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Thank you, Flavio.
We will now invite architect Roberto Luís de Melo Monte-Mór,
professor at UFMG,
who has been doing research in Economy and Urban Planning,
and works mainly with urban planning,
urban and regional economy,
and organization of space and environment.
The other part of this conversation is Fabiana Borges Teixeira dos Santos,
executive coordinator of Belo Horizonte’s technological park,
researcher at UFMG’s Center for Development and Regional Planning,
and member of the Executive Committee
at the National Science and Technology Institute,
in Nano Biopharmaceuticals.
Fabiana and Roberto, please, come to the stage.
Seems you have a few slides to show, right?
I’d like to remind the audience that questions for the speakers
should be given in writing to our receptionists.
Thank you.
Good morning.
We’re a bit indecisive about just talking or presenting,
so we’ll do both and try to go fast.
So the idea is this: to try and quickly present
some aspects of the city’s metropolitan plan,
the Master Plan for the Integrated Development
of Belo Horizonte’s Metropolitan Area (PDDI, in Portuguese),
done at UFMG in partnership with PUC-MG and UEMG.
We’ll especially stress the issues that have to do with mining.
Then Fabiana, who coordinated the economic area,
and specifically the policy for the development of mined areas,
will speak, and then we’ll talk to Flavio about it.
Well, the metropolitan area planning was an institutional advance,
and that’s been recognized on many levels.
In the 2000 decade, the state government set up
an innovative metropolitan planning apparatus,
which ended up being set up with UFMG,
with this idea of having the university at the center stage,
articulating with the state, the cities, and society.
We did a very brief diagnosis, only possible due
to the involvement of teachers and post-grad students.
The plan involved 180 people, 57 teachers more or less,
80 post-grad students, and consultants,
and in our analysis we realized that Belo Horizonte
had weak potential for competing in the national space;
an outdated economic profile; excessive centrality in the capital,
there are 34 cities gravitating around Belo Horizonte;
very fragile metropolitan surroundings,
due to the traditional economic approach,
in which mining plays a big role;
limited articulation between cities and regions; strong social inequalities,
which we actually think is a positive thing,
since other metropolitan areas have even heavier ones,
so it’s a significant possibility of investment for Belo Horizonte
to reduce it; poverty concentrated around peripheral areas;
fragile local identities; and very significant impacts
on natural and constructed heritage, as Flavio just showed.
It’s partially located in the so- called Iron Quadrangle
and has mining... We’re talking mainly about iron,
but in the Cerrado region to the north we have limestone
and a series of cement industries,
and, to the south, sand, so actually the three main building elements
are present in the metropolitan area. Iron, cement, and sand.
The premises implicated
the strengthening and building of a sense of metropolitan citizenship,
stemming from a new pact yet to be built;
a sense of solidarity between cities, avoiding some kind of fiscal war;
the strengthening of the metropolitan area as a unit;
social and economic inclusion as a central value,
we assumed that without solving the poor people’s problems
there’s no possible solution, and that is one possible advantage,
to reduce these huge gaps;
promoting social and environmental justice;
inverting priorities and investing primarily in this fragile surrounding.
It is acknowledged worldwide that a metropolis can’t adequately develop
if it’s looking at itself, and we are more thinking about city-region,
metropolis-region, all articulated.
Valuing diversity, Belo Horizonte, like other metropolis in the world,
is at a spot where biomes meet,
with very significant geological formations,
which Flavio quickly showed; I mean, on one side is the Iron Quadrangle,
on the other, the beginning of the climb to the Central Plateau,
which is the Cerrado; on another side is the sea of hills
leading to Campo das Vertentes, to the south of the country.
It’s located exactly in that confluence,
so there’s huge internal diversity, which has to be strengthened.
Strengthening of the newest economy, a name we use jokingly
because in the 1970s there is the rise of the new Minas industrialization,
with a significant effort
to not be just a maker of intermediate goods such as cement, steel, iron,
and become an important industrial pole.
