Serra do Mel suit reveals absence of mediation, regulation, and value-capture infrastructure in Brazil

Summary

The May 2025 Serra do Mel class action against Voltalia, backed by the public prosecutor’s office and the public defender’s office, exposes structural absences of mediation, safety regulation, and value-capture infrastructure around Brazil’s renewable expansion.
The suit’s alignment of state legal actors with the plaintiffs converts the dispute from a private contract complaint into a state-backed regulatory action whose downstream costs the industry will bear rather than the plaintiffs.
Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber’s 1973 diagnostic of “wicked problems” applies: each standard remedy — compensation, setback rules, contract caps — fills one of William Ury’s third-side roles while leaving provider, mediator, healer, and referee functions empty.
Brazil’s northeast produces more renewable energy than the grid can absorb, with 20.6% of wind and solar generation curtailed in 2025; the offshore build-out, with more than 100 licences pending at Ibama, risks reproducing the Serra do Mel pattern unless third-side functions activate before new contracts are signed.

In May 2025, three rural workers’ organizations filed a civil class action in Serra do Mel, Rio Grande do Norte, against Voltalia, a French renewable-energy multinational, alleging that wind farm development on leased land has damaged residents’ health and undermined their livelihoods. The suit — assessed favourably by the public prosecutor’s office and the public defender’s office — seeks compensation for collective non-pecuniary damage for health problems or unfair contracts; the suspension of four windfarms still under construction; the relocation of existing turbines; a corrective environmental impact assessment with community participation; and a contract review that would cap transferred rights at 50% of a farmer’s plot, restoring their status as “special insured persons” within the Brazilian social security system. The decision to litigate was taken in July 2024 at a packed meeting at which hundreds of farmers voted to pursue legal action. The underlying dispute is broader than the named parties: it is a structural absence of mediation, safety regulation, and value-capture infrastructure around Brazil’s renewable build-out — a build-out that has reached roughly 35GW of onshore wind capacity, the fifth-largest globally, with nine in ten of Brazil’s turbines concentrated in the northeast, according to the Brazilian Association of Wind Energy and New Technologies and the Global Wind Energy Council.

What the suit asks, and who is on which side

The civil class action was filed in May 2025 in Serra do Mel by three rural workers’ organizations, with a favourable assessment from the public prosecutor’s office and the public defender’s office. It targets Voltalia and seeks: compensation for collective non-pecuniary damage for health problems or unfair contracts; suspension of four windfarms still under construction; relocation of existing turbines; a corrective environmental impact assessment with community participation; and a contract review that would cap transferred rights at 50% of a farmer’s plot, restoring their status as “special insured persons” within the Brazilian social security system. By law, if a farmer transfers up to 50%, they do not lose their insurance rights, provided they continue to work the land. The plaintiffs also ask for the relocation of existing turbines and a community-participation element in the environmental impact assessment.

The decision to litigate emerged from a July 2024 meeting at which hundreds of farmers voted to take legal action. The named plaintiff organizations are joined by the public prosecutor’s office and the public defender’s office in their assessment. The alignment of these state legal actors with the plaintiffs is the most trajectory-determining feature of the case: it converts what might have remained a private contract complaint into a state-backed regulatory action whose downstream costs the industry, rather than the plaintiffs, will absorb. Voltalia, in a statement to the Guardian, said it had “not been served,” complied “strictly … with Brazilian legislation” and adopted “a collective, participatory and transparent contractual construction process” with a “commitment to the social development of the communities.” The company said it “developed the agreements in collaboration with local landowners and diligently addresses any matters concerning these agreements through the appropriate channels” and denied that the projects caused damage, saying its windfarms were “managed in accordance with applicable regulatory, social, environmental, and health and safety requirements.” Voltalia also said it valued “sustainable development” and “dialogue with local communities … from local in-person assistance to digital channels such as the Ombudsman, as well as regular meetings, and social and environmental initiatives.”

