Over the objections of environmentalists and forestry professionals, Ecuador’s Environment Ministry has scrapped a newly developed system of outsourced forestry oversight, returning timber-industry supervision to government hands. The move came after Ecuador’s Constitutional Tribunal on Oct. 28 struck down key components of the outsourced forestry-control system, which experts here had praised for tightening enforcement. (See “Ruling undercuts Ecuador’s forestry reform”—EcoAméricas, Nov. ’03.) Ecuador’s Attorney General had been expected to advise whether the high-court ruling invalidated a key contract under which the Swiss company Societé Générale de Surveillance (SGS) was conducting supervisory duties such as issuing and reviewing logging permits. The contract allowed SGS to levy fees on logging activity. But government officials reassumed control of forestry oversight before the Attorney General’s...
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Canada’s Manhattan Minerals is weighing its next move in the wake of Peru’s announcement that the company had failed to meet key conditions of the option it holds to develop a mine in the northern Peruvian community of Tambogrande. The government announced late last month that it would not extend the Dec. 1 deadline for Manhattan to prove it had US$100 million in net assets and the capacity to process 10,000 tons of ore a day. Manhattan did file paperwork in time. But on Dec. 10, Centromin Perú, the state-owned mining company responsible for evaluating the submission, said Manhattan had not met the requirements and that the option agreement would be terminated. “Obviously, we are very surprised by this decision by Centromin and...
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Brazil’s Environment Ministry has launched a four-year, US$26.7-million program to control ozone-depleting chemicals present for the most part in domestic, commercial and industrial refrigerators. The government aims to begin recycling chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) by 2007 so it can stop importing them and thus not encourage their production, says Lia Marcia Silva Hora, a technical advisor at the Environment Ministry’s department of environmental quality. Brazil consumes some 6,000 tons of imported CFCs annually mainly because an estimated 36 million refrigerators here use the chemicals. CFC-based refrigerators were sold locally until 2001, when Brazil forced manufacturers to produce new models that use non-ozone-depleting substitutes. Dupont, the last chemical company to produce and sell CFCs in Brazil, stopped manufacturing the chemicals in...
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Colombia announced this month it would soon open national parks to private investment to curb a financial crisis that has left biodiversity hotspots and endangered species, such as the Cotton-top Tamarin (Saguinus oedipus) and Mountain Tapir (Tapirus pinchaque), vulnerable to loggers and hunters. Environmental authorities say that on Jan. 20 they will open bidding for restaurant, lodging and recreational concessions in three national parks and a sanctuary, a sanctuary being roughly equivalent to a national monument in the United States. They expect to auction off similar services in two additional protected areas later in 2004. Officials say the concessions move is part of an effort to improve conservation by bolstering park budgets and working with settlers near protected areas. “Our national parks system is...
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