Chile is preparing tough new norms to curb emissions from the nation’s thermoelectric plants. The new rules, announced last month and now subject to a public-hearings process, have won praise from green groups and drawn heavy criticism from industry and from Chilean Energy Minister Marcelo Tokman. Complaining publicly that the regulations are “stricter than the norms of the European Union,” Tokman is lobbying the executive branch to soften the rules before giving them final approval. He asserts that to comply, energy producers here will have to invest a total of US$1 billion. Said Tokman in a Jan. 8 interview with the Santiago daily El Mercurio: “We have spoken with [environmental authorities], and we want to contract someone to do a technical study to...
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With the United Nations dubbing 2010 the “International Year of Biodiversity,” environmental groups worldwide are spotlighting species loss—now occurring at 1,000 times the natural rate. Latin America, not surprisingly, occupies center stage. Of the world’s ten most biodiverse countries, five are in Latin America—Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Mexico and Ecuador. And the region has some of the highest concentrations of threatened species, including the greatest number of threatened amphibians and one of the greatest varieties of threatened birds. That’s largely because of widespread land clearing caused by agricultural expansion, logging and infrastructure development, as well as other factors including the introduction of invasive species. Such trends will be on the agenda in October, when green groups and government officials convene in Nagoya, Japan for...
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Peru’s designation in December of three new protected areas-- two in northern Amazonas cloud forest and a third covering a string of coastal islands and peninsulas—has boosted the country’s conservation lands to 19,380,000 hectares (74,830 square miles). The cabinet approved designation of the cloud-forest areas on Dec. 10, creating the 39,237-hectare (96,956-acre) Cordillera de Colán National Sanctuary and the neighboring 23,597-hectare (58,309-acre) Chayu Nain Communal Reserve in a mountainous area inhabited by Awajún people. Under Peruvian law, national sanctuaries are designed to protect “the habitat of a species or community of flora and fauna, as well as natural formations of scientific and scenic interest.” Communal reserves are conservation areas where local residents, usually indigenous communities, can use the natural...
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The Human Rights Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law has presented the United Nations a report detailing a history of environmental and health impacts from a lead-smelting facility in an Argentine indigenous community near the Bolivian border. At issue is the impact of Metal Huasi, a lead-smelting plant that for nearly 30 years operated in Abra Pampa, a community of 14,000 in Argentina’s Jujuy Province. When the plant closed its doors in 1987, it left behind piles of lead-tainted waste from which windblown dust fouled the air and nearby soils. The report, titled “Abra Pampa: A Community Polluted, a Community Ignored. The Struggle for Environmental and Health Rights in Argentina,” asserts Argentine authorities failed to act for decades on...
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