Amid mounting opposition, President Alfonso Portillo last month canceled a Guatemalan company’s contract to explore for hydrocarbons in Guatemala’s largest lake. The Atlantic Petroleum Company (CPA) of Guatemala still holds a contract for a second, contiguous concession that runs to the Sarstun River on the border of Belize. Environmentalists and residents are demanding that the government give the lake permanent protected status and also cancel the second contract on grounds that it endangers the Sarstun. “There was a revolt here over the contracts and the president did the right thing,” says Ricardo Solis, of the environmental organization Madre Selva. “But if he wants to be the friend of the environment he said he would be in his presidential campaign, he needs to finish the job...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
With the death of José Lutzenberger last month, Brazil lost one of the founders and most highly regarded leaders of its environmental movement. Lutzenberger died May 14 at the age of 75. The cause of death was heart failure brought on by respiratory problems. An agronomist, Lutzenberger began his crusade in 1971 after working 14 years for Basf, the German pesticide maker. He represented Basf in Venezuela, Morocco, China and Brazil. Convinced of the health dangers of pesticides, Lutzenberger left the company to campaign against the chemicals and to promote organic farming. He focused in particular on his birthplace, the southern farming state of Rio Grande do Sul. Lutzenberger helped found the Rio Grande do Sul Environmental Protection Association (Agapan), which he headed from 1971...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
More than $98.6% of voters in the Peruvian district of Tambogrande this month rejected a $315-million open-pit gold and copper mine planned by the Canadian-based Manhattan Minerals Corp., but it is unclear how, if at all, the local referendum will affect the project. About 75% of the district’s approximately 37,000 eligible voters turned out for the June 2 referendum, which was organized by the local government. Two weeks earlier, Jaime Quijandría, Peru’s minister of energy and mines, said the government did not consider the referendum to be binding. And Larry Glaser, chairman and CEO of Manhattan, asserts local residents could not express an informed opinion until after the company has submitted its environmental-impact study, which is due in early July. “We...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
The construction in Ecuador of a 300-mile (500-km) pipeline for heavy crude oil is advancing despite determined opposition from a variety of environmental groups, one of which recently bought land in the right of way in an attempt to halt the work. Green advocates argue that the route of what would be Ecuador’s second major crude oil pipeline must be shifted because a portion of it crosses the Mindo, a cloud-forest region that boasts some 450 bird species. In April, activists with the non-governmental group Action for Life (Acción por la Vida) acquired rights to 2,000 acres (800 hectares) of Mindo land some 28 miles (45 kms) northwest of Quito in hopes of blocking the pipeline. So far, the move has...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