Cui bono — who captures the value, who absorbs the cost

The value flows of Serra do Mel, traced by the Lavoro Institute from data published by the National Electricity Agency (Aneel), run in directions that do not pass through the community that produces them. Seventeen of Serra do Mel’s 36 power stations sell all of their electricity on the open market — most of it, according to the Guardian, “to Brazil’s south-east and central-west regions” at prices negotiated directly with large consumers. The Guardian reported that electricity generated in Serra do Mel is sold cheaply to consumers the residents have never met, while the power that lights local homes costs roughly twice as much.

The payments that flow to the farmers are 1.55% of turnover — not 1.55% of generation. The lawsuit characterizes these payments as “hard to audit” because their value depends on where the energy is sold rather than on what is generated locally. The 50-year leases on plots of land originally granted by the Brazilian state to needy farmers fifty years ago lock the arrangement in for the working life of anyone who signs; the residents’ status as “special insured persons” — a category within the Brazilian social security system created for rural workers on family-run farms — is at risk if they can no longer work their holdings.

The land Antonio de Souza farms was granted by the Brazilian state to needy farmers fifty years ago; his contract with Voltalia leases a portion of it to the company for another fifty years. The income promised by the contracts was 3,000 to 5,000 reais monthly (£430–£720), adjusted annually like a salary, without harming crops. A decade later, de Souza is leading the public civil lawsuit. He told the Guardian he cannot plant crops in the affected area, drive a tractor through it in bad weather without risking an electric shock, or graze cattle near the cables. The contract specifies that infrastructure occupies one hectare (2.5 acres); de Souza reports that “four hectares have become wasteland on a 50-hectare plot that was the family’s livelihood.” His assessment: “If I’d known it would be like this – that I’d be prevented from planting and harvesting – I wouldn’t have signed that contract with them,” adding that he is not opposed to wind power.

Edvaldo Bessa, then 75, returned to his plot and received an electric shock from the steel cables of an uninsulated metering tower, the Guardian reported. Ten years after Brazil passed the 10GW wind power milestone in 2016, most streets in the municipality remain unpaved and families have no mains water. Relvani de Brito, whose late father signed a 50-year lease on the family’s land and who has since been barred from her own property, lives 250 metres from a turbine and described the noise: “At night it’s worse because everything is quiet, and that’s when the racket starts.” She added: “I take medication for anxiety. I don’t sleep at night; I wake up at one o’clock, right on the dot.” Health data compiled by the Lavoro Institute from the Primary Healthcare Information System (Sisab) shows significant increases in anxiety and panic disorders, sleep disorders, and hearing problems in Serra do Mel from 2022 onwards, when most of the municipality’s 36 windfarms came into operation. In Poço Branco — a municipality similar across all indicators except for the turbines — the trend moved in the opposite direction.

Four framings and what each prescribes

The dispute is being read in four registers, each corresponding to a different prescription.

Regulatory adjustment (national energy discourse; Voltalia’s account). Under this framing, the lawsuit represents contract disputes to be settled within existing law. Voltalia’s statement, summarised above, exemplifies the framing. The policy backdrop is President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s November 2023 framing, in Riyadh, of Brazil’s ambition to become the “Saudi Arabia of green energy” within ten years. Prescription: contract enforcement within existing law.

Regulatory failure (affected communities; public prosecutor’s office). Under this framing, the absence of federal minimum-distance, contract-disclosure, and safety-standards regulation is the operative cause. Brazil has no federal regulation stipulating minimum distances between turbines and homes; France requires equipment to be at least 500 metres from houses. Relvani de Brito’s residence at 250 metres from a turbine and her account of night-time noise anchor this framing. Prescription: federal minimum-distance regulation, contract-footprint verification, turbine-relocation remedies, and transmission-safety standards.

Distributive injustice (civic organisations including the Semi-Arid Region Human Rights Reference Centre, CRDH). Under this framing, the structural problem is that cheap local generation is sold to distant buyers while local residents pay more; contracts transfer land for 50 years at payments structured against distant-market prices; the surrounding community’s share of generated value is small and untransparent. De Souza’s reported statement sits within this frame. Prescription: community-ownership stakes, transparent royalty calculations linked to generation rather than turnover at distant consumer markets, and explicit protections for social-security status during long-duration land leases.

