A Honduran court sentenced seven men to prison terms ranging from 30 to 50 years for their roles in the 2016 murder of environmental and indigenous leader Berta Cáceres. Cáceres, who was shot in her home in La Esperanza, Honduras in 2016, had been leading opposition to construction of the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam on the Gualcarque River. (See "Award winner knows activism’s risks all too well" —EcoAméricas, April 2015) and (See "Violence rife, facts scant in Honduran dam debate" —EcoAméricas, March 2016.) Her murder sparked an international outcry and prompted banks to withdraw financial support for the project. Four of the men accused in the killing were given 50-year prison sentences while three others were handed 30-year terms for helping...
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Panama’s government has declared Boná Island a national wildlife refuge, effectively ending the threat of industrial development of the highly prized haven for birds and marine life just off the country’s Pacific coast. Located about 25 miles south of the Pacific entrance to the Panama Canal, Boná Island was selected as the site of an oil-tanker terminal project that won initial approval from the government last April. Panamanian and international environmental groups condemned the move, demanding the island be made a protected area, and the government promptly reversed course. (See "Pushback in Panama against island oil terminal" —EcoAméricas, April 2019.) In December, the government announced that Boná, neighboring Estivá Island and nearby islets would become a refuge encompassing roughly 230 acres (93 hectares) of land and 1,500 square miles (3,900 sq. kms) of surrounding sea...
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Brazilian state prosecutors have filed homicide charges against 16 top executives and engineers of the Brazilian mining giant Vale and TÜV SÜD, a German safety consultancy, over a catastrophic mine tailings-dam collapse that killed 270 people on Jan. 25, 2019. Prosecutors on Jan. 21 charged 11 Vale employees, including former CEO Fabio Schvartsman and five employees of TÜV SÜD with 270 counts of homicide in connection with the dam collapse at a Vale iron-ore mine in east-central Minas Gerais state. They also charged the 16 employees and the two companies that employed them with numerous environmental crimes based on the impact the disaster had on nearby fauna, flora and rivers. Schvartsman took a leave from his post in March 2019, two months after the disaster, after federal prosecutors recommended his immediate exit. The collapse of the Vale-owned tailings dam last year sent 12 million cubic meters...
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The Colombian government plans to resume aerial spraying of glyphosate-based herbicide to curb illegal coca cultivation, a practice suspended since 2015 due to environmental and public-health concerns. Colombia used planes and helicopters to spray glyphosate, the active ingredient in such commercial herbicides as Roundup, over vast swaths of rural land from 1994 to 2015, when the country’s Constitutional Court ordered a halt to the practice. Applying the precautionary principle, the court said spraying should not occur in the absence of research showing it would not cause significant health and environmental harm. The court was responding in part to complaints from communities that argued airborne glyphosate often drifted wide of the intended mark, killing non-coca crops and polluting natural lands and water sources. Driving Colombia’s decision to renew spraying is an expansion of illegal coca cultivation that the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) says in 2017...
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