Unleaded gas sales got underway in Venezuela this month, leaving Cuba as the sole Latin nation that has yet to introduce lead-free fuel. The start of unleaded gas sales by some 600 service stations is one of several steps being taken in Venezuela to address tailpipe emissions. Measures also have been put in place to tighten vehicle smog checks and ensure all cars imported or assembled in Venezuela have catalytic converters and electronic fuel injectors. Companies including British Petroleum, Shell, Texaco, Mobil and Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) are producing the unleaded fuel. Initially, the government forecast that half of all cars would be running on lead-free gas by 2006, but now the Environment Ministry says it expects only 38% to use the fuel...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
President Fernando Henrique Cardoso has approved the fine print for Brazil’s new Environmental Crimes Law—and regulators have wasted little time exercising their newfound clout. Ibama, the Environment Ministry’s enforcement arm, announced Oct. 4 that it was levying a record, $360,000 fine on the timber company Cilla Indústria e Comércio Ltda. The agency says its inspectors seized 1,180 cedar logs cut outside the company’s permitted logging area in Novo Progresso, in the Amazon state of Pará. The Environmental Crimes Law, enacted last year but held in limbo until Cardoso approved rules to implement it last month, dramatically boosts government enforcement authority. Among other things, it provides for fines of up to $25.6 million. Previously, the maximum fine for environmental crimes was $2,550. The fines include...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
Chile’s Public Works Ministry is set to receive bids Nov. 30 from investors interested in building and operating a $380-million, cross-town toll highway for the capital. But so far, investors remain wary of the project. And a coalition of 25 Santiago groups is fighting the road plan on environmental grounds. The 20-mile (33-km) toll road, called the Costanera Norte, or East-West System, is the first urban thoroughfare project offered to investors under Chile’s 1993 concessions law. Five other concessions allowed under the law involve Pan-American Highway work. The concessions aim to ease bottlenecks in the delivery of products to ports. Two of the concessions are on track, Carlos Cruz, head of concessions for the Public Works Ministry, told the...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
Defending one of Brazil’s showcase trade-integration projects, federal transportation officials have obtained a judicial order overturning a previous ruling that had suspended environmental licensing of the Tocantins-Araguaia Waterway. But controversy does not appear to be over for the $120-million, 1,310-mile (2,096-km) waterway plan, which is intended to boost cargo hauling along the Tocantins and Araguaia rivers to 6 million tons a year. In the west-central state of Mato Grosso, the federal prosecutor’s office has ordered police to investigate allegations of fraud in the preparation of the project’s environmental impact statement. The project aims to lower transport costs for producers, particularly soybean growers, in interior river valleys. Environmentalists, however, are concerned that the dredging work will alter the area’s hydrology...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
Debate about whether Mexico should accept foreign help for victims of its severe flooding took center stage this month, overshadowing discussion about environmental problems that may have contributed to the devastation. Analysts here say the floods in southern Mexico, officially estimated to have killed more than 300 people and left some 300,000 homeless, were exacerbated by such factors as ineffective river-basin management, local deforestation and poor urban planning. But their calls to address these problems were eclipsed by debate about President Ernesto Zedillo’s remarks that Mexico would not ask for international aid because the country can provide enough disaster relief independently. Zedillo said foreign aid would be of little use unless it came in the form of funding, which he recommended be sent to...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
Without felling a single tree, a Bolivian timber company has given up its 20-year concession to log 111,200 acres (45,000 hectares) of rainforest land. In March, Fatima Ltd. was preparing to log the tract, which has valuable mahogany stands. But Bolivia’s National Park Service joined the Washington D.C.-based environmental organization Conservation International to head off the logging. In a deal announced last month, Fatima’s owners gave up their company’s concession on land in northeast Bolivia’s Madidi National Park. In return, Conservation International agreed to pay them $100,000 to offset their spending on a forest management plan. Madidi Park was created in 1995, four years after the logging concession was granted, so Fatima had the right to log the area. But Fatima owners agreed...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
