Despite grave problems of air and water pollution at its current Colombian mine, Drummond Coal will soon begin construction of a new 100,000-acre (40,000-ha) coal mine in northeastern Colombia which company officials say will be the biggest open-pit mine in the world. The new US$1.5 billion El Descanso Norte mine is expected to boost Drummond’s annual exports of mined thermal coal from an average of 70 million tons to 100 million tons, increasing Colombia’s gross domestic product by as much as 4%. That would propel Colombia to the third spot among world coal exporters, ahead of Russia and behind Australia and Indonesia. “We will [soon] be exporting $10 billion annually in coal [from Colombia],” says Augusto Jiménez, the president of Colombia...
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Small farmers, indigenous leaders and environmentalists in Mexico are demanding that federal and Chihuahua state authorities take stronger measures to curb the unauthorized planting of genetically modified corn in the northern border state. Protests intensified this fall after the federal Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fishing and Food (Sagarpa) confirmed the presence of a transgenic corn strain on about 180 acres (70 has) of cropland in Chihuahua. In one action, members of Greenpeace Mexico dressed in space suits dumped corn cobs at the Sagarpa offices in Chihuahua City. Calling the planting of gene-altered corn in Mexico a “grave crime” under the country’s current biosafety law and regulations, Sagarpa said in a statement that the Chihuahua case has been turned over to the Attorney...
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Chilean President Michelle Bachelet has signed a bill into law declaring the waters off the country’s coast a sanctuary for whales, dolphins and porpoises. The new law covers the waters of Chile’s Exclusive Economic Zone, which extends 200 nautical miles from the country’s 3,400-mile-long coastline, and reaches 350 miles outward from Easter Island and other outlying Pacific islands that belong to Chile. Encompassing about 5.3 million square miles (13.7 million sq kms) Chile’s exclusion zone is said to be one of the world’s largest. “This is an historic milestone for Chile and the conservation of species,” says Juan Carlos Cárdenas, executive director of the Santiago-based nonprofit Ecoceanos. “It also demonstrates that the informed participation of an organized citizenry can generate changes toward...
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Looking to preserve Argentina’s vast temperate grasslands, the U.S.-based environmental organization The Nature Conservancy has opened its first office in Argentina to spur the effort. Temperate grasslands, which harbor biodiversity, store carbon and help stave off desertification, have come under pressure in Argentina for reasons ranging from the spread of monoculture farming to unsustainable ranching. Though Uruguay and Brazil possess significant amounts of temperate grassland, Argentina has the greatest expanse of the habitat, which The Nature Conservancy describes as among the least protected in the world. Spanning a variety of eco-regions, the grasslands in Argentina are found in areas including the Patagonian steppe, where sheep ranching is common, and the humid pampa, a prime farming area where land-use pressures are particularly intense...
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