This planning was successful, the coming of Fiat
at the beginning of the 1970s crowned this process,
but that process, which we call Fordism, is also over,
so now we need a newer economy,
centered around advanced technology, clean industries and such.
More integration with the surroundings;
an integrated and inclusive development model; new capacities;
clean and renewable energy; overcoming inequalities;
and strengthening sub-regions.
We set up the plan with a methodology
that from the start tried to integrate the various actions.
We defined a set of transversal theme areas,
coordinated by an economic nucleus,
a social nucleus, and an environmental nucleus.
Ten themed areas and complementary studies. The themed areas’ goal
was to articulate things such as culture, education, food safety,
and generation of work and income.
Or technology, knowledge, and economy, all integrated
in one thing, and those were the terms of the diagnosis.
After four months, we realized that those interdisciplinary or teams
were becoming autonomous and were looking at themselves,
so we decided to implode them all and reorganize everything
according to big integrating axes, which are these:
Accessibility, Social Security, Sustainability, and Urbanity,
all within a territorial perspective integrating all of this,
and institutionalized, showing the necessary actions.
We had an expressive participatory process,
within the possibilities of a one-year plan,
but it fell way beyond what would be desirable;
European countries, such as Italy, Spain, and others,
have a participatory process of many years, even prior
to the start of the plan, which is what we’d like,
to spend a year or two preparing the population and then start
a planning and develop it.
We did that along the process, and it was extremely rich
and had an important role. A lot of the proposals
came from the joining of the team’s proposals
with the ones coming from society in many ways: from the City,
from organized sectors; technicians; consultants, and so on.
All of that was gathered. At first we had over 300 proposals,
and we gathered it in 35 main proposals and policies,
and then along the process they became 23,
plus 5 having to do with territory and institution.
Some quick examples of sectorial and integrated studies.
This one is from the economic area, which includes the so-called
production structure, knowledge, and alternative energetic technologies.
Here are the projects to be implemented
in the metropolitan area. What we see is that the majority
is also in the mining sector, steel, with impacts even beyond
what we have predicted for the next few years,
both within the metropolitan area and in its periphery,
as is the case of the Alto Vale do Paraopeba
consortium, in the Congonhas, Lafaiete, and Ouro Branco area.
Here are the environmental and cultural complexes,
an attempt to articulate the environmental issue
with the cultural one, very much linked to what Flavio presented us,
where we defined five big complexes called CACs,
and within them little specific areas to be detailed,
and the idea is to use these multiple regional identities
as an element of strengthening the community’s participation,
and building this pact that we want.
Along the participatory process a front for metropolitan citizenship
was spontaneously created,
and they elected the CACs as one of their main fields of work.
Here is a quick view of how polarized they are
in relation to Belo Horizonte.
The plan’s proposal is for a concentrated decentralization,
proposing three big metropolitan centers
and one set of sub-centers articulated in a network.
Today the whole articulation starts is Belo Horizonte,
our highway system is radio-concentric, it converges into Belo Horizonte.
Here is a study about the differential impact
of climate changes, I’ll show this very quickly,
because I think what Fabiana has to say is more important.
So here are the structural dimensions, territory on one side,
institution on the other, and the four big axes.
This was very interesting because we didn’t know
how the population would react, there was some apprehension,
it was very abstract, but what happened in the participatory
process of building proposals was the opposite;
people were very clear, they helped, we had five originally
and reduce it to four; we changed the name,
it became Social Security because of popular debate,
and within these axes we defined policies
at first as debate, and then as proposal,
detailed into programs and projects.
So each of these policies has a set of programs,
which have a set of projects.
Here the overall structural proposal,
the current situation extended,
with a radio-concentric highway system,
intended to be a polycentric, compact metropolis,
with a network of highways.
Here the proposal for structuring...
A metropolitan center to the north, one in the Betim area,
one to the south, exactly where the mining activity is more concentrated,
which is this area here to the south; here Rodoanel, the penetration areas,
the other sub-centers in their many levels, into the areas...
