Messages

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

The event took lives, affected numerous families and created impacts of all sorts.

While at the same time of the bereavement due to this huge impact, we should display the necessary balance to convert this enormous problem into a solution that goes beyond merely recovering areas and re-establishing the lives of the persons affected.

Our mission should embody a goal of combining the recovery process with an economic and social development project for the affected region, with its result being a legacy whereby this territory will acquire better conditions than prior to the collapse.

Much was achieved in 2016, yet we should humbly recognize that we are in a long-term building process and there is still much room for improvement. We are also aware that this progress should be obtained in perfect harmony with the community, focusing on the improved lives of individuals.

As members of Renova Foundations Oversight Board, we call on everybody involved in this process and who support this cause to join us in this vision of taking quality of life throughout the region, from Mariana to the mouth of the Doce river, to a whole new level.

Wilson Nélio Brumer
Chairman of the Board of Trustees

ADVISORY BOARD

The Advisory Board is in charge of acting as society’s voice in Renova Foundation’s governance. No mean task, considering the array of impacts and possibilities in the mission entrusted to it which are to be carried out through actions of multiple nature and dimension.

The board’s composition should react not only the interests of communities and landowners directly affected, but also to those communities with interests that are less evident at first sight. Due to their capillarity, the River Basin Councils will play an important role in the remediation of springs and riparian vegetation, sanitation, water conservation, agriculture and other initiatives. The academic community’s representation will be one of these, as much of the expertise for what has been and will be done during the recovery programs in affected areas is unprecedented, both due to the nature and scale of activities.

In defining its composition, the Advisory Board requires a considerable effort by the entities and communities that it represents and by the Renova Foundation team, with board members as its links. The first task will be to define forms of ensuring compliance with its role of representing and forwarding recommendations to the Oversight Board. Permanent awareness of what relevant actions are needed, construing requirements by represented parties and communications with executive and decision making instances will be permanent challenges.

Cláudio Bruzzi Boechat
Coordinator of the Advisory Board

INTER-FEDERATIVE COMMITTEE

The environmental, social and economic impacts from the Fundão dam incident will require an extended response over the coming years. There is a consensus among the organizations involved that containment, remediation and compensation activities are both urgent and complex, and therefore require sound governance. This governance has been provided using a collaborative and innovative approach through the inter-Federative committee (IFC) and its advising Standing Technical committees created under the Conduct Adjustment Declaration, the IFC has provided an inter-organizational, inter-state platform for coordinating the activities of the parties involved, each with often overlapping roles and responsibilities that need to be coordinated to develop solutions that will build on, rather than contradict with each other.

The Technical committees are responsible for advising and monitoring the remediation and compensation programs under the Conduct Adjustment Declaration, providing an appropriate venue for engagement and discussion among experts to achieve solutions that are suited to the magnitude of the issues stemming from the incident.

With this responsibility and the aspirations of society in mind, each of the federal, state and municipal bodies represented on the IFC and Technical committees are expected to achieve high standards of excellence in fulfilling their mission of performing the commitments under the Conduct Adjustment Declaration and the relevant programs. key to the success of this monumental e ort will be the interaction between the IFC and its Technical committees and Renova Foundation, which has been created specifically for the purpose of implementing.

the programs under the Conduct Adjustment Declaration. We believe that the governance structure created by the Conduct Adjustment Declaration, which places the Foundation as the primary agent for implementing the decisions of the IFC, is both innovative and capable of ensuring the effectiveness of the multiple initiatives within each program, in both the environmental and social dimension.

A monumental challenge lies ahead.

Suely Mara Vaz Guimarães de Araújo
President of Ibama and the Inter-federative Committee – CIF

MAINTAINING COMPANIES

The remediation of the damage caused by the Fundão dam breach in Mariana (MG) in November 2015 is a high priority for the companies that support the Renova Foundation – We are deeply sorry for what has occurred and remain committed to ensuring we do what is right and compliant with Brazilian law to remediate the environment and compensate those who have been affected.

