An Argentine congressional panel was scheduled this month to consider a controversial nuclear-cooperation agreement under which Australia could send spent nuclear fuel to Argentina for processing despite an Argentine constitutional ban on the importation of nuclear waste. Prompting that accord was a $180 million contract that Argentina’s Institute for Applied Investigations (Invap) won in June 2000 to build a research reactor for the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization (Ansto). As part of the deal, Invap agreed that, if needed, it would receive the reactor’s spent fuel, vitrify it, then return it to Australia for disposal. Though Argentina’s constitution prohibits the importation of nuclear waste, Invap’s commitment was authorized under a nuclear-cooperation accord Argentina and Australia signed on Aug. 8 of last year...
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Environment Minister José Sarney Filho has left office as part of the withdrawal this month of Brazil’s Liberal Front Party (PFL) from the country’s governing coalition. The right-wing PFL bowed out after accusing President Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s centrist Social Democratic Party (PSDB) of instigating a March 1 police raid on a company owned by PFL presidential candidate Roseana Sarney and her husband, Jorge Murad. Federal police were looking into the alleged misuse of government development funds. After obtaining a search warrant, they investigated the offices of the company, which finances agricultural projects, and reportedly seized $1.5 million reais ($600,000) in cash. Roseana Sarney, the governor of Maranhão state, is running second in presidential-preference polls. After the raid she issued an ultimatum to her...
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The state oil company Petrobras, plagued by a series of environmentally damaging oil spills in the past two years, is adding more than $200 million to its so-called Pegasus anti-pollution effort, boosting total spending on the program to $1.215 billion. Pegasus, launched in 2000 and slated to end next year, is intended to upgrade oil pipelines and improve spill detection—in part by automating pipeline monitoring. It also seeks to bolster spill response by stockpiling cleanup equipment at or near facilities. Now Petrobras is boosting Pegasus by $215 million. The increase is largely to ensure all pipelines—not just those in sensitive areas—are automatically monitored by 2004. But the increase also includes $15 million for 3-D survey equipment to gauge soil...
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Ibama, Brazil’s environmental-enforcement agency, has dismissed one of its regional managers and is investigating 18 employees after discovering alleged irregularities in regional offices in south Bahia State. The action came after the Atlantic Forest Network, an association of 230 environmental groups, wrote Ibama President Hamilton Nobre Casara and then-Environment Minister José Sarney Filho that Ibama branches in Eunápolis, Teixeira de Freitas and Ilhéus illegally authorized clearing in the Atlantic Forest. In a Jan. 9 letter, the network also accused the agency’s southern Bahia authorities of failing to stop real estate speculation in fragile coastal areas, illegal dumping and trafficking in endangered animals. Amid the ensuing controversy, Ibama on Jan. 30 dismissed Valmirando de Oliveira Brito, the agency’s executive manager for the Eunápolis office...
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A two-year-old citizens’ complaint filed with the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) against Mexico is a step closer to resolution. Filed in June 2000 by the Chihuahua Commission in Solidarity and Defense of Human Rights (Cosyddhac) and the Texas Center for Policy Studies (TCPS), the complaint alleges that the Mexican Attorney General’s Office for Environmental Protection (Profepa) failed to protect the environmental interests of Chihuahua’s indigenous inhabitants by neglecting to act on complaints of illegal logging in the Sierra Madre mountains. The CEC is now deciding whether to prepare a “factual record,” a detailed report that does not result in penalties but is meant to prompt improvements by drawing public attention to a case. Cosyddhac organizer María Teresa Guerrero says Profepa...
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