Venezuela last month ended the sale of leaded gasoline here, becoming the last major Latin American country to do so. The milestone was greeted with varied reviews. The state oil company Petroleum of Venezuela (PDVSA) hailed the removal of lead, added to gasoline for decades to boost octane and stop engine knock, as an environmental breakthrough. “The Bolivarian government has applied the measure—the eradication of tetraethyl lead—to place itself at the vanguard in terms of world regulations on environmental issues,” the company said in a national advertising campaign. PDVSA refers to unleaded fuel as “ecological gasoline.” Green advocates describe the removal of leaded fuel—and the toxic pollution it produced—as an isolated bright spot in an otherwise grim environmental picture here. “It...
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A Colombian regional court has ordered the suspension of the first phase of a US$21 million urban-renewal project in Cartagena that environmentalists say would destroy mangrove swamps, endangering dozens of species of birds, mammals, reptiles and fish. Deciding a suit filed by an anonymous citizen, the court ruled last month that the first phase of the project in the prized, 472-year-old Caribbean port was being carried out illegally because project organizers had failed to hold public hearings and notify authorities as required by law. Cardique, the local environmental authority for Bolívar Department, where Cartagena is located, filed an appeal on Aug. 16. That appeal could put Bolívar, which approved the first phase of the project and joined Cartagena’s municipal government in...
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On paper, Brazil has well-established ground rules defining what land uses are and are not permitted in national parks, biological reserves and other protected areas. Land-use restrictions are vague, however, when it comes to Areas of Permanent Environmental Protection (APPs), which are open urban or rural lands lying along rivers and lakes, in river-headwaters areas or on mountaintops or slopes exceeding 45 degrees. To resolve that problem, Brazil’s National Environmental Council (Conama) is drafting land-use rules for APPs, which typically are forested, environmentally sensitive and erosion-prone. The effort could have far-reaching economic implications depending on how restrictive or permissive the regulations turn out to be. Already, the Conama initiative has prompted a legal battle, which culminated in a Supreme...
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Argentina’s lack of adequate hazardous-waste treatment and incineration capacity was underscored last month when the city government of Buenos Aires put six metric tons of dated rat poison aboard a ship bound for Belgium. The poison, consisting of 13,029 pounds (5,910 kilos) of hexachlorocyclohexane and 1,197 pounds (543 kilos) of thallium sulfate, had been caught in bureaucratic limbo since 1996, when its owner—the city government—found that its expiration date had passed. The city failed to find a legal means of disposing of the poison in Argentina. So in the meantime, the poison was stored in a warehouse in a Buenos Aires ecological reserve. Last month, however, city officials had the poison sent to Belgium for incineration at a total cost of about...
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