The Risk of Land Degradation in Areas Impacted by Tailings Mudflows: A Legal and Economic Assessment

IF 3.6 2区农林科学 Q2 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES

Land Degradation & Development Pub Date : 2024-11-07 DOI:10.1002/ldr.5366

Lucimar de Carvalho Medeiros, Maíse Soares de Moura, Isadora Fonseca Navarro, Luís Felipe Sanches Fernandes, Fernando António Leal Pacheco, Adriana Monteiro da Costa

{"title":"The Risk of Land Degradation in Areas Impacted by Tailings Mudflows: A Legal and Economic Assessment","authors":"Lucimar de Carvalho Medeiros, Maíse Soares de Moura, Isadora Fonseca Navarro, Luís Felipe Sanches Fernandes, Fernando António Leal Pacheco, Adriana Monteiro da Costa","doi":"10.1002/ldr.5366","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Accidents involving tailings dams are threatening because of their potential impacts. In many countries, despite the existence of legislation the population lives with the insecurity of potential dam breaks. Using Minas Gerais state in Brazil as an example, the aforementioned insecurity applies to hundreds of tailings dams, specifically the Vargem Grande dam of Vale mining company. The area affected by a dam failure is set through legal‐administrative instruments called “flood patches.” The purpose of this study was to analyze these patches, using the Vargem Grande dam as example, and assess the possible land degradation impacts of a failure, focused on the flooded native vegetation. The assessment resorted to the VERA—Economic Valuation of Environmental Resources method. The results exposed the potential destruction of 200 ha of Atlantic Forest and 55 ha of Cerrado vegetation within the flood patches. However, the simulated outcomes also reveal a significant decline in the flood patches in a short period (from 4.60 km2 in 2022 to 3.05 km2 in 2023), related with dam‐decommissioning risk‐reduction works allegedly implemented or to be implemented by the mining company. This reduction can be misleading because decommissioning works are legal‐administrative issues frequently used by the mining companies to minimize their responsibilities in the case of tailings dam breakup. It is worth mentioning that the patch reduction led to a convenient drop in the VERA results, from nearly 74 to 53 million dollars. Therefore, the official protocol used to delineate the flood patches must be improved to allow a more realistic evaluation. In that regard, the changes to flood patches overtime must be better defined in the legislation, namely through inclusion of potentially affected soil‐ and water‐bearing ecosystem services. Effective monitoring of dam‐decommissioning works is also paramount for a true evaluation of land degradation in the impacted areas.","PeriodicalId":203,"journal":{"name":"Land Degradation & Development","volume":"127 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6000,"publicationDate":"2024-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Land Degradation & Development","FirstCategoryId":"97","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ldr.5366","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Accidents involving tailings dams are threatening because of their potential impacts. In many countries, despite the existence of legislation the population lives with the insecurity of potential dam breaks. Using Minas Gerais state in Brazil as an example, the aforementioned insecurity applies to hundreds of tailings dams, specifically the Vargem Grande dam of Vale mining company. The area affected by a dam failure is set through legal‐administrative instruments called “flood patches.” The purpose of this study was to analyze these patches, using the Vargem Grande dam as example, and assess the possible land degradation impacts of a failure, focused on the flooded native vegetation. The assessment resorted to the VERA—Economic Valuation of Environmental Resources method. The results exposed the potential destruction of 200 ha of Atlantic Forest and 55 ha of Cerrado vegetation within the flood patches. However, the simulated outcomes also reveal a significant decline in the flood patches in a short period (from 4.60 km2 in 2022 to 3.05 km2 in 2023), related with dam‐decommissioning risk‐reduction works allegedly implemented or to be implemented by the mining company. This reduction can be misleading because decommissioning works are legal‐administrative issues frequently used by the mining companies to minimize their responsibilities in the case of tailings dam breakup. It is worth mentioning that the patch reduction led to a convenient drop in the VERA results, from nearly 74 to 53 million dollars. Therefore, the official protocol used to delineate the flood patches must be improved to allow a more realistic evaluation. In that regard, the changes to flood patches overtime must be better defined in the legislation, namely through inclusion of potentially affected soil‐ and water‐bearing ecosystem services. Effective monitoring of dam‐decommissioning works is also paramount for a true evaluation of land degradation in the impacted areas.

查看原文本刊更多论文

受尾矿泥流影响地区的土地退化风险：法律和经济评估

涉及尾矿坝的事故因其潜在影响而具有威胁性。在许多国家，尽管制定了相关法律，但民众仍生活在潜在溃坝的不安全感中。以巴西米纳斯吉拉斯州为例，数以百计的尾矿坝，特别是淡水河谷矿业公司的 Vargem Grande 大坝，都存在上述不安全因素。受溃坝影响的区域是通过称为 "洪水补丁 "的法律行政手段确定的。本研究的目的是以 Vargem Grande 大坝为例，对这些区域进行分析，并评估溃坝可能造成的土地退化影响，重点是被淹没的本地植被。评估采用了环境资源经济评估法（VERA-Economic Valuation of Environmental Resources）。评估结果表明，在洪水泛滥的区域内，200 公顷的大西洋森林和 55 公顷的 Cerrado 植被可能遭到破坏。然而，模拟结果还显示，洪水斑块在短期内大幅减少（从 2022 年的 4.60 平方公里减少到 2023 年的 3.05 平方公里），这与据称矿业公司已经实施或即将实施的大坝退役风险降低工程有关。这种减少可能会引起误解，因为退役工程是矿业公司经常利用的法律行政问题，以尽量减少其在尾矿坝决堤时的责任。值得一提的是，补丁的减少导致 VERA 结果从近 7 400 万美元下降到 5 300 万美元。因此，必须改进用于划定洪泛区的官方规程，以便进行更切合实际的评估。在这方面，必须在立法中更好地界定洪泛区随时间发生的变化，即纳入可能受影响的土壤和含水生态系统服务。对大坝退役工程进行有效监测对于真正评估受影响地区的土地退化情况也至关重要。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Land Degradation & Development 农林科学-环境科学

CiteScore

7.70

自引率

8.50%

发文量

379

审稿时长

5.5 months

期刊介绍： Land Degradation & Development is an international journal which seeks to promote rational study of the recognition, monitoring, control and rehabilitation of degradation in terrestrial environments. The journal focuses on: - what land degradation is; - what causes land degradation; - the impacts of land degradation - the scale of land degradation; - the history, current status or future trends of land degradation; - avoidance, mitigation and control of land degradation; - remedial actions to rehabilitate or restore degraded land; - sustainable land management.