Here we did a study on environmental and real estate conflicts,
identifying the priority areas for a more compact metropolitan growth.
Here we see the CACs again, with their hierarchy,
and the local centers, I mean, it’s also important to bring
the nature of agricultural activities back into the cities,
strengthen urban agriculture, there’s work to be done in that,
because a lot of those cities still have a significant primary sector
population working in agriculture and cattle,
so we have to take advantage of that, and the expectation today
is to brake the barriers between city and country,
making this urban-metropolitan element an integrator
of a set of economic activities in the primary sector,
with agriculture and cattle, the industry sector,
and the service sector, in a more balanced manner.
Here we have the general proposal for network structure,
the railroad proposal...
Today the metropolitan area’s railroad system,
which encompasses about 21 cities, is practically entirely
in the hands of the mining companies, used to transport minerals,
when it’s not abandoned. So the metropolitan agency took that on
as a priority task, they’re conducting a study with UFMG’s Engineer School,
to assess the railroad system’s situation,
bringing more assertive proposals to articulate the metropolitan area
and its surroundings.
Here is the articulation of the metropolitan area outwards.
You can see that the surroundings of the metropolitan area
is also a mining area, especially the Vale do Aço [Steel Valley] area,
with Coronel Fabriciano and Ipatinga, now with this new concentration
in the area... I mean, there is a concentration in Congonhas
and Ouro Branco, but now there’ll be a 15-billion-reais investment,
with extremely significant growth, so it’s important to think about
this articulation outwards, including with the surroundings as a whole.
One of the plan’s proposals is to build also a kind of ring road.
Belo Horizonte poses a serious problem today
for transportation between many regions,
given Minas Gerais and particularly Belo Horizonte’s privileged position.
There are very serious problems, every day we’re seeing very
serious accidents in Belo Horizonte’s ring road,
where trucks pass by coming from everywhere
and heading to São Paulo or Rio.
So this is very important.
Here we can see the ring proposed
to go beyond this handle that exists today,
which is Belo Horizonte’s ring road.
I’ll invite Fabiana now, who’ll talk more specifically about mining.
Thank you.
Hi, good morning, everyone.
Well, I’ll complement Roberto’s presentation,
and in fact the reason we started
looking at mining in our studies of the metropolitan area
is that when we started developing the studies for the metropolitan plan,
we came across an investment portfolio
for the metropolitan region and the state of Minas Gerais
that was heavily centered in mining and metallurgy.
And that generated a need for us to treat this issue,
especially because of the confluence
of the Iron Quadrangle and the metropolitan area.
So, going back a little, I’ll be brief because Flavio and Roberto
touched on a lot of the points, but let’s remember
that despite the negative impacts and especially
what concerns hydric resources,
there are objective reasons for mining to keep existing.
It’s very hard for cities to give up what mining means to them,
especially small cities with no other alternatives.
So I think our effort here is to think about what to do
and what those alternatives are, and then have regional and urban plans
and productive alternatives combined with those plans,
which is key, as Flavio said.
I’ll pass through this quickly, as Flavio said,
50% of all mineral products in Brazil come from Minas Gerais.
There are 394 mining towns, of the 853 total.
Despite seeming small, 2,5% here is only in regards to mineral extraction.
We have to remember that’s a very intense activity in terms of capital,
but it doesn’t generate lots of jobs, so in fact this 2,5%
of the Gross Domestic Product doesn’t show the importance
it exerts in the state, which can be up to 30 or 40%
if you consider the whole mining chain.
It’s 780 million in resources
for states, cities and the federal government in mining shares.
One possible example is Alto Paraopeba,
where cities had an increase in taxes multiplied by five
because of mining-metallurgy activities in the area.
It’s a leap for these cities.
Generation of direct jobs and a huge deal of exports.
45,5% of all the state’s exports.
Vale alone exports almost 17 billion.
