A joint Danish, Uruguayan and U.S. project aims to take 40% of the organic garbage generated in Uruguay’s two most populous local jurisdictions and convert it into methanol fuel that will be used to power container ships. The initiative in the departments of Montevideo and Canelones is intended to supply methanol for one or two of 12 methanol-powered vessels that the Danish shipping company Maersk aims to build. Plans for the project have been presented to the Uruguayan government by the local firms CSI Ingenieros and Ciemsa and Inglobal—an engineering consultancy, a construction company and an investment consultancy, respectively—in partnership with Maersk and WasteFuel, a U.S. firm. WasteFuel specializes in the conversion of waste into low-carbon and green fuel. The plans call for methanol production to begin in “20 to 24 months,” Uruguayan Environment Minister Adrián Peña said this month. WasteFuel announced on March 10 that...
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The brother of slain prize-winning environmental activist Isidro Baldenegro was shot dead in southwest Chihuahua State, Mexico, this month, joining a list of indigenous Rarámuri killed in the struggle to control and protect their pine and oak forests. José Trinidad Baldenegro, 51, was killed on March 7 about a quarter-mile (0.4 kms) from his home in Coloradas de la Virgen. The remote community of 1,000 people is located in the Sierra Tarahumara, a region of deep canyons and forest-clad mountains in the Sierra Madre Occidental. Baldenegro’s death is a reminder of the unremitting violence that has forced hundreds of people to abandon Coloradas. Their land—some 50,000 hectares (123,000 acres), according to the Chihuahua-based human rights group Alianza Sierra Madre—is now at the mercy of local strongmen and gangs who fell trees for timber and to open space for ranching, poppy farming and even silver...
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The February photo-op involving the mayors of seven Mexico City boroughs—all of them members of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Morena Party—seemed promising enough. The occasion was the inauguration of a project aimed at cleaning up the notoriously polluted network of canals in the district of Xochimilco and, in the process, improving native habitat of the critically endangered axolotl, the iconic Mexican salamander. So far, so good, but the ceremony drew an outcry from conservationists. That’s because event organizers poured 2,000 axolotls from buckets onto grass so the mayors of seven of the city’s 16 boroughs could handle them while being filmed and photographed. Though axolotls are amphibians, they do not undergo metamorphosis but instead remain aquatic. Experts say that removing them from water and exposing them to direct sunlight can be harmful to them, as can the handling of them by humans, which can result...
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Just a week after taking office, new Chilean President Gabriel Boric signed the Escazú Agreement, a historic, region-wide environmental treaty resisted by his predecessor, Sebastián Piñera. The first-ever regional environmental treaty in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Escazú Agreement has been ratified by 12 nations and took effect in April 2021. It promotes citizen access to environmental information and decision-making, a principal goal being to enable the public to provide timely and knowledgeable input on development plans. The accord also promotes protection of environmental advocates, often the targets of violence in the region. Though Chile and Costa Rica facilitated talks on the treaty, both countries have so far failed to embrace the pact, which has stirred concern in business circles that it will be used as a cudgel against important investment projects. Costa Rica signed the treaty after hosting talks on it in the town for...
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