After six months of uncertainty and a violent protest that left a police officer dead, Peru’s Congress has granted a 30-month extension for environmental mitigation work at a major smelter in the central highland city of La Oroya. Doe Run, a subsidiary of the privately held U.S.-based Renco Group, had cut back on operations and finally shut down its smelter in June because of economic problems. In February, three banks had cut off the line of credit Doe Run used to pay mining companies that supply it with ore concentrate for processing. The smelter, which processes lead, zinc and copper, has a history of environmental problems dating from its opening in the 1920s. When Doe Run bought the complex in 1997, its environmental...
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A new report drawing on cases from countries including Brazil, Peru and Argentina reaches this conclusion: “Journalists who specialize in the environment are on the front line of a new war.” In its report, titled The Dangers for Journalists who Expose Environmental Issues, the Paris-based international nonprofit Reporters Without Borders highlights harassment of journalists around the world. “The conflicts between journalists and polluters are too many and too varied to be listed,” stated the document, issued in September. “The violence... reflects the new issues that have assumed an enormous political and geo-strategic importance.” Three incidents cited in the study involved reporters in Brazil. Vilmar Berna, editor of the environmental daily Jornal do Meio Ambiente based near Rio de Janeiro, found a bloody, half...
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Mexico’s National Water Commission (Conagua) announced this month that Mexico City’s three main reservoirs would start 2010 at 20% below their optimal levels, the result of Mexico’s worst drought in 60 years. The seven reservoirs that feed the Cutzamala water system, one of the world’s largest potable water networks. The system each year pipes 480 million cubic meters of water into the Valley of Mexico, home to the sprawling federal district as well as densely populated areas outside the capital’s boundaries. Lately, the Cutzamala reservoirs have dipped to levels that earlier this year marked an 18-year low, forcing the government to institute a regimen of cuts that at times have left poor neighborhoods on the city outskirts without running water for weeks. Officials say...
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Brazil’s Environment Ministry has launched a second phase of its Amazon Region Protected Areas (Arpa) program by pledging to expand the initiative in size, duration and scope. The program, begun in 2003, was designed to protect 50 million hectares (123.6 million acres), or 10% of the Brazilian Amazon, by 2012. Now, on the eve of the second phase of the three-phase program, Arpa aims to conserve 60 million hectares (148.3 million acres), or 12% of the Brazilian Amazon, by 2017. While Arpa initially prioritized biodiversity protection, it will now factor in climate-change mitigation in choosing what areas of the Amazon to safeguard. In Arpa’s first phase, during 2003-09, the program raised US$73.4 million from the World Bank’s Global Environment Facility (GEF), the...
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