Authorities in Chile’s Aysén region this month charged five men in the theft of 5.2 metric tons of glacier ice from the Jorge Montt Glacier at Bernardo O’Higgins National Park. Chilean police say that in late January they stopped a refrigerated truck in connection with a traffic violation near the town of Cochrane, and found it contained glacier ice. They say the company operating the truck intended to sell the ice to upscale bars and restaurants in Santiago. Police say the company, whose name has not been released, intended to market the ice as “ancient ice,” and was researching the possibility of exporting “ancient water” in bottles to Europe. Said a police spokesman: “As there is no evidence of a prior export, it’s safe to...
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A push to harness rivers on the eastern flank of the Andes for hydropower risks interrupting the flow of nutrients into the Amazon basin and breaking vital connections between Andean and Amazonian ecosystems, according to a new study. The findings point to a need for basin-wide planning instead of project-by-project impact evaluations, according to Matt Finer of Save America’s Forests and the Center for International Environmental Law, one of the authors of the paper, which was published April 18 in the online journal PlosOne. They also highlight potential future threats to the cloud forest along the western rim of the Amazon basin, an area of high biological diversity with many endemic species about which scientists say they know relatively little. The study’s...
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The World Bank has approved a pioneering US$300.75 million loan to Mexico to help that country strengthen the “social resilience” of low-income and indigenous communities confronting climate change. Granted by the bank’s board on March 1, the loan is earmarked for mitigation and adaptation projects ranging from wetlands restoration to community forestry in 3,000 indigenous communities and 250 municipalities, especially in the states of Campeche, Quintana Roo and Yucatán. What the World Bank approved is known as a “development policy” loan, a type of financing that typically is disbursed quickly to help the recipient government carry out policy and institutional reforms. Bank executives say that Mexico’s credit is the first such loan it has ever made to help low-income communities respond to...
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Peruvian President Ollanta Humala this month gave the green light to the controversial Minas Conga mining project in northern Peru, but said the government would insist on some of the modifications recommended by three outside hydrology and mining experts. In a speech on April 20, Humala said the government would guarantee that communities near the mine site in the Cajamarca region would have sufficient water year-round. Local opposition to the mine—where construction was suspended on Nov. 29 because of protests—has centered on fears that it would dry up water sources in a boggy, lake-studded area more than 12,000 feet (3,700 meters) above sea level. Opponents in the Cajamarca region announced that they would give the national government until the end of...
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