Mexican commercial farmers have joined a government campaign to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 2012. The Mexican government plans to spend US$60.5 million over the next three years on helping agribusinesses become greener, officials in the federal Agriculture, Ranching, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food Secretariat (Sagarpa) announced in January. The strategy, which seeks to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from agriculture by 1.6 million tons a year by 2012, won a World Bank award in the category of “sustainable development and agriculture” in December. The program is supported by a $50 million loan from the World Bank and a $10.5 million grant from the United Nations Fund for the Environment. It is part of President Felipe Calderón’s pledge to slash annual carbon emissions by 50...
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Brazil is taking its boldest step ever to combat desertification by earmarking R$500 million (US$277 million) annually to fight the problem—mainly in the poor, semi-arid northeast, the region most prone to climate-change-induced drought. At the opening this month of a three-day national conference on desertification that included representatives of 12 Brazilian ministries and 11 state governments, Environment Minister Carlos Minc announced that his ministry would begin allocating the anti-desertification funds this year. “This is the largest amount the Environment Ministry has ever disbursed to combat desertification,” says Ricardo Padilha de Castro, a desertification specialist at the Environment Ministry’s Department of Rural Sustainable Development. “In Brazil, climate change is having its worst impact in the northeastern region, the...
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Two protected areas in Brazil—a national marine park and a state park—have been named Ramsar wetlands of international importance. The new Ramsar sites are Abrolhos Marine National Park, a coral-reefed volcanic archipelago off the coast of northeastern Bahia state, and Rio Doce State Park, an Atlantic Coastal Forest area in east-central Minas Gerais state that includes 46 lakes. The Ramsar designation, intended to identify wetlands worthy of special protection, has been applied to over 1,800 sites worldwide under the Ramsar Convention, which dates from 1971. The 91,300-hectare (225,510-acre) Abrolhos Marine National Park and the 35,973-hectare (88,853-acre) Rio Doce State Park are Brazil’s tenth and eleventh Ramsar sites, respectively. The two public parks, recommended by Brazil’s environment and...
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Three Ecuadorians are suing the Copper Mesa Mining Corp. and the Toronto Stock Exchange over alleged threats and abuse against them when they demonstrated against Copper Mesa exploration activity in their region. The plaintiffs allege that the company used ex-military personnel to break blockades set up by protestors, who have denounced the project since 2004. They say Copper Mesa and also the Exchange—because it gave the company access to capital-—had a duty to avoid conduct that posed unreasonable risk of harm to others. They charge the defendants had received ample information about actions taken against opponents of the mining project...
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