A 2026 target that has quietly slipped
Brazil Potash’s Autazes project, a planned $2.5bn potash mine and processing complex roughly 120 kilometres southeast of Manaus, was, as recently as a few years ago, slated to begin production in 2026 at a planned capacity of 2.2 to 2.4 million tonnes of potassium chloride a year, enough to cover around a fifth of Brazil’s potash needs in a country that currently imports almost all of the mineral it uses, mostly from Canada and Russia. That target has not been met, and the project remains tied up in the same consultation dispute that has shadowed it for years.
The mine itself does not sit on Indigenous land, but at least two reserves within 10 kilometres carry a legal right to be consulted under Brazilian law, a right that has become the project’s central legal battleground. The Mura Indigenous Council chose, at one stage, to consult 35 tribes, some more than 70 kilometres away, and several hundred Mura people have voted in support of the project at various points. Brazil Potash’s chief executive, Matt Simpson, has called that support “a major milestone achievement” demonstrating respect for the Mura’s wishes.
A consultation process contested from within
That account sits uneasily alongside allegations of coercion raised separately by federal prosecutors and some Mura community members. Prosecutors investigating the case cited audio recordings, video reports and in-person hearings that they said showed what one prosecutor, Fernando Merloto Soave, described as “very serious” pressure, adding that many community members “are prevented from using their fields.” A 2017 land sale for 60,000 reais was reportedly signed with a thumbprint rather than a conventional signature, a detail that has featured in subsequent legal challenges to the project’s consultation process.
Individual accounts from Mura community members reflect that same split. One community leader, Sérgio do Nascimento, has described being told to “sell it or lose it,” while Lindalva de Almeida Carneiro has said her family did not want to sell but that her brothers came under pressure to do so. Others, including Mura teacher Matilde Mura, have struck a different note, saying their communities live off hunting and fishing and “are not against progress,” a statement that captures the project’s core tension more than it resolves it.
A legal back-and-forth with no clear end
Brazilian courts have ruled against the project’s permitting process multiple times, with company executives noting that two earlier rulings, in 2018 and September 2023, were both subsequently overturned by Brazil’s Federal Court in Brasília, which found the lower court had relied on flawed or biased information. A further suspension followed a request from federal prosecutors alleging irregularities in granting a preliminary permit. Brazil Potash has consistently denied wrongdoing, saying 34 of the 36 villages affected by the project were properly consulted, and has expressed confidence that higher courts will again overturn the latest suspension.
Why the stalemate matters beyond Brazil
Brazil’s near-total reliance on imported potash, a critical fertiliser input, means the Autazes project’s fate has implications for national food-security planning that extend well beyond the Mura communities directly affected. But the project’s inability, so far, to resolve a consultation dispute that has now run for close to a decade illustrates a recurring pattern in extractive projects near, though not on, Indigenous land: formal consultation requirements can be procedurally satisfied while leaving genuine consent sharply contested, a gap that courts, prosecutors and the company itself have each interpreted differently at different stages of the same dispute.
Related: Vanuatu’s taro farmers are navigating a very different kind of pressure on indigenous land-based knowledge, climate rather than extraction, but share with the Mura communities a stake in who controls decisions about land their livelihoods depend on.
