- The European Union’s demand for electric vehicles may lead to the deforestation of 118,000 hectares (291,584 acres) in critical minerals-supplying countries, according to a new report.
- Brazil, which accounts for large reserves of nickel, graphite, rare earths, lithium and niobium, would be one of the most affected countries.
- Despite the mining project’s socioenvironmental impacts, the Brazilian federal government has backed companies with financing and political support.
- Experts warn that the new minerals rush increases pressure on Indigenous communities already suffering from mining companies’ violations.
The European Union committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2050, meaning it won’t emit a single ton of carbon dioxide more than it can absorb. To reach this goal, Europeans must upgrade their transport system, which accounts for 75% of EU emissions, with electric vehicles.
However, mining activities to supply this may result in new carbon emissions. According to a report commissioned by the European organizations Fern and Rainforest Foundation Norway and produced by the Institute for Ecological Economics and WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, 118,000 hectares (291,584 acres) of forests around the world may be destroyed by 2050 to meet the EU’s green aspirations. That’s equivalent to 1.8% of the total deforestation registered in tropical forests in 2024, according to the Global Forest Watch.
“As some mining activities clear large forested areas, they contribute significantly to increased atmospheric CO2 levels, thereby exacerbating climate change,” the report stated.
Brazil alone would account for 11.7% of that — 13,900 hectares or 34,347 acres, a small 3.6% fraction of the total deforestation registered in 2024 in Brazil’s Amazon and Atlantic Forest combined, according to data from Imazon research institute. The actual area, however, would likely be much larger, since experts considered only the direct deforestation caused by mines. Indirect clearances from infrastructure expansion, such as building access roads for heavy machinery, settlement growth or land conversion for agriculture that historically follows new roads are not included in the figures.
The impact size varies depending on the type of battery cars will use. The so-called NMC 811, for example, is the most common battery in the European market and requires significant amounts of nickel and cobalt. The LFP, conversely, does not require these resources, and it has lower deforestation impacts. In all scenarios analyzed by the report, however, Brazil would top the ranking of the most deforested countries, alongside Indonesia.
The list of transition minerals, also known as critical or strategic, includes dozens of substances like copper, aluminum, manganese, niobium, silver, nickel, cobalt, rare earths and lithium. They are essential components not only for electric vehicles but also for other low-carbon energies, like solar and wind power.
The impacts of this new mineral boom are not limited to deforestation. It includes biodiversity loss, contamination of water sources and violations of traditional communities’ rights. In 2024, the international human rights organization Business & Human Rights Resource Centre tracked 156 allegations of abuse in critical minerals projects worldwide, including environmental damages, work-related deaths and attacks against environmental defenders.
“Impacts on human rights often happen in conjunction with environmental impacts,” Caroline Avan, head of just transition and natural resources at the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, told Mongabay. “The two are connected.”
Threats vs. opportunities
The Brazilian government is celebrating the mining rush as a major economic opportunity, despite being home to the world’s largest tropical forest and one of the most affected countries in the report, alarming environmentalists. The International Energy Agency estimates the demand for critical minerals will come from $230 billion in 2023 to $1 trillion by 2030, and Brazil has a strategic position in this market.
According to Brazil’s international investor’s guide, the country has 12.3% of the world’s nickel reserves, 26.4% of graphite, 19% of rare earths, 4.9% of lithium and 94% of niobium, besides important reserves of vanadium, manganese and bauxite.
Entrepreneurs say Brazil could also benefit from the commercial war between the United States and China, which has a quasi-monopoly over the strategic minerals supply chains. In November 2024, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed agreements to boost mining exploration in Brazil. In March, Donald Trump’s administration confirmed a partnership with Brazil to conduct joint research for strategic minerals in four Brazilian states.
“We can’t cope with all the requests we receive, both from companies and countries,” said Raul Jungmann, president of Brazil’s Mining Institute (IBRAM), which represents Brazil’s mining companies. In an interview with the Brazilian newspaper O Globo, Jungmann said investors from Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States have reached out for business opportunities. “There’s a huge appetite.”
Businesses have already started to establish their presence across Brazil. According to a report from the Brazilian news outlet InfoAmazônia, by May 2024, there were 5,046 mining requests for critical minerals all over the Amazon, covering 26 million hectares (64.2 million acres), an area almost the size of Ecuador. Of all requests, 1,205 are located up to 10 kilometers (6 miles) from Indigenous territories. In 390 cases, the requests were for areas inside traditional lands, which the Brazilian Constitution forbids.
“Government documents have shown that there is a very high incidence of these minerals in protected areas of the Amazon,” Marta Salomon, senior analyst at Talanoa Institute, a Brazilian think tank committed to climate policy, told Mongabay. “And there is tremendous pressure in Congress to allow mining on Indigenous lands,” she said, referring to a work group created by the Senate to discuss the opening of Indigenous lands to mining projects.
Support from Lula’s administration
Mining companies found an important ally in President Lula for their expansion plans. In 2025, his administration invested 54.3 million reais ($9.6 million) in mapping strategic minerals, according to Talanoa’s project Política por Inteiro. Another 281 million reais ($49.6 million) should be invested by 2026.
The country’s national development bank, BNDES, also engaged in the transition minerals rush with two funds totaling 5 billion reais ($881 million). In August 2024, the bank approved a 486.7 million reais ($86 million) loan to Sigma, a Canadian lithium company operating in Minas Gerais — in May, the company was accused by a group of researchers of committing serious human rights violations and irregularities in environmental licensing. Another governmental initiative, the Brazil Platform for Climate Investment and Ecological Transformation, invested $1.8 billion in three companies working with rare earths and nickel.
