An Amazonian indigenous-rights organization here filed a complaint on Dec. 5 with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), an international palm-sector stakeholders group whose members pledge to uphold environmental and social standards. The Federation of Native Communities of the Ucayali (Feconau) alleges that a plantation operated by RSPO member Plantaciones de Pucallpa, a Peruvian company, has cleared mature forest in the ancestral territory of the Shipibo-Konibo community of Santa Clara de Uchunya, in the Ucayali region. “You can’t implement monocrop palm plantations in highly biodiverse forests,” says Feconau President Robert Guimaraes, who traveled to the December climate summit in Paris to present the case to international donors—among them officials from Norway and Germany, which are funding Peruvian efforts to reduce...
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The death this month of conservationist and environmental philanthropist Douglas Tompkins has prompted the Chilean and Argentine governments to embrace his proposals for a series of national parks in both countries. Tompkins, 72, died Dec. 8 while kayaking with five friends at General Carrera Lake, in the Aysén region of Chilean Patagonia. His kayak capsized due to strong winds. According to reports, he endured the icy waters of the lake for nearly two hours before later dying in a hospital in the regional capital Coyhaique due to severe hypothermia. Following news of Tompkins’ death, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet praised him as an “innovative and generous man in the protection of the natural heritage of the planet” and in particular highlighted his philanthropy, which she said...
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Cristina Kirchner handed over presidential power this month to Mauricio Macri following an unfavorable review of her and her late husband’s environmental performance as back-to-back presidents of Argentina. In a report issued a month before Macri’s Dec. 10 inauguration, Argentina’s Auditor General’s office, a watchdog controlled by the national Congress, concluded that “economic activities such as agriculture, fishing and mining have been carried out by the private sector without adequate state control.” The 154-page report covers the 2003-07 presidency of former President Néstor Kirchner, who died in 2010, as well as the eight-year presidency of his wife, Cristina Kirchner, who handed over to Macri on Dec. 10 after serving two consecutive four-year terms. It says cropland expansion by a third...
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Brazil’s top cosmetics maker added to its list of milestones in 2015, winning a United Nations Champions of the Earth Award for its efforts to promote sustainable development. Natura, which reports that 82% of its products, by weight, are vegetal, obtains its natural ingredients by working directly with its suppliers. Those suppliers are mainly forest communities and cooperatives that gather or grow those ingredients without compromising the environment. The company, named the winner in the UN awards-program’s Entrepreneurial Vision category in September, started in 1969 with door-to-door sales in Brazil. It has since expanded direct sales to six Latin American countries, deployed local distributors in Bolivia and opened retail stores in France. Last year it bought Aesop, an Australian brand with a...
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