A Mexican judge has ordered the country’s electric-power authority to suspend work on the 900-megawatt La Parota dam planned near the Pacific coast resort of Acapulco, handing a legal victory to farming communities and environmental activists fighting the US$1 billion project. The September decision by federal Judge Jacinto Ramos Castillejos means construction of the controversial hydroelectric station will not begin under the administration of Mexican President Vicente Fox, who leaves office Dec. 1. Ramos Castillejos ruled that work must not proceed until complaints concerning land acquisitions made for the dam and 54-square-mile (14,000-ha) reservoir on the Papagayo River are resolved. In those complaints, project opponents accuse authorities of rigging assemblies in which property owners ostensibly agreed to sell land...
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Costa Rica’s National Power and Light Company (CNFL) is one government approval away from launching a US$21 million wind-power project in the populous Central Valley. The small community of Pabellón, southwest of San José, is set to see eighteen 148-foot- (45-meter-) tall windmills erected on a 5,900-foot-high (1,800-meter) ridge. In that portion of the Central Valley, east-to-west trade winds surge over the mountains on their way to the Pacific Ocean. Technical studies show that average wind speeds at the Pabellón site during Costa Rica’s December-through-April dry season exceed six meters (20 feet) per second, the minimum velocity needed to produce electricity. “This is a huge advantage because we can offset the drop in hydroelectric...
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The UN Development Program (UNDP) is leading a campaign to provide US$15 million to help four different Indian tribes recover a part of their ancestral lands and restore their forests in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountain chain on Colombia’s Caribbean coast. Members of the Kogui, Wiwa, Arhuaco, and Kankuamo tribes have lived for thousands of years in the Sierra Nevada, the world’s highest coastal range, but small-scale ranchers, subsistence farmers and coca growers have inundated the region in recent decades. The intruders have destroyed over 85% of the native forests and degraded watersheds that are crucial to the Indians and to lowland communities, including Santa Marta and Valledupar. Meanwhile, tribal members have been assassinated by illegal guerrilla and paramilitary armies, according...
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Buoyed in its campaign to block two massive pulp projects just across the border in Uruguay, Argentina is welcoming news that one of those projects will be relocated. The Spanish company Ence announced last month that it is looking to build its US$600 million plant elsewhere in Uruguay. The company said its decision did not stem from Argentina’s environmental concerns over the two projects, located on the Uruguay River just across from the Argentine city of Gualeguaychú. Instead, it attributed the move to the logistical difficulties of operating in the same area—the Uruguayan municipality of Fray Bentos—as the US$1.2 billion million pulp mill now being built by Finland’s Metsä-Botnia. Ence got government approval for its mill earlier than Metsä-Botnia...
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