Huge diversified mining company Vale must be put in the lowest rung of environmental, social and governance (ESG) hell for putting far more emphasis on dividend declarations decided behind fancy mahogany-doored boardrooms than on the safety of dicky upstream iron-ore tailings dams. Last month’s tailings dam disaster at Vale’s Córrego do Feijão iron-ore mine, in Brazil, killed 170 people and left at least 140 missing, this after Vale-BHP’s Samarco iron-ore tailings dam collapse killed 19 nearly four years ago. In response, Brazil has banned new upstream mining dams and ordered the decommissioning of existing upstream versions by August 15, 2021. This is both late and inefficient, and also needing to continue to hang its head in shame is BHP, the world’s largest mining company, which is only now urging its peers to create an independent international body to take charge of overseeing the construction, integrity and operations of tailings dams that store mined waste.