Environmental, social and religious groups are calling on the governor of northern Argentina’s Jujuy province to suspend oil operations in a national park that constitutes the biggest protected area in the Yungas, a forestland bordering the country’s Chaco region. Oil operations to tap the so-called El Caimancito reserve have been conducted off and on since the 1960s in the 5,700-hectare (14,000-acre) project area, which sits entirely within the 76,300-hectare (188,500-acre) Calilegua National Park. In 2011, the Chinese company JHP International Petroleum Engineering took on the project. It has since been attempting to put the site in working order and has started pumping a small volume of crude, roughly 40 cubic meters a day, in hopes of expanding production to 5,400...
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Brazil’s Environment Ministry and the World Bank have launched a US$95.2 million (R$ 234 million) initiative that is intended by 2019 to more than triple the area of ocean under environmental protection in Brazil, while strengthening existing marine protection overall. The government will contribute US$52 million (R$127 million) in funding, with the World Bank providing an $18.2-million grant, the state-controlled oil company Petrobras donating $20 million, and Funbio, a biodiversity conservation nonprofit, chipping in $5 million. Currently only 1.5%, or 5.5 million hectares (13.6 million acres) of all Brazilian marine areas are federally protected. The initiative aims to have 5%, or 17.5 million hectares (43.2 million acres), of these areas conserved by 2019 for reasons economic as well as ecological...
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Scientists from Woods Hole Research Center working with Mexico’s National Forestry Commission have produced a map of carbon stocks in Mexico so detailed that it shows forest cover at the scale of just one hectare (2.47 acres). The map is intended as a new tool to help Mexico prepare for REDD+, the global plan to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation and degradation through the conservation of woodlands. Deforestation is the second most important source of carbon emissions after the burning of fossil fuels, and reducing deforestation is seen as a cost-effective way to cut greenhouse-gas emissions, according to the United Nations REDD program. The idea behind REDD+ is to compensate developing countries for keeping their forests standing. But first those forests must be...
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A government proposal to excise 277 hectares (685 acres) from Cerros de Amotape National Park in Peru’s northern Tumbes region and reclassify it as buffer zone has riled environmentalists, who fear it could set a disturbing precedent. Draft legislation sent to Congress on Nov. 5 says the change is needed to comply with the terms of a 1971 treaty with Ecuador, which calls for a joint irrigation project—50,000 hectares (123,552 acres) in Ecuador and 20,000 hectares (49,421 acres) in Peru—along the river that forms the countries’ shared border. A national park is the most strictly protected type of conservation area in Peru. The change would allow construction of a dam and reservoir. As an offset, it also would create a 14,304-hectare (35,345...
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Citizens’ environmental complaints in Uruguay have “increased in quality and quantity in recent months” following the start-up of an online complaints service by the National Environment Directorate (Dinama), officials with the agency say. Dinama created the citizen complaints platform in the wake of staffing increases in 2013 that have boosted the environmental control and inspection capability it can bring to bear on projects by 80%, says Francisco Beltrame, Uruguay’s minister of Housing, Land Management and Environment. Beltrame says the added capacity was necessary on account of a five-fold surge in projects requiring environmental oversight—from 500 in 2008 to nearly 2,500 now. The online citizens’ complaint system debuted on Aug. 16. “...[T]he citizens present the environmental institution [with] a perspective that otherwise...
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