Mexico’s Environment and Natural Resources Secretariat (Semarnat) thanked Congress late last month for “approving and improving” the first environmental reform package in the year-old administration of President Vicente Fox. Last-minute changes to the administration’s bills, made by the lower house’s Ecology Commission at the urging of non-governmental organizations, resulted in, among other things, a requirement for periodic public disclosure of toxic industrial emissions—chemical-by-chemical, site-by-site. This reform of the General Ecological Equilibrium and Environmental Protection Law (LGEEPA) responds to the federal government’s commitment under the environmental side-accord of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) to institute a Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (PRTR) comparable to those in effect in the United States and Canada. After the...
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Environmental progress in the three North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) nations is jeopardized by population growth, consumer tastes for bigger automobiles and government budget cuts in green regulations, according to the Montreal-based North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC). In its first broad review of the state of North America’s environment, the CEC this month cited a wide variety of government studies and academic research, addressing such issues as air, water, forests, wildlife, pesticides, soils and toxics. “Our report shows that over the past few decades, the loss and alteration of habitat has become the main threat to biodiversity,” says Janine Ferretti, executive director of the three-nation CEC, established as an independent commission under Nafta’s environmental side accord. In discussing Mexico, the...
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Due to environmental-licensing delays, construction has been held up for 26 of 68 thermoelectric plants that Brazil’s government had approved in hopes they’d be built by 2005. Officials with Aneel, Brazil’s electric-power regulatory agency, attribute the delays mainly to inadequate environmental impact statements submitted by the companies building the plants. “Companies wanting to build thermoelectric plants routinely hire unqualified firms to prepare environmental-impact statements on their projects, either because these firms offer low prices or because the hiring companies don’t know what firms are best qualified to prepare such statements,” says Cristiano Amaral, head of Aneel’s inspection department for power-generation projects. Jorge Luiz Reis, Ibama’s licensing director for energy generation, says some of the impact statements were “sloppily done“ and “lack...
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The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) has designated two archipelagos and two savanna tracts as World Heritage sites in Brazil. Meeting Dec. 13 in Helsinki, Finland, Unesco officials announced a number of natural areas as heritage sites in Latin America, including Cuba’s Alejandro de Humboldt National Park and the marine reserve surrounding Ecuador’s Galápagos islands. But the bulk of the designations in the region involved Brazil, where four natural areas were selected: - Fernando de Noronha archipelago, a marine park 215 miles (345 kms) off northeastern Rio Grande do Norte state; - the Rocas atoll biological reserve, 92 miles west of Fernando de Noronha; - Chapada dos Veadeiros Park, 160 miles (260 kms) north of Brasília in Goías state; - Parque das Emas, 435 miles (700...
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