I won’t prolong myself on this data, but it’s important to consider,
because on the indicators
of relevance is the collection of the so-called CFEM tax.
The 15 largest collecting cities in Minas Gerais
concentrate 90% of the total,
meaning mining activity is very concentrated,
and it’s happening in huge proportions and scale, as Flavio said.
Four of these cities are in Belo Horizonte’s metropolitan area,
and we can see on that side which are those cities, marked in green.
In orange are the cities in the so-called collar,
and the others are the rest of Minas’ cities.
In the metropolitan area we estimate
that almost 13 thousand people are directly employed by mining,
and 780 thousand are in its services.
Well, as I said, the investment portfolio
for the mining and metallurgy sector we came across was very associated
with the international boom in commodities.
Despite the financial crisis slowing down this momentum,
we still have scary predictions for an increase
in production and investments.
For Brazil, and this is an estimate by the Ministry of Mines and Energy,
there are estimated 64,8 billion dollars,
of which 42,4 billion will come to Minas Gerais.
So we’re talking about a scale... We either start thinking about
the kind of impact and what it will mean for the population
and for our landscape, which is our theme,
or we’ll waste a lot of time and wake up in the end,
when it has taken over.
In Minas Gerais, estimates done by the Brazilian Mining Institute
account for 21,4 billion during the next few years,
a bit different from the scale
given by the Ministry of Mines and Energy,
and those are the regions getting it.
Notice that all of them, Caeté, Serra Azul,
Itabirito, and Congonhas, are within a less than
100-kilometer radius from Belo Horizonte.
That means we’re dealing with a zone of heavy urban growth,
and, as we’ll see, possible conflict.
And there’s Nova Jazida, as Flavio mentioned, the northern mines,
which have already been generating strong impacts in that area,
in terms of real estate speculation and altering the way people live.
Here is just the image of the Iron Quadrangle,
which I think you know very well, so I’ll pass.
But the important thing for us to think
is that this image speaks for itself.
This is an image of the Iron Quadrangle,
and you can see that mining companies, today,
and the areas of exploration are practically integrated.
It’s not unusual today to see mining companies
making regional action plans themselves.
You can see it’s all integrated within the territory,
it’s impossible, in this quadrangle,
to distinguish the mining areas.
That means that today we have a new paradigm
ruling this large scale mining:
the operation hubs, which integrate logistics, exploration,
improvements, and their competitiveness depends
on that operations hub working well.
Recently we had the chance of seeing a presentation by Vale,
where they incorporate their regional operations plan
in the strategic discussions of how to integrate the various mines
we saw before with a logistics,
service and supply system.
It’s an impressive thing, which we have to anticipate
in order to be able to follow what’s happening.
So we have to be prepared for this work logic of the hubs.
And the activities related to mining, another difficulty
we have to face is that they’re not location-restricted,
but they extend both their impact and their improvements
beyond each city’s borders. They integrate regions.
That’s why we can no longer talk about location,
but we have to talk about territories,
as Flavio also said in his presentation,
and as was very clear in the PDDI.
Today we have to adopt a territorial approach.
Here is just the map, we already showed
the confluence of the metropolitan area
and the Iron Quadrangle, where we’ll now see
investments and possible conflicts.
Here is the map showing the main investments.
You can see this part of the Iron Quadrangle
and the metropolitan area
is where the major mining investments will occur.
This is the map of the metropolitan and collar area.
I circulated the areas where the main investments are being made.
When we look over there, for instance,
here...
here is the Apolo Project area,
in the Barão de Cocais and Caeté region,
where that big Vale project is being discussed
and where we have the Gandarela Mountains,
an important repository of hydric resources in the metropolitan area.
In that area, Nova Lima, Itabirito, the exit for Congonhas,
Conselheiro Lafaiete, Codap.
Here is the exit for Serra Azul, all of these investments here
are associated with mining and metallurgy.
So you can see it’s very close, and we’ll see in the next...
Here is Conceição do Mato Dentro, old MX’s big investment,
where the effects have already started to show.
