Nicaragua moved one step closer to fulfilling a two-centuries-old ambition when its National Assembly this month approved legislation granting a 50-year concession to a Hong Kong-based company to build a cross-country shipping canal from the Caribbean to the Pacific. The Nicaraguan government claims the US$40 billion project, intended to compete with the Panama Canal, will capture 4.5% of global maritime freight traffic, double the per-capita gross domestic product of the country and help pull Nicaragua out of poverty. But critics say too little is known about the sources of financing, the route, the economic viability of the project and HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Company (HKDN), which was granted the 50-year concession. With no environmental-impact study...
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For centuries, indigenous groups in the Amazon have employed fire as an essential tool of rotational agriculture, using it to clear the land for crops, kill weeds and make the soil more workable. They have set fires to stimulate the growth of palm groves attractive to herds of wild pigs and of grasses suited for thatching roofs. But in recent years, indigenous groups in the Upper Xingu river basin in northern Brazil have noticed a disturbing phenomenon. Fires intended to clear the floodplain savannas and scrub forests do not extinguish themselves as readily as they once did. Instead, they quickly spread to the humid rainforests, damaging them and making them less resistant to drought. “Starting in 2000, the fires don’t put themselves out anymore ... We...
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U.S. clothing entrepreneur Douglas Tompkins has donated another of his estancias to the Argentine government so it can become part of Argentina’s national park system. In this case, the donated land is a 15,000-hectare (37,000-acre) tract called El Rincón, located at the foot of the Andes in the Patagonian province of Santa Cruz. The property is a gateway to the south face of San Lorenzo peak, a treacherous slope of ice and rock that no climber is known to have scaled. Since El Rincón borders on Perito Moreno National Park, the land donated by Tompkins will create a contiguous expanse of parkland covering 142,000 hectares (350,000 acres). The transfer of El Rincón marks Tompkins’s third parkland donation to Argentina. The former owner of...
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Environmental and indigenous-rights organizations have requested urgent intervention by the United Nations to stop construction of the 28-megawatt Barro Blanco Dam, currently being built on the Tabasará River in Western Panama. The Honduran company Genisa, which began construction of the dam in May 2011, says Barro Blanco will provide electricity to nearly 70,000 inhabitants, significantly reduce the amount of fuel Panama uses in thermal power plants and bring emissions reductions of around 67,000 tons of carbon equivalent a year. Because of those reductions, the project has become part of the UN Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), the carbon-offset scheme established under the Kyoto Protocol. In June 2011, the CDM’s executive board authorized Genisa to sell carbon credits on world markets. But in recent...
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Former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, the favorite to win the country’s presidential elections in November, for the first time has gone on the record to express unequivocal disapproval for the HidroAysén project, a controversial, US$10 billion plan to build five large hydroelectric dams in Chilean Patagonia. In a nationally televised debate this month ahead of a June 30 presidential primary vote to elect a candidate from the center-left opposition parties, Bachelet was responding to a question about energy and the HidroAysén project, which secured environmental approval in May 2011. “We need to diversify the energy matrix, getting cleaner and cheaper energy, with a goal of 30% of our energy sources by 2030 to come from non-conventional renewable sources,” said Bachelet, who served...
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