Government officials from four Southern Cone nations—Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay—convened in Montevideo last month to launch a four-year, $26.8 million program aimed at safeguarding the Guaraní Aquifer, one of the world’s largest underground sources of fresh water. The 460,000-square-mile (1.2 million-sq-km) Guaraní Aquifer underlies portions of all four countries, with 71% of it in southern and western Brazil, 19% in northeastern Argentina, 6% in eastern Paraguay and 4% in northwestern Uruguay. The vast majority of water users in those areas currently rely on river water, but the aquifer is expected to play an increasingly prominent role in the future. Until now, the Guaraní Aquifer has been managed by the respective national governments—or in Brazil’s case, by...
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Colombia’s Indians last month won a partial victory when the nation’s highest court ruled the government must consult with them on fumigating drug crops found in their territories. The Indians argue that the nation’s 1990 Constitution, which empowers them to manage their natural resources, criminal justice and other key affairs, permits them to decide the terms of drug eradication. But the government maintained that exempting Indian territory would create a haven for the guerrilla and paramilitary armies that produce drugs, making Indians more vulnerable to armed attack. In its ruling, the country’s Constitutional Court ordered the government to negotiate coca- and poppy-eradication with tribal authorities over the next three months and directed two watchdog agencies that have been critical of aerial spraying—the National...
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Mexico’s Environment and Natural Resources Secretariat (Semarnat) has rejected plans for Oaxaca state’s first industrial shrimp farm—a 1,000-acre (400-hectare) complex on a coastal estuary near the indigenous Zapotec town of Unión Hidalgo, in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The local environmental group Gubiña XXI and community fishermen have opposed the farm since the project was announced in April 2001. They argue mangrove destruction and water pollution from large-scale shrimp farming would threaten the environment and thus the local economy, which is based on the sale of fish, wild shrimp, hearts of palm, palm fronds, firewood and salt. The shrimp operation, proposed by Aquaculture Development, was to be the first in a series of six industrial-scale shrimp farms that would be built...
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Armed with new information on illegal logging, Costa Rican Environment Minister Carlos Manuel Rodríguez has ordered a five-month logging ban in partially-forested pasturelands located in 14 municipalities in the country’s northern, eastern and Caribbean zones. The ban applies to landowners seeking permits to log partially deforested areas used for cattle grazing and crops. It follows a recent study by the Environment and Energy Ministry (Minae) and the Foundation for Development of the Central Volcanic Range (Fundecor) that found most illegal logging has been occurring on partially forested pastureland and areas bordering primary and secondary forests—not, as officials had believed, in forests covered by timber-management programs. Costa Rica’s 1996 Forestry Law allows logging permits for three purposes: tree-plantation operations, forestry management...
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