Explaining Brazil #45: How to recover from the Brumadinho dam collapse?

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This week’s podcast, How to recover from the Brumadinho dam collapse?, was supported by Voom, an Airbus company. Voom is an on-demand helicopter booking platform that allows its passengers to fly between nine different helipads in the city of São Paulo from Monday to Saturday for less than BRL 500.

Once again, Brazil has made international headlines. And once again, it was not for positive reasons. On January 25, an iron tailings dam near the town of Brumadinho, in the Southeastern state of Minas Gerais, spilled the equivalent of at least 12 hundred Olympic-sized pools of mud onto the surrounding region.

The incident has already claimed dozens of lives — and hundreds more are reported missing. Rescue brigades continue searching for survivors. But the more time passes, the less likely it gets to find people who are still alive.

The catastrophe has provoked sadness, outrage, and compassion among Brazilians.

But above all, it has left a slew of unanswered questions.

How did this happen?
Who is to blame for Brumadinho?
What will be the lasting environmental consequences?
And, most importantly, how can we prevent this from happening again?

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On this podcast

Edegar de Oliveira Rosa is the Head of the Food and Agriculture Programme at the World Wide Fund for Nature in Brazil. He has a degree in Agronomy from São Paulo’s State University (UNESP) and has worked for multiple international organizations.

Gustavo Ribeiro has extensive experience covering Brazilian politics. His work has been featured across Brazilian and French media outlets, including Veja, Época, Folha de São Paulo, Médiapart, and Radio France Internationale. He is the recipient of multiple awards, including the Abril Prize for outstanding political journalism. He holds a master’s degree in Political Science and Latin American studies from Panthéon-Sorbonne University in Paris.

Euan Marshall is a journalist and translator who has lived in São Paulo, Brazil since 2011. Specializing in Brazilian soccer, politics, and the connection between the two, his work has been published in The Telegraph, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, The Independent, and Jacobin Magazine, among others. In 2014, he authored a comprehensive history of Brazilian soccer entitled “A to Zico: An Alphabet of Brazilian Football.”

This podcast was produced by Maria Martha Bruno. She is a journalist with 14 years of experience in politics, arts, and breaking news. She has collaborated with Al Jazeera, NBC, and CNN, among others, and worked as an international correspondent in Buenos Aires.

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