The early efforts put forth by Samarco, and supported by the shareholders, following the accident were concentrated on providing immediate assistance to the affected population, with deployment of specialized technical teams to cover accommodation, the provision of drinking water to the localities supplied by the Doce River, animal rescue and shelter, bridge reconstruction and the clearing of roads. Less than a week after the tragedy, children were back in schools.

An important step towards the mid and long-term recovery and compensation was the signing of a Transaction and Conduct Adjustment Declaration (TTAC), by Samarco, Vale and BHP Brasil, the Federal government, the Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo State governments and various Brazilian administrative bodies and environmental authorities in March 2016. According to what was prescribed by the TTAC, Renova Foundation was created with the mission of implementing and managing remediation and compensation programs, preventing further delays in the implementation of solutions for the environment and impacted people.

Almost a year after the founding of the Renova Foundation, we are confident that the we have blazed the right trail. The complexity of the actions undertaken by Renova, the level of interaction with public officials and civil society, the long duration of some of its programs, could only be achieved through an organization with relevant social and technical competencies focused on those objectives and assured of having the financial resources to accomplish them.

We cannot change the past or bring back all that was lost, but the early work developed by Renova Foundation shows that it will be possible to restore the environment, rebuild communities and implement programs that will bring enduring benefits to the entire Doce River region.

Samarco, Vale and BHP.

Minas Gerais Public Prosecutor’s office

Belo Horizonte Judicial Supervisors of Foundations

The creation of Renova Foundation is an unprecedented solution for the country, devised within the scope of a lawsuit in which the Federation, the state of Minas Gerais and the state of Espírito Santo sought to repair a large-scale damaging event, namely the collapse of the Fundão Dam, in Mariana.

The magnitude of this disaster caused the proposal of organizing a privately owned foundation – to manage remediation actions – to face a number of questions and opposing stances, under the argument that this would be a protective shield for the companies responsible for the event.

Guided by the understanding that the foundation was being organized in order to restore damages ensuing from the dam’s collapse rather than to replace companies in any remediation liabilities, and with enough assets to fulfil its primary purpose, not based on the full remediation assumption but sizeable with the proposed intention, the Belo Horizonte Public Prosecution Office, in charge of the Foundations division, approved the creation of Renova Foundation by means of Resolution PTFBH no. 16/2016 dated June 30, 2016.

Renova Foundation is a privately owned non-profit legal entity, with independent administration, assets, finances and operations, created as the executive arm for mining companies that do not have the expertise required to overcome the impacts caused by the dam failure.

Renova Foundation was organized with ambitious ends: to manage and execute 42 socio economic and socio environmental programs. Its managers and control agencies hold the great responsibility of maximizing the social benefits arising from such an initiative.

Following a slow transition process, the Foundation is currently taking over the full scope of the restoration programs and is entirely autonomous in defining the pace of its activities, relying on the dynamism, flexibility and principally the transparency which is of the very nature of the tertiary sector, seeking to involve the affected segments. We believe that Renova Foundation is capable of conducting the proposed programs more quickly, with greater quality and at a lower cost, thus bringing more satisfactory results to society.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office prepared several punctual suggestions with regards to Renova Foundation’s bylaws, aimed at improving control mechanisms and the assurance of an unbiased administration vis-à-vis to its founders. Having concluded its organizational procedures, yet in the structuring stage, the Public Prosecutor’s Office continues to investigate compliance with the commitment for an asset contribution assumed by the founders, as well as creation of its statutory bodies.

To the eyes of the Foundations Legal Supervisors of Belo Horizonte, Renova Foundation appears as an opportunity to grant resolute treatment to collective protection, whose goals will only be fully complied with by the actual participation of all players involved in the processes and the communities affected by the tragedy.

Valma Leite da Cunha

Public Prosecutor

Marcelo de Oliveira Costa