Corporate-state method in the mineral sector: Discourses and practices in the context of energy transition

Abstract

The contemporary global socio-ecological context is marked by catastrophic events associated with climate change. In this scenario, the race for minerals considered essential for the energy transition intensifies processes of socio-metabolic disruptions on an expanded scale, in space and time. In Brazil, the corporate sector finds a favorable environment to expand its mining activities, counting on the substantial support of the State, which endorses and facilitates development projects. In Bahia, this process generates numerous socio-environmental conflicts and deepens the historical invisibility of rural peoples and traditional communities. This article analyzes the method of the corporate sector and the State, especially in Bahia, considering their discourses and practices in the context of the energy transition and the global demand for strategic minerals. Specifically, it reflects on the unprecedented expansion of mineral research and prospecting and the resulting territorial conflicts. It addresses the State's narratives in the public hearing held in the Legislative Assembly of Bahia, with the central participation of the Movement for Popular Sovereignty in Mining, highlighting contradictions based on the different perspectives in dispute. Furthermore, it discusses the actions of the state-owned mineral research company, which provides consultancy to mining companies and reproduces discourses strategically propagated by the corporate media sector. The research adopts a dialectical approach, based on the analysis of concrete reality, its historical movement and its contradictions, using qualitative techniques such as participant observation in meetings and training spaces of social movements, as well as during the aforementioned public hearing, and documentary analysis of journalistic articles and publications on official social networks of mining companies and municipal and state governments. In general terms, it highlights an architecture that involves mechanisms of power control and instruments of domination: strategic pragmatism and sectoral hegemony; regulatory disregard and institutional capture; strategies of consensus and social control; technological advancement and information control; territorial investigation and coercive apparatus; hegemonic capital and socio-environmental impacts. Through this structure, corporate tactics find support in the public sector, which works to neutralize political and social obstacles, in addition to benefiting from a political environment favorable to mining under the pretext of decarbonization. An uncontrolled offensive by capital is underway, supported by the State, which guarantees mineral expansion under the guise of sustainability and energy transition, ignoring the socio-ecological impacts on rural people, their territories and ways of life.

Keywords: Discourses; Corporate Mineral Sector; State; Mining; Energy Transition.