The Brazilian austerity plan that helped calm world markets has riled environmental groups from São Paulo to Washington. To satisfy the conditions of a pre-approved International Monetary Fund loan of $41.5 billion, the Brazilian government must serve up some $24 billion in spending cuts in its 1999 budget and another $80 billion by 2002. Environmental groups claim the new budget, if passed by Congress, will gut environmental protection. They point in particular to over $60 million in cuts planned for the Pilot Program to Protect Tropical Forests—the vast majority of which involve donations from industrialized countries. Brazilian officials offered conflicting explanations for why international donations would be included among the government budget cuts. Environmental groups, meanwhile, called this and other planned reductions illogical...
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Argentina expects to meet informally with other developing nations to discuss efforts to stop global warming. Elsa Kelly, director of environmental affairs for Argentina’s foreign ministry, told EcoAméricas that a growing number of developing countries are interested in the talks. Specifically, they want to explore the economic and political consequences of undertaking voluntary cuts in greenhouse gases and participating in the trading of emissions credits with industrialized countries. The Kyoto Protocol, drafted in Japan one year ago, calls on developing nations only to restrain emissions voluntarily; it commits industrialized signatory countries to reduce their emission of heat-trapping gases at least 5% below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012. It also provides for a still largely undefined emissions trading system. Last month, at a follow...
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Lawyers for the city of Lima are preparing to take the Peruvian government to court over a federal judge’s decision to allow construction of a spaghetti factory on the edge of a wetland. The city says it will appeal the ruling favoring pasta maker Lucchetti to the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Court for Human Rights, in San José, Costa Rica. The outcome could influence enforcement of municipal environmental and zoning laws in Peru, and send a signal to foreign investors about the country’s legal climate. Lima and the city of Chorillos, which is in Lima’s jurisdiction, served Lucchetti several orders to stop work on the plant last year, claiming the company was building without filing paperwork required for construction permits. The controversy prompted...
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Latin America is waiting to see what steps the U.S. will take in the wake of a World Trade Organization, WTO, ruling against U.S. efforts to certify other countries’ sea turtle protection programs. The recent WTO ruled the certification—a prerequisite for countries wishing to export shrimp to the United States—violates the 1994 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade because it forces domestic law on foreign countries. Under the federal Endangered Species Act, the U.S. State Department certified 23 shrimp exporters: Argentina, the Bahamas, Belize, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay and Venezuela. As part of the certification program, the U.S. banned Venezuelan and Brazilian...
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The Mexican branch of the environmental group Greenpeace this month filed a legal complaint against Petróleos Mexicanos, the state-owned oil monopoly known as Pemex, for allegedly dumping petroleum waste in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz. Bypassing the civil-complaint process available through Mexico’s environmental secretariat, Greenpeace Mexico went to the federal Attorney General’s office to accuse Pemex of criminal violations of conservation laws. It alleged that the oil company dumped refinery waste near the coastal township of Ixthuatlán del Sureste—part of a pattern of illegal toxics disposal in numerous communities, Greenpeace says. If federal prosecutors press charges, Pemex officials could face fines of up to $70,000 and maximum prison terms of six years. Greenpeace is asking that Pemex be required to pay...
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The Commission for Environmental Cooperation is reviewing a complaint that Mexico failed to enforce its toxic waste laws by allegedly allowing a lead smelter in Tijuana to abandon tons of waste near a residential area. The complaint alleges that when U.S.-based New Frontier Trading Corp. stopped recycling batteries at its subsidiary, Metales y Derivados, it left behind hazardous waste it should have shipped to the United States under Mexican law and the bi-national La Paz Agreement. Three groups—San Diego’s Environmental Health Coalition together with the Tijuana-based Citizens’ Committee for Community Services and Restoration of Cañón del Padre—filed the complaint, the commission’s 20th to date. They claim the company left the city an estimated 6,000 tons of waste including lead slag...
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Caribbean and Latin American countries say they are developing a common front against desertification. The Caribbean and Latin American Group of UN member countries cited progress in a report at the opening of the Second Meeting of the Conference of Parties to the Convention to Combat Desertification held in Dakar, Senegal, Nov. 30 to Dec. 11. The group, one of four geographical blocs established to design resource-sharing strategies against desertification, reported it has set up a new regional coordinating unit. Among other things, the unit will focus on: providing special assistance to Haiti for a national action program, creating an information network, promoting national and subregional programs, establishing desertification indicators, and supporting local educational measures. The Caribbean and Latin American bloc also said 90...
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