Environmentalists charge deforestation and construction on the slopes of the Balsamo Mountains contributed to the massive landslide that killed hundreds of people in the Las Colinas neighborhood of Santa Tecla, just south of San Salvador, during El Salvador’s Jan. 13 earthquake. They say they talked for years about the need to protect the Balsamo Mountains, calling on government authorities to halt construction work there. “We said there’s going to be an earthquake and it would collapse, and it collapsed,” says Ricardo Navarro of the Salvadoran Center for Appropriate Technology, Cesta. Officials at the Environment Ministry reject the assertions. They say there were landslides throughout the country, regardless of tree cover. “Deforestation had nothing to do with it,” says Edgar Hasbun, an advisor to the ministry...
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After seven months of work, a bipartisan panel of lawyers appointed by the Chilean National Environmental Commission (Conama) to study the six-year-old Base Environmental Law has released a report containing a menu of recommendations. Among the main proposals: eliminate Environmental Impact Declarations (required of projects with little environmental impact); grant expanded powers to Conama’s legal department; set new limits on projects subject to environmental-impact evaluation; and provide new planning instruments such as environmental audits and certification. Regarding the future of Conama, there was no agreement on whether the agency eventually should be given ministerial status. Lawyers representing the business sector argued that Conama should remain as a coordinating agency under the office of the Chilean presidency. Marcelo Castillo, an environmental attorney and...
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An Amazon indigenous tribe has rejected a proposal by the federal environmental agency Ibama that would encourage ecotourism on their lands. Ibama is trying to stimulate ecotourism at the adjacent Mount Roraima National Park, a seldom-visited park on the Brazilian-Venezuelan border that is the site of Brazil’s fourth highest mountain. Under its plan, ecotourism agencies would helicopter hikers close to the base of the 9,432-foot (2,875-meter) mountain or to another location, from which they could trek across the park boundary to several villages of the Ingariko people. The 1,900-strong Ingariko recently rebuffed both aspects of Ibama’s proposal, however. They consider Mount Roraima the resting place of their ancestors and the sacred home of their gods. In November, following a general...
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Paraguay, lagging behind its Latin American neighbors in creating a federal environmental authority, is taking steps to catch up. On Dec. 28, President Luís Ángel González Macchi’s office announced a $10-million program to put into effect the National Environmental System created by Congress in June. The initiative is intended to implement environmental mandates set by the Constitution as well as international conventions on climate change, biological diversity and endangered-species protection. Integral to it is the creation, also approved by Congress, of a National Environmental Council and an Environment Secretariat. To date, environmental policy has been overseen piecemeal by the agriculture, interior and public health ministries. Now that the new environmental system has a budget, authorities say their first step will be to organize...
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Chile’s lead environmental agency has been given 60 days to respond to a complaint that it failed to enforce the country’s environmental laws when it approved a major timber-processing project in 1998. In the case, filed under the environmental complaints procedure approved as part of Chile’s 1997 free-trade agreement with Canada, Chilean and North American green groups claim the environmental impact statement (EIS) of the Cascada Chile project was illegal. While Cascada Chile’s EIS addressed potential impacts of its processing facility and port on the southern Chilean harbor town of Ilque, it failed to gauge the project’s impact on the surrounding native forests, the complaint argues. The $180 million Cascada Chile project, a joint venture of U.S. timber giant Boise Cascade and Chile’s...
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Speaking of complaints... The Secretariat of the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) has recommended a factual record be developed in a case concerning U.S. policy on migratory birds. Environmental groups from Mexico, Canada and the United States complained to the CEC that the United States violates its own laws by allowing loggers to kill migratory birds without a permit. They say the government illegally exempts logging operations from the provisions of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which is aimed at protecting migratory birds. In a decision announced Jan. 15, the CEC Secretariat recommended to the tri-national agency’s governing Council that a factual record be prepared. It is now up to the CEC Council to decide whether that step will be taken...
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