Oversupply (sector observers). Under this framing, the structural problem is generation outrunning the grid. Brazil in 2025 wasted 20.6% of the wind and solar energy it could have generated through curtailment, with losses estimated at more than 6bn reais. Elbia Gannoum, president of the Brazilian Wind Energy Association, called this “the worst crisis in Brazil’s wind energy industry.” Prescription: transmission investment and slowing capacity addition in saturated regions; otherwise generation continues to be stranded.

The two regulatory-adjacent framings — regulatory failure and distributive injustice — are not mutually exclusive. A coherent response would combine a federal minimum-distance standard; a transparent, generation-linked royalty calculation; explicit social-security-status protections; and enforceable community-participation requirements in environmental impact assessment. Elinor Ostrom’s empirical work on common-pool resource governance identifies boundary rules, monitoring, and graduated sanctions as preconditions for sustainable local management; applied to Serra do Mel, the missing federal minimum-distance rule is one of several “boundary rules” whose absence prevents the surrounding community from functioning as the governance unit Ostrom’s empirical work identified. The regulatory-failure framing, on its own, may understate the contribution that locally-legible institutions can make; the distributive-justice framing, on its own, may overstate what fiscal transfers can deliver absent those boundary rules.

Why no third side activated — provider, mediator, healer, and referee functions unfulfilled

William Ury, in his 1999 book The Third Side: Why We Fight and How We Can Stop — written out of the Harvard Negotiation Project — identified ten third-side roles distributed across three clusters: providers and teachers (preventive); bridge-builders and mediators (productive); and arbiters, equalizers, healers, witnesses, referees, and peacekeepers (corrective). Applied to the Serra do Mel record, the distribution of activation is uneven.

The provider role — addressing unmet basic needs whose absence generates grievance — is largely absent. The income promised by the contracts was intended to substitute for unmet needs; the lawsuit alleges the substitution has not materialised because the contracts restrict land use, and most streets in the municipality remain unpaved while families have no mains water. The teacher role — surfacing alternative conflict-handling scripts — is under-developed. On Areia Branca beach, ~30km from Serra do Mel, the CRDH found, according to activist Giovanna Ferreira, that “the people most affected were unaware of what was about to happen” when Ibama issued the country’s first offshore wind licence in June 2025. The bridge-builder role — structured occasions for cross-community encounter — is under-developed. Voltalia described “regular meetings” and an “Ombudsman” channel; the lawsuit’s allegations and the residents’ statements indicate these structures have not produced the trust-building effects the role is meant to generate.

The mediator role is absent from the formal landscape. The lawsuit represents the parties’ preference for adjudication over facilitated negotiation; no third-party facilitator has, on the available record, attempted to surface the interests beneath the positions. The arbiter role is being invoked through the courts. Whether it produces a durable resolution depends on the litigation’s outcome and on whether the surrounding community’s other third-side roles become active in parallel. The equalizer role is partially filled by the public prosecutor’s office, the public defender’s office, and the rural workers’ organizations that aggregated the plaintiffs. Whether this is sufficient to redress the asymmetry between hundreds of smallholders in a single municipality and a French-listed multinational is open.

The healer role is largely absent. The Lavoro Institute’s report documents the injury at population level — significant increases from 2022 onwards in anxiety and panic disorders, sleep disorders, and hearing complaints in Serra do Mel, with the opposite trend in Poço Branco — but no restorative process, truth-telling forum, or therapeutic community intervention is described. The lawsuit’s request for “compensation for collective non-pecuniary damage” is a legal substitute for what healing work would address. The witness role is partially filled: the Lavoro Institute’s report, the Guardian’s reporting, and the CRDH’s monitoring have made the conflict visible to external audiences. Whether this visibility creates accountability costs depends on whether national-level institutions respond.

