Environmentalists are bracing for the worst following the Oct. 28 election of Jair Bolsonaro, at times a withering off-the-cuff critic of environmental regulation and land conservation, as president of Brazil. Yet regressive environmental statements the right-wing Bolsonaro made in advance of his comfortable 55%-45% win came amid a general lack of detailed green-policy proposals, leaving many analysts in doubt as to what’s in store. “Bolsonaro has no understanding of what constitutes environmental policy,” says Mario Mantovani, public policy director for the SOS Atlantic Forest Foundation, a Brazilian nonprofit. “But it’s unclear if he’ll stick to regressive statements he has made about the environment, which would be disastrous, or instead heed warnings from scientists, environmentalists and agribusiness groups that sound environmental...
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Paraguayan green advocates are demanding greater protections for park personnel, pointing out that two months since the murders of two guards in a Paraguayan natural reserve the poachers believed responsible are still at large. Park guards Rumildo Toledo and Artemio Villalba were shot dead on Aug. 18 by poachers in the Tapytá Nature Reserve, a privately managed natural area in Paraguay’s southern department of Caazapá. The lack of arrests and broader concerns the case has generated prompted the Moisés Bertoni Foundation, a nonprofit that manages the reserve, to launch a campaign supported by over a dozen Paraguayan and international organization. Called #SoyGuardaparque, the campaign is intended to spotlight the plight of Paraguay’s park guards in public and private reserves. It also is pressing for the...
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Saying “the era of biofuels has begun in Bolivia,” Bolivian President Evo Morales last month signed a new law for the first time allowing the commercial sale of biofuel—initially of ethanol to be mixed with conventional gasoline. The Sept. 15 signing and a decree issued subsequently paved the way for sales of gasoline containing 12% ethanol to begin in Bolivia at the end of October. The blended fuel, to be called Super Ethanol 92, will be sold as an alternative alongside conventional vehicle fuels at 300 to 400 service stations this month and by the end of next year, the government says, in 95% of the country’s service stations. The ethanol will be produced from sugarcane, whose cultivation currently occupies 150,000 hectares (370,000 acres...
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Facing indigenous opposition in the country’s Amazon region, Ecuador has scaled back plans to auction 16 oil-concession blocks in the southeastern provinces of Pastaza and Morona Santiago. Just two will be offered, both near the Peruvian border. Ecuadorian Natural Resources Minister Carlos Pérez said the change was made to ensure oil-development projects don’t trigger social unrest, pointing out that there are no indigenous communities in either of the two areas where oil activity will be allowed. The upcoming auction would come as part of an agreement under which Ecuador will produce crude in the southeast and send it through a Peruvian pipeline to a refinery in Peru’s Pacific port city of Talara. In return, Peru would give Ecuador access to two gas fields...
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