Ruling in one of its most important environmental cases in years, Colombia’s highest court has overturned a forestry law that critics said would open vast tracts of primary forests to commercial logging. The Jan. 23 decision by Colombia’s Constitutional Court to throw out the 2006 General Law of Forestry marked a huge victory for a national coalition of Indian, Afro-Colombian and environmental organizations. The coalition had challenged the law, arguing it would endanger the country’s 158 million acres (64 million has) of primary forest—nearly half of which belongs to Afro-Colombian and Indian groups. (See “Colombian bill to boost logging causes alarm”—EcoAméricas, Oct. ’05, and “Uribe sends timber law back to Congress”—EcoAméricas, Jan. ’06.) Ruling on largely procedural grounds, the court...
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Mexican environmental groups are panning President Felipe Calderón’s choice to head Mexico’s foremost environmental-enforcement office, charging that the appointee, a former governor, has little known interest in—or knowledge of—green issues. Calderón named Patricio Patrón to head the Federal Attorney’s Office for Environmental Protection (Profepa) on Jan. 18. A member of the president’s center-right National Action Party, Patrón was governor of the southern state of Yucatán from 2001 to 2007. Earlier, he was mayor of the state capital of Mérida and a member of the state congress. Yucatán green activists charge that deforestation in the state, as well as chaotic urban growth around Mérida, accelerated during Patrón’s watch. But the primary criticism of Patrón’s appointment, leveled by a national network of non...
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After a post-inaugural summer vacation, Argentine President Cristina Kirchner used her first official appearance of 2008 to propose a cleanup of the Salí-Dulce basin, one of Argentina’s most important watersheds. Kirchner announced the initiative last month with the governors of the five provinces that share the 22,000-square-mile (57,000-sq-km) watershed—Catamarca, Córdoba, Salta, Santiago del Estero and Tucumán. The objective is to reduce pollution from Tucumán sugar mills and other plants blamed for harming water quality in Santiago del Estero’s Río Hondo reservoir. (See “Argentine protests target sugar-mill waste”—EcoAméricas, Feb. ’07.) It calls for a watershed commission and incentives to induce plants to install pollution-control equipment. “Businesses must have a different investment—in environmental preservation,” Kirchner said...
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For years, the Emberá-Katío Indians fought plans by the Colombian government to build a 350-megawatt hydroelectric dam along the Sinú River that would supply much-needed energy to the national grid, prevent winter flooding of the Sinú Valley—and permanently inundate large expanses of farm and pastureland. When the 2,500-member tribe lost its battle in 1999 and the government built the US$750 million Urrá dam on the Sinú, displacing hundreds of Emberá and killing off 80% of their fishing resources, the Emberá tried to find comfort in a promise: The government pledged in writing not to build a larger dam being planned, the 860-megawatt Urrá II. Now the government seemingly has gone back on its word. It says it wants...
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