Questions regarding the feasibility and environmental impacts of Nicaragua’s planned US$50 billion trans-isthmus canal have delayed construction on the project until March. The decision to postpone the project comes after ERM, the British company that conducted the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment [ESIA], expressed the need for further research. The Nicaraguan government has now ordered new studies to examine seismic risks in the canal zone and whether there is enough fresh water to fill the canal’s locks reliably as ships pass through. On Sept. 30, HKND, the Chinese company behind the project, released a 113-page executive summary of ERM’s 14-volume assessment. In it, the consultants express concern about the canal’s short five-year construction timeline, the social effects on resettled communities...
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The battle between Mexican opponents of genetically modified corn and biotech giants such as Monsanto and Syngenta has heated up since a Mexican district court judge in September overturned a two-year-old moratorium on the test-planting of genetically engineered corn. Opponents of transgenic corn immediately lodged an appeal and, for the moment, successfully reinstated the suspension. But an appeals court must determine in the coming weeks or months whether to maintain the suspension or let field trials of gene-altered corn go ahead. Such trials were suspended in 2013 after scientists, advocacy groups and farmers’ organizations brought a class action lawsuit against the government and five biotech companies. The moratorium keeps the crop testing on hold while judges weigh a decision on the...
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Authorities in Brazil this month arrested 19 members of a criminal ring for allegedly using fraudulent commercial licenses to catch hundreds of millions of dollars worth of fish—mainly sea bass (Micropogonias furnieri) and mullet (Mugil brasiliensis), among the country’s most commonly consumed fish. Ibama, the enforcement arm of Brazil’s Environment Ministry, made the arrests on Oct. 14 in a joint operation with the Federal Police, Jair Schmitt, Ibama’s coordinator of environmental monitoring, told EcoAméricas. Those arrested included members of Brazil’s Fishing and Aquaculture Ministry (MPA), who allegedly granted fraudulent licenses, and Ibama agents, who purportedly allowed the ring to operate. Among them were two prominent officials. Though Schmitt and other authorities declined to name them on grounds they had not yet been charged by...
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A Paraguayan environmental group is completing a major habitat restoration project to reverse damage done to a riverine area used by thousands of migratory shorebirds each year in Asunción Bay. The two year, US$750,000 project, funded mostly by Paraguay’s government and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is being carried out by Guyra Paraguay, a non-governmental forest monitoring and conservation group. If successful, it will return avian life to damaged areas of Asunción Bay, which lies along the Paraguay River on the northern outskirts of Asunción, the nation’s capital. “There is an urgent need to restore this waterfront,” says Alberto Yanosky, Guyra’s executive director. “It is a crucial area for large number of birds migrating in search of food from their nesting grounds...
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