Two savage attacks in April left nine peasant squatters dead and 22 encamped Indians injured, rekindling concern about land conflicts that for decades have elevated murder rates in rural areas of Brazil. Meanwhile, a third confrontation, this one in May between military police and peasants who were occupying public land, ended in the deaths of 10 squatters. In the first attack, on April 19 near the town of Colniza in the western Amazon state of Mato Grosso, a group of hooded men armed with rifles and machetes and likely hired by local landowners, attacked peasants occupying public land. They killed nine unarmed adult men ranging in age from 23 to 57, according to the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), a rural-workers rights group linked to...
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Argentina will build two new nuclear power stations, with China financing 85% of the US$14 billion cost, according to an agreement announced May 16 in Beijing between Argentine President Mauricio Macri and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Argentine officials say construction will begin in January 2018 on Atucha III, a 745-megawatt plant to be located in the community of Lima, 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of Buenos Aires. The as-yet unnamed second power station, to be built in the southern province of Río Negro starting in 2020, will have an installed capacity of 1,150 megawatts, officials say. If the two power stations materialize, Argentina will have a total of five nuclear plants. One of the current three, the Embalse plant in Córdoba province...
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During 1940-87, Costa Rican forests took a massive hit, shrinking by over 50% as vast tracts were cleared for cattle ranches. The country registered some of Central America’s most severe deforestation, it’s tropical woodlands seemingly doomed. Then began an astonishing turnaround: by the 1990s, Costa Rica had managed to gain a reputation as a leading green-conscious country and ecotourism destination. The shift got underway in the 1980s when the country cordoned off large chunks of forest as protected areas and began devising a system of so-called environmental-services payments for landowners committed to keeping forests and watersheds intact. A subsequent reforestation campaign arguably proved to be one of the most successful in the world. The country has reduced its deforestation rate and boosted...
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Peru’s Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that blocked a mining company from evicting a family from their farm in the northern Cajamarca region. The ruling came less than two weeks after police detained two foreigners who were showing a documentary critical of a different mining company in southern Peru. In its May 3 decision, the Supreme Court rejected the accusation that Máxima Acuña, who won the Goldman Prize in 2016 for her resistance to Minera Yanacocha’s proposed Conga mine in Cajamarca, had usurped mining company property in 2011. (See “Peruvian, Puerto Rican among Goldman honorees”—EcoAméricas, April ’16.) The ruling ends a six-year legal battle over the matter, but Acuña and her family still face civil suits related to their refusal to...
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