Border-wall agreement orders environmental steps

September 2023

Paraguay

Assessing banks’ role in deforestation of Gran Chaco

As the European Union prepares to limit imports of goods whose production contributes to deforestation, attention has rightly focused on lax land-use controls in Latin ......

Mexico (Free Read)

Female president, green-policy turn likely in Mexico

Mexico’s June 2, 2024 presidential elections could break important ground. That’s mostly so because Claudia Sheinbaum and Xóchitl Gálvez, the two front-runners, are women, meaning ......

Honduras

Honduras sets stage for forest-carbon transactions

In July, the Honduran Congress approved ground rules for climate-protection transactions designed to incentivize conservation and augmentation of the country’s stores of forest carbon. It ......

U.S.–Mexico

Border-wall agreement orders environmental steps

The settlement recently of four lawsuits filed in 2019 and 2020 to challenge former U.S. President Donald Trump’s expansion of the U.S.-Mexico border wall requires ......

Region

Pushback against EU anti-deforestation measure

Environmentalists are criticizing a joint complaint that 17 developing countries registered this month with the European Union (EU) concerning its new measure to prohibit commodity ......

Around the Region

‘Time-frame’ argument against Indigenous land rights rejected

In a lopsided and precedent-setting 9-2 vote, Brazil’s Supreme Court (STF) has rejected an agribusiness-backed attempt to deny Indigenous people rights to ancestral lands they ......

Centerpiece (Free Read)

Pressure builds for and against ocean mining

In mining companies around the world, potato-sized seabed nodules containing metals such as cobalt, copper, manganese, and nickel have stirred intense interest, given these metals’ ......

Q&A

Ayoreo-Totobiegosode member discusses Chaco land-use pressures

Paraguay’s El Chaco Biosphere Reserve is home to 49,000 Indigenous people, including the country’s 2,600 Ayoreo—the only partially uncontacted people in South America outside of ......

Border-wall agreement orders environmental steps

U.S.–Mexico

The settlement of border-wall litigation includes provisions to mitigate environmental damage done by barrier construction. (Photo courtesy of GAO)

The settlement recently of four lawsuits filed in 2019 and 2020 to challenge former U.S. President Donald Trump’s expansion of the U.S.-Mexico border wall requires environmental remediation work in certain areas degraded by the projects. Meanwhile, a new federal report chronicles environmental damage that has been caused by border-wall projects, citing problems ranging from altered water flows to wildlife-habitat fragmentation. The four lawsuits, brought by conservationists and state governments, had argued the Trump administration was pushing environmentally destructive border-barrier construction in violation of the Constitution and laws including the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The settlement, announced July 17, requires the Biden administration to undertake environmental remediation along sections of the wall that the Trump administration had built or replaced using repurposed defense and treasury funds without Congressional consent. The Sierra Club was the lead plaintiff in two of the suits, while the other cases were... [Log in to read more]

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September 2023

Paraguay

Assessing banks’ role in deforestation of Gran Chaco

As the European Union prepares to limit imports of goods whose production contributes to deforestation, attention has rightly focused on lax land-use controls in Latin ......

Mexico (Free Read)

Female president, green-policy turn likely in Mexico

Mexico’s June 2, 2024 presidential elections could break important ground. That’s mostly so because Claudia Sheinbaum and Xóchitl Gálvez, the two front-runners, are women, meaning ......

Honduras

Honduras sets stage for forest-carbon transactions

In July, the Honduran Congress approved ground rules for climate-protection transactions designed to incentivize conservation and augmentation of the country’s stores of forest carbon. It ......

U.S.–Mexico

Border-wall agreement orders environmental steps

The settlement recently of four lawsuits filed in 2019 and 2020 to challenge former U.S. President Donald Trump’s expansion of the U.S.-Mexico border wall requires ......

Region

Pushback against EU anti-deforestation measure

Environmentalists are criticizing a joint complaint that 17 developing countries registered this month with the European Union (EU) concerning its new measure to prohibit commodity ......

Around the Region

‘Time-frame’ argument against Indigenous land rights rejected

In a lopsided and precedent-setting 9-2 vote, Brazil’s Supreme Court (STF) has rejected an agribusiness-backed attempt to deny Indigenous people rights to ancestral lands they ......

Centerpiece (Free Read)

Pressure builds for and against ocean mining

In mining companies around the world, potato-sized seabed nodules containing metals such as cobalt, copper, manganese, and nickel have stirred intense interest, given these metals’ ......

Q&A

Ayoreo-Totobiegosode member discusses Chaco land-use pressures

Paraguay’s El Chaco Biosphere Reserve is home to 49,000 Indigenous people, including the country’s 2,600 Ayoreo—the only partially uncontacted people in South America outside of ......