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November 12, 2009
A challenge for many decades to come
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Publication: Exame online magazine - Sustainability Guide
(Unsigned) Alcoa, which in September inaugurated a bauxite mine in the State of Pará, is learning that the sustainable management of its business depends on dialogue with society for however long the project lasts – or even longer. Located in the west of Pará, Juruti was barely more than a village lost in the Amazon forest until just a little while ago. The situation in the municipality of 34,000 inhabitants began to change in 2005, when Alcoa’s Brazilian subsidiary started building one of its most ambitious projects ever: a mine for extracting the region’s bauxite reserves. In addition to the high quality ore (used as raw material for producing aluminum), Juruti is impressive because of its size. There are 700 million metric tons of bauxite and the initial forecast is to mine 2.6 million tons a year. In planning the work, which took almost three years to build and required investments of R$ 3 billion, Alcoa tried to involve the local community. One of the things it did was in 2007 to create the Sustainable Juruti Council, which has three representatives from local authorities, three from the company sector and nine from civil society. Discussions in this association resulted in the preparation of a plan that involves investments of R$ 50 million in conserving the flora and fauna, environmental education, health services, public security, valuing and resurrecting local culture and infrastructure construction work (that is still on-going) of the Juruti Community Hospital. This year Alcoa entered into partnership with the Peabiru Institute, an NGO from Belém, to set up the Juruti Sustainability School. The idea of the school courses, which began in April, is to inform members of NGOs, teachers and government employees about the downside of living alongside an ore mine and teach them how to dream up and seek support for projects that are of benefit to the region and that allow it to develop without having to depend on the company. Despite the care Alcoa has taken, not everything has gone according to plan. At the beginning of September, a few days before the mine was opened, the Para Public Prosecutor’s Office started investigating the possible contamination of the water table in the Jabuti and Santo Hilário communities in Juruti. According to local residents the construction of a highway and a railroad by Alcoa has contaminated the creeks and made the water unsuitable for drinking. The company admits that the work has left the water muddy, but questions the extent of the contamination and has undertaken to recompose the soil and replant trees along the banks of the creeks, in addition to other environmental protection measures. This incident has made it clear that the challenges involved with sustainably managing Juruti do not end with the simple opening of the mine, as Franklin Feder, president of Alcoa for Latin America and the Caribbean recognizes. “The dialogue needs to continue over the next 50 or 70 years when we shall be extracting ore from the mine”, says Feder.
Sustainability checklist
How the company behaves with regard to some of the most important items analyzed by the Exame Guide survey
No – Audits and publishes a Sustainability Report in Brazil
Yes – Executive pay is linked to economic, environmental and social goals
No – It has an in-house audit function that reports directly to the board of directors
Yes – Its strategic planning adopts measures for reducing poverty
Yes – Its strategic planning adopts measures for reducing corruption
Yes – It identifies, monitors and establishes goals for reducing the indirect impact of its operations
Yes – It prepares an inventory of greenhouse gas emissions from its activities in Brazil
Yes – It has emission reduction targets
Yes – It takes responsibility for the health, safety and quality of life of contractors’ employees
No – It monitors suppliers with regard to their use of forced or compulsory labor
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