The referee role operates within significant gaps. Brazil’s absence of a federal minimum-distance standard, the contract terms the lawsuit alleges exceed the contracted footprint, and the absence of disclosure standards for the 1.55%-of-turnover payment represent rule gaps that prevent the referee function from operating. The peacekeeper role is not engaged, because the conflict has not produced physical violence; the lawsuit, however, signals escalation through rhetorical hardening (formalising grievances previously informal as unfair-contract and health-damage allegations), third-party recruitment (the alignment of the public prosecutor’s office and the public defender’s office with the plaintiffs), and symbolic markers (the suit’s comparative framing of Brazilian minimum-distance regulation against the French 500-metre standard, which travels beyond the immediate case).

What happens next — the offshore build-out, and Rittel and Webber’s diagnostic

In June 2025, Ibama issued Brazil’s first preliminary licence for an offshore wind energy project. The project, located off Areia Branca beach near a salt terminal, is being developed by the National Industrial Training Service (Senai-RN) to supply the port itself as a test site under a recently enacted 2025 law. More than 100 additional offshore windfarm licence applications are waiting to be processed at Ibama.

Ferreira’s framing of the case as precedent-setting — “The way this process is conducted sets a precedent for all others to follow” — applies to the offshore build-out as well as to the onshore context. Senai claims the chosen area is in shallow waters far from traditional fishing grounds; fishers told the Guardian the towers will be erected where they work. The pattern observed at Serra do Mel — contracts signed under conditions of economic stress, third-side prevention roles unfilled, regulatory referee function absent — is capable of replicating along the coast.

Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber, in their 1973 Policy Sciences paper “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,” identified the diagnostic feature of wicked problems: no intervention resolves the dispute as a whole, because every attempt at solution generates new problems in adjacent frames. The Serra do Mel dispute satisfies the test. The three framings of national strategic ambition, local cost, and sectoral overcapacity do not converge into a single problem statement — the diagnostic feature of wickedness in Rittel and Webber’s sense. Compensation through the class action addresses the equalizer role but does not fill the provider, bridge-builder, or referee functions. A French-style 500-metre setback rule would address the referee’s absence but does not address the open-market electricity sale that leaves Serra do Mel households paying roughly twice the rate at which their energy is sold. The contract reform the lawsuit seeks — capping transferred rights at 50% — would restore farmers’ “special insured” status but does not generalise to the offshore context, where fishers’ territorial claims operate through a different legal infrastructure. Brazil’s northeast already produces more renewable energy than the grid can absorb; additional capacity risks deepening both the curtailment problem and the local-cost problem unless third-side functions become active before new contracts are signed.

Executable levers, and the limits of any one of them

Among regulatory levers, the most executable in the near term is contract-transparency action under the existing authority of the public prosecutor’s office or Aneel; federal minimum-distance legislation and transmission-safety rules require congressional action and remain further from executability. The equalizer function, already in motion through the public prosecutor’s and public defender’s alignment with the plaintiffs, represents the most concrete operational third-side capacity currently activated.

Without active provider, mediator, healer, and referee functions, each new project risks reproducing conditions in which contracts signed in one decade become lawsuits the next, and in which the framing of the problem — green-energy leadership at the national scale; livelihoods, retirement, and health at the local scale — remains unaddressed even as the projects themselves advance. Whether the third side emerges before the offshore build-out repeats the onshore pattern is the open question the present case poses.

On Areia Branca beach, the fisher Luis told the Guardian he has heard about the turbines planned for the sea where he works and is fearful, but believes all will be well: “God and the ocean will always provide the fish we need.” His statement — an expression of hope under conditions of incomplete information — captures the position of residents awaiting decisions about their fishing grounds while remaining, on the CRDH’s account, “unaware of what was about to happen.”

Analytical techniques used in this piece

This analysis applies the methods below. Each links to a short, plain-English explainer you can read and reuse.

The Third Side: Takes the vantage of the surrounding community that has a stake in resolving a conflict (Ury).
Wicked Problems: Treats a problem as wicked — no stopping rule, no clean test of success, every attempt consequential.