Growing land disputes between farm and forest communities on one hand and agribusiness, mining, and hydropower interests on the other have seemingly made Latin America the most dangerous region of the world for environmental defenders. Between 2002 through 2011, 591 land-rights and environmental activists in Latin America were murdered, accounting for 83% of such killings worldwide, according to a recent report by Global Witness, a London-based human rights and environment group. Still, it is difficult to know with certainty how Latin America compares in violence against environmentalists to the rest of the world. While data internationally tends to be very poor, Latin America stands as a region where human rights and environmental organizations closely monitor human rights abuses. Brazil, Peru, and Colombia headed...
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Federal prosecutors’ offices in six Brazilian Amazon states have sued the National Institute of Agrarian Reform (Incra), the government agency in charge of settling landless peasants, claiming improperly executed land reform is a major cause of Amazon deforestation. In a coordinated effort, federal prosecutors in six of nine Amazon states where deforestation is highest each filed suit, asking the respective federal courts in their states to ensure government restrictions on Amazon land-clearing are enforced in Incra-settled areas. Using satellite-image analysis provided by the Amazon Institute of Man and the Environment (Imazon), a non-governmental Amazon research agency, the federal prosecutors said that in the period 2000-10, Incra-settled areas accounted for 20% of all Amazon deforestation. “The Imazon study shows that Incra...
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The center-right government of Chilean President Sebastian Piñera is proposing to implement “green taxes” on companies producing or importing products that have a short useful life but require long periods to break down, or cannot break down, in waste dumps. Among such products, says Chile’s Environmental Ministry, are tires, oils and lubricants, batteries, light bulbs, metals, glass, tetra packaging products and plastic bags. The government wants to use income from the new tax to promote the recycling of such products, expand Chile’s recycling infrastructure and improve community awareness of the need for pre-recycling trash separation. Chile’s finance ministry estimates the taxes could generate approximately US$100 million annually. “The approval of this reform, implementing such an economic instrument to promote environmental protection, would...
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After failing for years to keep their promises to reduce the amount of trash Argentina’s capital sends to landfills in nearby Buenos Aires province, Buenos Aires municipal authorities have received a stern warning. Daniel Scioli, the governor of Buenos Aires province, has given the city 30 days to meet the targets set in the Zero Trash Law, a measure municipal officials approved in 2004 and have ignored ever since. Under the Zero Trash Law, the city resolved to reduce the flow of trash to landfills this year to 750,000 metric tons, then to 375,000 tons by 2017. Since the law was approved, however, the city’s solid-waste output instead has increased from 1.5 million tons in 2004 to 2.3 million tons last year. Buenos Aires...
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