When we think about the images we saw of investments and we look,
for instance, at where the main protection areas
of the metropolitan area are.
Where the main areas of environmental interest are.
We can see the overlap of those areas,
and that begins to explain why conflicts between mining companies
and communities are aggravating.
Another one: when we look at the hydric resources,
special protection areas,
and mining.
In the same way we start to see
an overlap, and how important that is.
All of this is showing...
And here is another one which I think is clearer,
a study done for the PDDI,
which shows both the real estate activity of urban occupation
and the probability for urban growth.
Look at the probability for urban growth, this brighter blue.
When you take these probabilities
you see that the path for urban growth
is also the path associated with mining.
On that side is the Caeté project, the Apolo mine, the exit...
On this side are all the projects associated with Serra Azul and others.
And here, in this zone,
is the vector connected to the Paraopeba Valley.
When we see this overlap
it becomes obvious that there’s possible conflict.
We need to take actions,
and the territorial dimension is key.
It’s important to remember, and this is just a demonstration,
because one of the arguments in favor of mining
is that it brings a lot of wealth, but we have to remember this:
the growing of the GDP doesn’t necessarily mean that the wealth
is kept where it’s generated.
Most of the time these cities and regions don’t have services
and are incapable of retaining these resources
that they generate.
So you see the disparity between the GDB per person,
which is all that wealth, and the income per person,
which is the sum of wages,
which indicates what actually stays in the area.
Let’s take Brumadinho, for instance.
The GDP per person is 13,800,
but the income per person is less than a thousand reais.
So we’re talking about an activity
that in 20 to 50 years, probably, depending on how they extract,
will come to depletion,
and it leads to the cities’ being hugely dependent, I’ll move faster,
and not creating alternatives
or generating local income and productive alternatives.
So let’s think about what the challenges are.
So far, what we’ve been seeing
is a development model adopted by mining companies
as a result of this action;
it’s the development of underdevelopment.
They can’t generate sustainable development
in the areas where they operate.
There’s strong dependency of natural resources and mineral exploration,
they don’t create alternatives concurrent with the operation,
and what’s more is that there’s a substitution of other activities.
Why? Because they demand labor both in their opening and their operation.
So people end up abandoning other activities, for instance,
agriculture, it’s very common
for them to leave the rural sector and go work in mining.
And even the intangible cultural heritage, the parties, the people,
stops. It’s impressive.
Despite an improve in socioeconomic indicators,
and that’s why we say it’s a model of developing underdevelopment,
you have negative environmental and socio-cultural consequences,
and a lack of productive alternatives simultaneous
to the mining operation.
I’ll move a little faster.
What we have, really,
is that today you need territorial management
with relevant scale of analysis and licensing.
We’re talking about environmental and social license.
Effects go beyond borders, and that’s why we need territory,
and the territorial management
needs to be coordinated with all actors
of the mining chain, communities,
governments, academy.
Another challenge that Flavio mentioned,
that is very clearly given,
is related to mine closings.
So far we have been facing
few challenges in that aspect,
because the mines are still operating.
But the fact is that companies don’t have
financial resources for environmental recovery,
there’s no fund for that,
let alone financial resources that could lead
to a productive restructuring of the place.
So, how can we do that closing if there are no financial resources?
That’s usually left up to the government,
but we have to get ahead of it, because we’ll see
that there’s a lot to be closed
in our future in the metropolitan area and in Minas Gerais,
and what Flavio also emphasized
is how we want to use those mined areas.
It’s very common to hear from mining companies
that mining has two harvests:
first is iron and the second is real estate speculation.
They say: first I make money from mining
and then from real estate speculation.
Is that what we want? And there’s a third, right, Flavio? Tourism.
Is that what we want for the future, really?
I think those are challenges
we have to think about. I’ll move fast here.
I won’t go into the issue of sustainable mining,
except for a few points.
First: using the abundance of natural resources
to create future productive alternatives.
