A Brazilian court has ordered the government to pay the Panará Indians $330,000, ruling that construction of a road across their land in the 1970s led to a devastating decline in the tribe’s population. The Socioenvironmental Institute (ISA), the São Paulo nonprofit that represented the Panará, says the ruling marks the first time the government has been ordered to indemnify an indigenous people. “It sets a precedent that other indigenous peoples can use to seek financial redress for actions that result in the decimation of their communities,” says ISA attorney Ana Valeria Araujo Leitao. The federal court ruled the road lead settlers, loggers, and miners to the Panará, bringing diseases against which the tribe had no immunity. The defendants—the Federal Indian Agency (Funai) and...
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A hotly debated plan to alter the mission of the North American Development Bank (NADB) is now in the hands of the bank’s directors, but there’s no deadline for a decision. Bank managers recently drew fire when they proposed expanding both the geographic scope of NADB operations and the types of infrastructure projects the bank may fund. (See “Development bank’s loan plans irk border experts”—EcoAméricas, September ’00.) Under the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) side-accord that created the bank, the NADB currently is limited to financing water, wastewater, and solid waste projects within a 60-mile (100-km) zone on each side of the U.S.-Mexican border. The bank has argued that due to difficult economic conditions on the border, a larger...
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A new environment minister has taken office in Venezuela—for the third time in less than two years. The new minister, Anaelisa Osorio Granado, a 49-year-old medical doctor who was previously Vice-Minister of Health and Social Development, took her post as head of the Environment and Natural Resources Ministry (Marn) last month. She replaces Jesús Arnaldo Pérez, whose effectiveness came under question. Even opponents of the government respect Osorio. She helped reorganize the Health and Social Development Ministry, set health policy, and led a national AIDS study. Still, some consider the turnover at Marn and Osorio’s scant environmental expertise disquieting. President Hugo Chávez disagrees. Asked recently why a doctor should head Marn, he said: “Health is directly affected to the environment.” Osorio’s...
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The oil spill this month in northern Peru’s Marañon River has prompted criticism of Pluspetrol, the Argentine company leading the high-profile Camisea natural gas project. Some 5,000 barrels of crude entered the Marañon after a Peruvian Navy barge contracted by Pluspetrol sank Oct. 3. The accident left thousands of people without drinking water and experts feared it would harm the rainforest environment along the Marañon and possibly downstream in the Amazon. Pluspetrol distributed food, water and medicine, but local mayors charge supplies were insufficient and that for days clean-up consisted of paying residents to go out in canoes and scoop up oil in buckets. “Pluspetrol’s response has been highly irresponsible,” says Robinson Rivadeneyra, member of the environment commission in Peru’s Congress. “The company...
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When Mexicans burn trash, they unwittingly contribute to the elevated concentration of cancer-causing dioxins in the milk of Inuit mothers in the Canadian Arctic. A study released this month tracks dioxins from sources in North America to the Nunavut territory of Canada, and suggests policy steps to reduce their impact on the environment and human health. The study, “Long-range Air Transport of Dioxin from North American Sources to Ecologically Vulnerable Receptors in Nunavut, Arctic Canada,” was conducted for the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) by environmentalist Barry Commoner and his team at the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems, Queens College, New York. The researchers used a U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration model to describe for the first time...
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Brazil has pulled ahead of China in its number of threatened mammal species and is second only to Indonesia in threatened bird species, according to the World Conservation Union (IUCN) 2000 Red List of Threatened Species. The world’s threatened birds are concentrated in tropical Central and South America and in Southeast Asia, while plant species are declining rapidly in these regions as well, according to the biodiversity assessment, released before this month’s Second World Conservation Congress in Amman, Jordan. To address the crisis, the IUCN must seek a wide range of partners, develop strong ties with governments and local communities, and engage the private sector, the report says. Indonesia has the most threatened mammal species—135. India has 80, followed by Brazil with 75 and...
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