“Through our potential in critical minerals and rare earths, our country is making every effort to increase its role in leading a just, inclusive and balanced global energy transition,” the mining and energy minister, Alexandre Silveira, wrote in an official report about Brazil’s potential in the sector. According to the ministry, Brazil has 48 critical mineral projects for the energy transition, 20 of which are in operation and 28 in the preoperational phase.
Salomon acknowledged that the energy transition is imminent and Brazil has a crucial role as a supplier of critical minerals. However, she said the Brazilian government should establish clear socioenvironmental guidelines for companies before providing them with political and financial incentives. “We still don’t have a clear policy either for the energy transition or critical minerals,” Salomon said .
The mines and energy ministry has been promising a national energy transition plan since 2023, but it hasn’t published it yet. In an email to Mongabay, the ministry stated the plan should be launched in the second half of 2025 and that the Brazilian law “already provides for socioenvironmental safeguards related to mineral exploration” (read the full response here). The ministry has also been promising a national policy on critical minerals since mid-2024, which should be out by the end of 2025.
IBRAM’s director of mining affairs, Julio Nery, also responded to Mongabay’s email saying, “The current legislation already includes these necessary environmental safeguards for mining projects” (read the full response here).
Lula’s administration also offers political support to mining companies. In February, the president went to a facility of the giant mining Vale for a ceremony to celebrate the company’s copper and iron expansion in the Amazonian state of Pará.
“The Brazilian state also has a strategic interest in Vale’s growth, in the country’s growth, and in the growth of the states you [Vale] exploit, whether iron ore, copper or any other,” the president said at the event.
“There is a confluence of politics of endorsement [of critical minerals projects] both in the symbolic and in the practical aspect,” said Maurício Angelo, founder of the Mining Observatory, an investigative journalism outlet and think tank, and a PhD student in environmental science at the University of São Paulo (USP). “This included incentives, subsidies, programs, policies, facilitation of fundraising, investments — all pursued in conjunction with the big companies.”
Vale is Brazil’s largest mining company and has a history of human rights and environmental violations, including two of the largest tragedies in the world’s history of mining, which took place in Minas Gerais state. The collapse of a dam in the town of Mariana in 2015 — considered Brazil’s greatest environmental disaster — left 19 dead and brought huge pollution to the Doce River. Four years later, another dam collapsed in Brumadinho municipality, killing 272 people and contaminating the Paraopeba River.
Now, Vale wants to head the country’s investments in transition minerals. The plan is to double its copper production by 2035 and increase its nickel production by 42% from 2023, consolidating its position as the world’s largest nickel producer.
Much of the nickel should come from the expansion of Pará’s Onça Puma mineral complex, where, for years, the Xikrin Indigenous people have been denouncing the contamination of the Cateté River by Vale’s mining activities. Research from the Federal University of Pará analyzed 720 Indigenous people and found high levels of heavy metals in 98.5% of them, prompting federal prosecutors to open a lawsuit against the company.
According to Angelo, Lula’s endorsement of Vale’s practices shows a “violent contamination” of public policies by private interests. “The Ministry of Mines and Energy, the National Mining Agency and even Lula and Geraldo Alckmin [Brazil’s vice president] are great enthusiasts and supporters of the mining sector,” he said. “The different governments are only serving private interests, even though they are dealing with an asset [minerals] that belongs to society.”
New technologies, old practices
Gaining the support of local communities through economic bargains, co-opting leaders or, as a last resort, using violence is also a tactic found in corporate strategies in Brazil and abroad, Angelo said. “What has changed is just the narrative of the companies that now say they are sustainable, green, essential to the energy transition,” he said. “But the practice of companies remains the same.”
The list of controversial projects involving transition minerals in Brazil includes the country’s largest bauxite producer, Mineração Rio do Norte, operating inside Saracá-Taquera National Forest, in northern Pará. River and Quilombola communities (occupied by descendants of Black enslaved people) accused the company of polluting the river, clearing the forest and scaring away game. In Barcarena, where the bauxite is processed by the Norwegian company Norsk Hydro, rivers have repeatedly been poisoned by mining tailings.
In Amazonas state, the Indigenous group Waimiri-Atroari has been denouncing the impacts of Brazil’s largest tin mine since the 1970s. In November, the so-called Taboca mining project was bought by the Chinese state-owned China Nonferrous Mining Corporation. Also in Amazonas, the Canadian Brazil Potash wants to install a potash ore mine over an area traditionally occupied by the Mura Indigenous people. The Federal Public Ministry is contesting the project’s licensing process.
“Companies are using the energy transition to exploit Indigenous areas, which, according to various studies, provide invaluable ecosystem and climate services for Brazil and the world,” Angelo said. “It’s not going to solve the climate crisis,” added Avan, from the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre. “We don’t have to choose between protecting human rights or solving the climate crisis because the climate crisis is a human rights crisis anyway,” she said.
Banner image: Europe will have to increase its electric vehicle fleet to become carbon neutral by 2050. Image by Rick Govic via Unsplash (Public domain).
CORRECTION (6-9-2025): A previous version of this article stated that the European Union committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2025. The real date of the goal is 2050. The post has been corrected.
UPDATE (6-10-2025): The article was updated to show that the 118,000 hectares of forests around the world may be destroyed by 2050 to meet the EU’s green aspirations are equivalent to 1.8% of the total deforestation registered in tropical forests in 2024. Also, it was updated to reflect that the 13,900 hectares of expected deforestation in Brazil is 3.6% of the total cleared in Brazil’s Amazon and Atlantic Forest in 2024.
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