A decade of conflict over the Spanish-owned company Endesa’s plans for a 570-megawatt hydroelectric dam on the Bío-Bío River in central Chile has ended now that the Chilean government has brokered an accord with four longtime holdout indigenous families in the project area. For leaving their land, each of the four Pehuenche families will receive $298,000 and 190 acres (77 hectares) of similar property elsewhere. They join 87 other Pehuenche families that have accepted compensation for land Endesa needed in order to carry out the $600 million project, which already is over 90% complete. Under the Sept. 17 agreement, the government promises to compensate 10 other indigenous families indirectly affected by the dam. It also pledges to press Chile’s Congress to approve...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
On paper at least, Brazil’s storehouse of conservation lands expanded significantly last month as two states, Amapá and Amazonas, announced they are earmarking vast tracts of rainforest for protection. The announcements were made at the World Parks Congress in Durban, South Africa, a 10-day meeting that was organized by the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and attracted 2,500 attendees from around the world. The bigger of the two conservation initiatives was unveiled by Amapá, which is creating a biodiversity corridor covering 24.7 million acres (10 million hectares), or 54% of the state—an area the size of Portugal. The biodiversity corridor, consisting largely of tropical rainforest, is to be set up by year’s end. Added to existing protected areas in Amapá, it will bring the...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
The top environmental officials of Canada, Mexico and the United States have named the members of a committee charged with conducting a 10-year review of the environmental side-accord to the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). One of the panel’s six members, Robert Page of Canada, says the Trade and Assessment Review Committee (Trac) will have until next summer to complete the review. “We are to have a draft report by the end of April and our mandate will be up in June,” says Page, vice-president of sustainable development at TransAlta, a power-generation company in Calgary, Alberta. The environmental side-accord, called the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC), took effect alongside Nafta on Jan. 1, 1993. It created the...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
An Argentine agricultural school is manufacturing biodiesel fuel from used vegetable oil donated by restaurants and supermarkets, producing enough of the stuff to run the school’s two tractors and two busses. The 690-student Agricultural School, located in the city of Tres Arroyos some 310 miles (500 kms) south of Buenos Aires, is making the fuel very much out of necessity. Because of Argentina’s ongoing economic crisis, the government of Buenos Aires province announced last year that it could not continue paying the fuel bills for the school’s student-transport program. So the school built a bare-bones biodiesel plant—since improved, thanks to a US$16,500 grant from the provincial government—that now processes over 1,320 gallons (5,000 liters) of used vegetable oil each...
[ Log in to read more | Subscribe ]