We saw an example with the oil extraction in the North Sea.
Nordic countries used the resources obtained with oil extraction
to create one of the most innovative economies
in technology, which is in the top of innovation rankings.
They used those resources in order to transform the economy.
That’s one path.
The other fundamental thing
is that management should always be shared
in mining territories.
There’s a very generalized concept in the world,
which hasn’t come here yet, and it’s obvious why companies
are reluctant to accept, which is social license.
It goes beyond environmental license.
Why? Because social license means
that communities take part, civil society too,
in all of the decision-making process
to do with the exploration of its territory.
This is key. It makes a difference.
It’s not like what we see today, a lack of transparency
and a huge secret in all of the decisions made.
We need information
and the guarantee for productive and cultural diversity,
socio-environmental integrity and well-being.
I’ll move a little faster.
One thing that is key to emphasize
is educating communities for this dialogue.
What we see, and we have a clear example
with the Gandarela Mountains,
is that decision-making is made difficult because
of how much information the mining companies and the population have.
If that information were leveled conflicts would be lesser,
and it would be very easy to make decisions.
We need this information system to be more democratic,
with a language that communities can understand.
Another thing I want to emphasize
is that we work in a compensatory logic:
destroy and then fix it.
The Public Ministry does its part
by setting compensatory measures,
but we have to follow the preventive logic:
when in doubt, don’t do it.
Like in the Gandarela Mountains and other areas.
If there’s doubt, don’t do it.
Talk to the community and look for new information.
And another point I want to emphasize:
some areas shouldn’t be mined.
I’m not making anything up,
this is established by international institutions
and mining companies associations.
But it doesn’t happen here. These are no go zones.
You really can’t go,
there’s no possible negotiation.
If there is negotiation it is with a large participation.
I talked about financial funds.
Well, the territorial issue I think I have to move faster through,
and then if you want we can discuss it later.
Territory as a social construct is what Flavio said,
but I think if we don’t see territory
as social relationships laid in a place
of constant transformation, we won’t be able to understand
and transform the challenge we have ahead of us.
Participatory governance we also talked about,
and here
are some examples
of what we have.
These mines are all in operation,
except for Águas Claras,
and we’ll have to deal with this in the future.
So there is: the closing of mines...
I’ll move faster because I’m running out of time.
These considerations about environmental impacts,
socioeconomic transformations,
what to do with infrastructure and equipment,
and the altering of social relationships in the territory.
The discussion of creating clear financial funds
for these areas and what to do with it in the future.
One of the key things when discussing future uses
is to make not magnificent proposals,
but ones that answer the community’s wishes,
rescue the local identity and people’s self-esteem.
That’s key.
And creating alternatives for jobs and income.
I’ll pass through the Eden Project...
This book here is
101 things to do with a hole in the ground,
I find it interesting because it has some examples; Eden was mentioned,
what it was
and what it became.
There is a cosmic ray detector;
sports, leisure, and entertainment;
an opera amphitheater;
a circuit, diving, hiking;
and alternative energies.
In Brazil, as Flavio mentioned, there’s Inhotim,
which I think we don’t even need to say.
But what’s key to emphasize
is creativity as an intangible asset
and a way of anchoring regional development.
That’s what we have to rescue.
I think creativity is key.
Not only in that dimension, but within each person.
This here, territorial management.
Here is Codap, an all-new way
of territorially managing big investments.
There are 25 billion estimated for these seven cities
in the Alto Paraopeba region,
and they work together in order to face the challenges
that come with that,
both in urban growth and in impact on public services
and infrastructure.
So here are examples of what they’ve been doing,
they’re looking to do a new regional plan
to rescue diversity in production,
as well as material and immaterial heritage.
I’ll move faster here, these are references.
I won’t stop in the environmental and cultural complexes
mentioned by Roberto, and also the Geopark,
which are different dimensions of territorial management,
integrating culture, science and technology,
planning, tourism,
in different scales of action.
That’s it, guys, thank you.