Colombia’s Environment and Transport ministries are putting the finishing touches on legislation that would reinstate mandatory annual emission testing of all automobiles. The effort comes as Colombia is trying other ways to cut smog from its 2.4 million automobiles—particularly in high-altitude Bogotá, where vehicles account for an estimated 60% of the air pollution. Colombia began requiring catalytic converters and electronic fuel injection on all new gasoline-powered cars starting with the 1998 model year, a move that affects all 150,000 automobiles imported or assembled in the country each year. Leaded gasoline, meanwhile, has been banned for more than five years. The testing bill would mark the country’s second attempt to require annual emissions check-ups. The first was suspended by presidential decree in...
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Ecuadorian and Peruvian Indians have won a reprieve in their effort to sue Texaco in U.S. courts for allegedly doing extensive environmental damage to their rainforest environment. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reinstated two lawsuits filed by the Indians in 1993 and 1994, overturning a lower court’s dismissal of the suits on jurisdictional grounds. The plaintiffs are residents of the Oriente region of Ecuador and a nearby portion of Peru. They allege that a subsidiary of Texaco contaminated their water and soil with billions of gallons of toxics while extracting oil in Ecuador from 1964 to 1996. Now the case returns to U.S. District Court in New York. Joseph Kohn, an attorney for the plaintiffs, says the suits are being pursued...
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Thirty companies have been certified to meet ISO 14000 environmental management standards in Argentina, and 10 more are expected to receive certification there by year’s end, according to a survey of consultants by the electronic magazine Ambiente Ecológico WWW. Among the biggest companies now in compliance with environmental management standards set by the Swiss-based International Standards Organization are Arcor, Goodyear, Grupo Pérez Companc, NEC, Rheem, Saneamiento y Urbanización, Scania, Shell, Siemens, Tetrapak and YPF. Although the consulting costs involved in such certification range from $10,000 to $50,000, several mid-size companies, including industrial waste treatment specialist I.D.M. and automation products maker Automación Micromecánica, also have begun the ISO 14000 certification process...
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The Mexican subsidiary of Metalclad Corp. has stopped work on an industrial waste site in the central Mexican state of Aguascalientes following protests by residents of nearby rural towns. Metalclad, of Newport Beach, California, is pursuing a $90-million claim against Mexico because similar opposition has kept the company from operating its hazardous waste site in adjacent San Luis Potosí state since 1995. The Metalclad arbitration claim was filed last year in Washington at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, a World Bank body being used to settle investment disputes under NAFTA. Metalclad Corp.’s Mexican subsidiary, Ecosistemas El Llano, halted construction on the Aguascalientes waste site in September after a weeklong sit-in at the gate by about 200 rural residents. The...
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Emissions Virtual Space, a small NGO in Mexico City, is building an electronic data base to bolster a new web site that will serve some 30 Mexican environmental organizations. Inspired by community groups’ freedom-of-information efforts in Canada and the United States, Emissions Virtual Space intends to promote public access to environmental information in Mexico, according to spokeswoman Marisa Jacott. Mexico has no open-records law, and while statutes require government agencies to answer citizens’ requests for information, authorities retain tight control over the release of data. The project is receiving support from the U.N. office of Information Technology and Research and a handful of U.S. NGOs, including Information for Citizen Transboundary Action on the Environment, Incitra, in Silver City, New Mexico...
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After a year of devastating wildfires in the Americas, two leading environmental organizations in Mexico and the U.S. are calling on presidents Ernesto Zedillo and Bill Clinton to inaugurate a web site dedicated to fire prevention. Mexico’s Group of 100 and the Natural Resources Defense Council in the United States are proposing that the two presidents do so by holding a “Cyber-Summit on Wildfires, Forests and Global Warming.” Top environmental officials in both administrations have responded favorably to the proposal, which calls for a real-time internet broadcast from Mexico City and Washington. The proposal comes amid ongoing preparations for future fires. In September, the World Bank approved a $15-million loan to Brazil for fire-control efforts in advance of the dry season...
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Partial shutdowns of industry on heavy smog days, conversion to natural gas, and dousing dusty construction sites with water have helped bring pollution levels to an 8-year low in the Chilean capital, authorities say. The Metropolitan Environmental Health Service, Sesma, spends $215,000 a year on eight monitoring stations to track particles of the industrial carbon and dust that account for much of the capital’s poor air quality. In 1990, the monitors recorded 22.5 tons of particulates a day from a total of 1,207 pollution sources. By the end of 1997 the pollution sources had more than tripled to 4,484—but the particulates amounted to 6.9 tons daily. At the end of July this year, 4,751 sources were emitting 5.3 tons a day, according to...
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Beginning next year, environmentalists and entrepreneurs who join forces in Latin America can seek financing from a new $10-million venture capital fund sponsored by The Nature Conservancy and the Inter-American Development Bank, IDB. Conceived as a way to help environmental NGOs raise money through commercial enterprises, Fondo EcoEmpresas, or EcoEnterprises Fund, will provide from $50,000 to $800,000 in equity or debt financing to small and medium-sized enterprises. To qualify, businesses must be sponsored by an existing NGO; they cannot simply form a nonprofit arm. They also will have to meet commercial and environmental criteria to be established by a fund manager recently hired for the project. “This is going to be very strict,” says Patricia Leon, Director of NGO Enterprise Development for...
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Meanwhile, another new fund is being set up to finance small South American businesses whose activities help preserve biodiversity. Among the businesses the Terra Capital fund will consider financing are ventures to produce hearts of palm, organic honey, berries and rainforest latex. The fund is sponsored by Banco Axial, S.A. and Sustainable Development Inc., both of Brazil, and the Environmental Enterprises Assistance Fund of the United States. Last month the IDB’s Multilateral Investment Fund approved a $4-million equity investment in the fund, and $12 million more is expected from the International Finance Corporation, the Swiss government, the Global Environment Facility and private investors. A new company, Terra Capital Advisors, will be formed in Brazil to provide investment management services to the fund...
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The largest tour business serving the Galapagos Islands has signed an agreement with the World Wildlife Fund to raise money for research and conservation efforts by the Washington-based organization and other environmental groups. Metropolitan Touring now solicits donations from clients to help meet a minimum fundraising goal of $100,000. The company handles 20% of the tourist traffic to the Galapagos, which receive 60,000 visitors a year, about 35% of them from abroad...
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