Argentina has awarded a contract for construction of a 37-mile (59-km) toll road and bridge across the Paraná River that organizers say will spur trade while reducing pollution. The project will connect the cities of Rosario in the province of Santa Fé and Victoria in the province of Entre Ríos. The toll road and the bridge, a four-lane, cable-stayed span, are to be built and operated by contract winner Puentes del Litoral S.A. of Argentina, under a 25-year concession. Officials at the Inter-American Development Bank, which this month approved $73.8 million in financing for the work, say the project will help boost trade within the Mercorsur bloc and also reduce fuel consumption and air pollution by easing transit in...
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Environmental concerns about the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are prompting greater scrutiny of plans to introduce engineered crop varieties in Mexico and Brazil. In Mexico, President Ernesto Zedillo has announced the creation of an executive commission to coordinate decision-making on the use of genetically altered plants and a scientific Bio-Security Consultative Commission, to which all public agencies must submit their plans for GMO-related regulations. The steps have drawn praise from environmental groups, which are campaigning against the introduction of transgenic corn in Mexico on grounds it might cross-pollinate with some 300 native corn varieties, compromising biodiversity. In Brazil, meanwhile, a federal court last month barred the government from authorizing the planting or sale of genetically engineered soybeans until bio...
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The top environmental officials of Canada, Mexico and the United States have appointed Janine Ferretti of Canada executive director of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, ending more than a year of uncertainty over the organization’s leadership. The CEC was created by Canada, Mexico and the United States in 1994 as part of the North American Free Trade Agreement to address regional environmental problems and disputes. Ferretti, a Canadian, has been the organization’s interim executive director since its first director, Victor Lichtinger of Mexico, resigned in February of last year. She was appointed to the three-year position last month by the CEC’s governing council, whose members are Canadian Environment Minister Christine Stewart, Mexican Environment, Natural Resources and Fishing Secretary Julia Carabias, and U.S. Environmental Protection...
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The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has asked the owner of the intellectual property rights to Banisteriopsis caapi, an Amazon plant with hallucinogenic properties, to defend the patent’s legal basis. The action, in response to a request for reexamination of the patent by groups representing Amazon Indians, does not mean the patent will be revoked. But it marks a new stage in the challenge to the patent issued in 1986 to Loren Miller, director of the California-based International Plant Medicine Corp. Miller registered the plant as Da Vine. In their request to the patent office, three organizations representing the Indians pointed out that South American shamans make a ceremonial drink called ayahuasca or yagé with the plant and use it in religious rituals. The...
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The San Pedro River, which rises out of the northern Mexican border state of Sonora and flows north past Ft. Huachuca and Tombstone, Arizona, has become the focus of an unprecedented binational conservation effort. On June 22, Environmental, Natural Resources and Fishing Secretary Julia Carabias of Mexico and U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt signed a joint declaration initiating a multimillion dollar project to protect water supplies in the San Pedro’s upper basin. The 264,000-acre (107,000-hectare) basin is an important stopping point for migratory birds including the green kingfisher, yellow-billed cuckoo, gray hawk, violet-crowned hummingbird and elegant trogon. On the U.S. side of the border, the federal Bureau of Land Management’s 10-year-old San Pedro River National Conservation Area, covering 56,000...
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