Environmental groups seeking to halt a planned mega-development on the eastern coast of the Baja California peninsula have opened a new front in their campaign: dissuading potential investors. In an “investor risk advisory” this month, the U.S. nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council and its Mexican partner, Niparajá, take aim at Cabo Cortés, a 3,800-hectare (9,400-acre)tourism and real estate complex proposed by the Spanish developer Hansa Urbana. Environmental groups argue Cabo Cortés would threaten Cabo Pulmo National Park, a marine reserve some 11 kilometers (6.8 miles) south that is home to the Gulf of California’s only living coral reef. Since the park was founded in 1995, its once-diminished marine life has shown greater gains than those of any other marine reserve...
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A year ago, President Dilma Rousseff launched Brazil’s Strategic Border Plan to curb illegal logging, gold mining and cocaine trafficking. Since then, four enforcement crackdowns have been conducted under the plan, and authorities say they’ve helped prevent the expansion of environmentally destructive activities in frontier regions, particularly in the Amazon. The latest Agatha 4 operation took place this month. In it, 8,500 troops and several hundred evironmental-enforcement agents were sent to Brazil’s northern border with Venezuela, Suriname, French Guiana and Guyana. It was the largest-ever Brazilian troop deployement. Unlike the three earlier Agatha operations, which focused primarily on drug traffickers, Agatha 4 targeted illegal Amazon gold mining. It resulted in the closure of five illegal gold mining operations and the discovery of 10...
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Banks whose lending takes social and environmental benefits and risks into account are outperforming traditional mainstream banks in such key areas as return on assets, growth in loans and deposits and capital strength, according to a recent report. The report, published in March, was commissioned by the Amsterdam-based Global Alliance for Banking on Values (GABV), a network of 15 of the world’s leading so-called sustainable banks. Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and GABV, it compared the performance of 17 sustainable-lending banks with 29 of the world’s largest and most influential banks between 2007 and 2010. Those 29 Global Systemically Important Financial Institutions (G-SIFI) were defined as “too big to fail” banks, among them Bank of America, JP Morgan, Barclays, Citicorp and...
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Chile has declared a coastal temperate rainforest preserve near the southern city of Valdivia a new national park. Called the Alerce Costero National Park, the approximately 25,000-hectare (62,000-acre) park will include 9,500 hectares (23,500 acres) donated by international environmental group The Nature Conservancy (TNC). “This park will help protect the ancient alerce trees of the coastal region and boost the socioeconomic development of nearby communities, completing the work that The Nature Conservancy has developed in this area over the past eight years,” says Francisco Solís, TNC’s representative in Chile. The park, officially established in February, forms part of a larger temperate-forest area that TNC and another global environmental organization, WWF, have helped put under protection. In 2003, when the Bosques forestry company...
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