Following the lead of other Central American countries that have turned over forests to indigenous communities, the Honduran government has granted land titles covering vast swaths of eastern territory to Miskito communities living there. Many conservationists argue that the best way to protect forests is to turn them over to the people who live in them. In much of the developing world, including Latin America, indigenous communities still inhabit the forests and their traditional practices dovetail with sustainable forest management. In a program begun last year with support from the World Bank, the government has titled 760,000 hectares (2,930 sq miles) in the department of Gracias a Dios to Miskito groups—almost 7% of the country’s territory. Eighty percent of that land was formally titled...
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Ibama, the enforcement arm of Brazil’s Environment Ministry, has conducted an unprecedented year-round crackdown on illegal Amazon logging and slash-and-burn land clearing since January, reacting to a spike in the deforestation rate in the last half of 2012. But despite an increase in fines since the operation began, it’s not yet clear how successful it has been. Past Ibama crackdowns have typically been limited to the May-through-October dry season, some lasting only a few months, when dry weather improves road conditions and deforestation tends to increase. This anti-deforestation drive, called “Operation Green Wave,” was launched in January during the November-through-April rainy season, when near-constant rain worsens road conditions and deforestation tends to decrease. Ibama admits that...
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The clearing of parts of a nature reserve with remarkable biodiversity in the Dominican Republic has left environmentalists there fearful that the government will increasingly open up protected areas to satisfy the aspirations of land-hungry farmers. Conservationists sounded the alarm on July 17, when the government began bulldozing 49 acres (20 hectares) of the Loma Charco Azul Biological Reserve in the southwest portion of the country in an effort to resettle farmers displaced by the flooding of a nearby lake. The roughly 43,000-acre (17,401-hectare) reserve was created in 2009 to protect dry forests, rainforests and other fragile ecosystems. It harbors 14 of the 19 globally threatened bird species on Hispaniola, as well as dozens of species of migratory birds, and the world’s...
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Measuring nations’ wealth purely in economic terms ignores the many environmental impacts that can affect not only individual countries, but the entire world, researchers say. Wealthy nations and those with fast growing economies—including some in Latin America—have the highest negative environmental impact, according to Corey Bradshaw, co-director of the Climate and Ecology Center at the University of Adelaide. Bradshaw suggests that including such other factors as population, natural-resource use and energy consumption would produce a more comprehensive picture of how well countries can sustain their people and at the same time influence the well-being of the world. In a comparative study Bradshaw co-authored in 2010, Brazil emerged with the greatest overall negative environmental impact in the world based on...
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