Ecuadorians this month saw a new environment minister take office—María de Lourdes Luque, an academic with a social sciences and environmental-management background who has worked at nonprofits including Ecuador’s Nature Foundation. She replaces Rodolfo Rendón, who resigned after 15 months. Rendón said he had only planned to stay for a year, but the move was a surprise because he had yet to finish work on tourism, fuel-transport and fishing regulations for the Galápagos Islands. The regulations, which have yet to be made public, have been eagerly anticipated since a tanker ran aground off the Galápagos in January, spilling most of its 240,000-gallon cargo of fuel. (See “Regulators scramble following Jessica spill”—EcoAméricas, Feb. ’01). Noting that the minister had promised the...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
Distressed by unauthorized appropriation of their medicinal plants, 56 healers, or taitas, from five tribes in the Colombian Amazon have unveiled a medical code of ethics and are lobbying the world community to respect it. The document, titled “Beliefs of the Elders,” insists on the tribes’ intellectual property rights over their knowledge of medicinal plants and calls for improved legislation on bio-prospecting. It has been translated into English and sent to the World Health Organization, the World Trade Organization and the European Union, among other bodies. “We are willing to engage in negotiations involving scientific or commercial research as long as our rights are respected,” the text reads. Colombia’s government backs the effort and is helping the Indians organize a legal strategy to give...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
A ruling by a Canadian judge this month has reduced a compensation payment that Mexico had been ordered to make to California-based Metalclad Corp. for losses the company incurred in building a Mexican hazardous-waste site it never was allowed to operate. The order, made on an appeal filed by Mexico, constitutes the first domestic court review of an arbitration award granted under the foreign-investment protection clauses in Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement. It was a central topic at a meeting in Washington, D.C. on May 8 of the Mexican, U.S. and Canadian trade ministers, who are under pressure to modify the chapter. Critics say the provision subordinates health and environmental concerns to business considerations. The ruling by British...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
Five months into the new administration of President Vicente Fox, federal officials revoked a permit that the previous government had granted for a 1,451-room luxury resort bordering a sea-turtle sanctuary at X’cacel, on Mexico’s Caribbean coast. Opponents of the project said they hoped the National Ecology Institute’s April 17 annulment of the permit granted last November to a consortium led by Spanish hotel giant Sol Meliá presaged stricter controls and greater public participation in environmental decision-making. Sol Meliá and its four partner companies still may be able to realize their plan for five hotels, tennis courts, and other facilities on 405 beachfront acres (164 hectares). The ecology institute ordered a new ruling on the permit within four months, following a public consultation...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
Venezuela’s proposed Organic Environmental Code, a measure intended to overhaul and unify the country’s environmental legislation under a comprehensive law, drew praise and censure when first proposed early last year. Environmentalists liked the way the 1,000-article legislation provided for regulatory powers ranging from industrial-pollution penalties to land-use zoning. But industry considered the code a confused, hyper-detailed hodgepodge that would cause permitting delays and prompt unfair fines. Now, after months of apparent dormancy, the chronically delayed legislation is showing some signs of life. The code is being reviewed by the legal department of the Environment and Natural Resources Ministry (Marn), where Legal Counsel Rosalba Melillo and her staff are working it into shape for approval by the National Assembly. Simplifying the law...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
