondente relatório contendo recomendações tecnicamente fundamentadas para subsidiar os órgãos governamentais responsáveis quanto ao disciplinamento de atividades recreativas motorizadas fora de estrada realizadas em áreas de especial proteção amb...
When mining affects natural or semi-natural ecosystems such as forests, rehabilitation often aims at restoring biodiversity. However, to what extent does rehabilitation also restore cultural ecosystem services? This paper investigates the perception of two groups of recreationists that use rehabilitated bauxite mine areas in southwest Australia, bu...
This article reflects on the potential for impact assessment (IA) to be a major vehicle for implementing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). While it is acknowledged that the SDGs are intended to deliver broader outcomes than IA currently does, we nevertheless argue there is significant convergence between IA and the SDGs, which we explore...
este artigo da série Questões em Foco apresenta uma abordagem sistemática para facilitar a coleta e a análise de dados e informações fundamentais e necessários para avaliar os impactos do rompimento da barragem de rejeitos do Fundão, em Mariana, e a eficácia dos programas de mitigação.
Disponível em https://www.iucn.org/sites/dev/files/rio-doce-pa...
Issue Paper 4, A framework for assessing environmental and social impacts of disasters: Ensuring effective mitigation after the Fundão Dam failure, presents a systematic approach, which would facilitate the collection and analysis of key data and information required to carry out an impact assessment and to evaluate the effectiveness of mitigation...
Esta Nota Técnica analisa o projeto de Lei Geral do Licenciamento Ambiental em discussão na Câmara dos Deputados (Terceira versão do relator, de 18 de julho de 2019 – conforme Anexo) e faz recomendações para seu aprimoramento. A terceira versão do projeto de lei (PL) apresenta diversas melhorias em relação à primeira versão divulgada para as Audiên...
Innovation is conceived as novelties bearing a potential to improve either a process and/or its products. In Impact
Assessment (IA), innovation can take different forms, such as new technical tools to improve a certain task or the
application of new concepts. This paper conceptualizes innovation in IA and reviews the literature, enquiring if the
th...
O objetivo dessa Nota Técnica é analisar, crítica e construtivamente, a proposta da Lei
Geral do Licenciamento Ambiental. Mais especificamente, objetiva-se analisar o texto-base
do PL à luz das boas práticas internacionais e evidências empíricas da ciência,
destacando questões críticas para serem consideradas em eventuais revisões e
regulamentações...
Esta é a versão traduzida do artigo publicado na Energy Policy, disponível em https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S030142151930299X?via%3Dihub
Pequenas Centrais Hidrelétricas (PCHs) estão rapidamente se espalhando, tanto globalmente quanto através dos rios de fluxo livre da Amazônia, ameaçando a provisão de serviços ecossistêmico...
This is a Portuguese translation for the original article published in English in Energy Policy:
Athayde, S.; Duarte, C. G.; Gallardo, A. L. C. F.; Moretto, E. M.; Sangoi, L. A.; Dibo, A. P. A.; Siqueira-Garay, J.; Sánchez, L. E. 2019. Improving policies and instruments to address cumulative impacts of small hydropower in the Amazon. Energy Polic...
Visando contribuir para aprimorar procedimentos para obtenção de outorga de autorização para exploração de aproveitamento de potencial hidráulico com características de Pequena Central Hidrelétrica-PCH, reunimos nesta nota técnica complementar à nossa sugestão específica ao texto da Resolução Normativa 673/2015, resultados de uma pesquisa científic...
Indirect deforestation induced by mining development can cause consequences beyond the mining leases, transforming the surrounding landscape due to land use and cover changes. This work analyzes the processes of land use and cover change in mining regions. Two areas in different stages of mineral extraction in the Brazilian Legal Amazon were chosen...
Introduction Mining regions are characterized by the concentration of mineral resources which undergo severe processes of land use and cover (LULC) change due to the combination of mining and non-mining activities. The construction of new roads, infrastructure for minerals transportation, ancillaries and urban settlements to shelter new mining work...
The need of providing social housing for a growing urban population triggers government action in several countries. Considering that these initiatives can cause significant environmental and social impacts, the potential contribution of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) to address such challenges is investigated. By reviewing the documents...
Recent gravitational-wave observations from the LIGO and Virgo observatories have brought a sense of great excitement to scientists and citizens the world over. Since September 2015,10 binary black hole coalescences and one binary neutron star coalescence have been observed. They have provided remarkable, revolutionary insight into the "gravitation...
A framework based on ecosystem services concept to facilitate stakeholder engagement, especially local communities for planning closure is introduced. Ecosystem services are benefits that the natural environment provides to maintain human well-being. In order to test the framework workshops were conducted with company staff of two bauxite mines ope...
Cumulative effects assessment (CEA), as a required practice for the environmental assessment (EA) of projects in many countries, faces several practical challenges, especially related to biodiversity. Drawing on the perspectives and experiences of Canadian EA practitioners, this paper explores options or drivers of change for improving project-base...
This guidebook was designed to help disseminate good environmental practices in the quarrying of limestone in karstareas. Specialists from a variety of disciplines with professional and academic experience were contacted to prepare a set of recommendations which could help mining companies mitigate the impact of their activities on the natural reso...
A fragmentação e a supressão de habitats estão entre as principais causas de perda de
biodiversidade no mundo e por esse motivo, foco de atenção durante a avaliação de impactos de projetos. Em âmbito mundial verifica-se a crescente adoção de práticas de compensação por perda de biodiversidade, definida como um mecanismo que visa contrabalançar os i...
IUCN is a recognised global authority on the status of the natural world and the measures needed to safeguard it. Since the early 2000s, it has established and managed a variety of Independent, Scientific and Technical Advisory Panels to deliver credible and robust advice to
third parties in a manner that is transparent, accountable and scientifica...
In the first of a series of publications, the independent Rio Doce Panel presents its views and recommendations for moving towards sustainable and resilient mitigation of the impacts of the dam failure. The key message from the Panel is: mitigation efforts should lead to a positive and lasting legacy for present and future generations.
Available f...
Na primeira de uma série de publicações, o Painel independente do Rio Doce apresenta suas perspectivas e recomendações para
avançar na mitigação sustentável e resiliente dos impactos do rompimento da barragem. A mensagem principal do painel é:
os esforços de mitigação devem resultar em um legado positivo e duradouro para as atuais e futuras geraçõe...
Como todo projeto, um Plano de Recuperação de Áreas Degradadas (PRAD) deve ser cuidadosamente preparado e ter sua viabilidade analisada antes de sua execução. Uma vez aprovado, sua implementação deve ser igualmente cuidadosa e os resultados, periodicamente avaliados. O uso de indicadores e a comparação entre o esperado e o alcançado são alguns dos...
Mining companies are expected to ensure a positive legacy for communities and to engage them in defining post-mining land uses. This paper examined how an ecosystem service approach might be utilised to arrive at agreed post-mining land uses acceptable to communities and the mining company during mine closure planning. This was investigated in the...
In response to the increasing loss of biodiversity, several countries have adopted offsetting policies that seek to balance habitat destruction by restoring, enhancing and/or protecting equivalent values offsite. Such mechanisms are increasingly important in quarrying, where habitat loss may be unavoidable due to colocation of mineral resources and...