Peruvian officials are calling a huge new Chinese-owned deep-water port in their country a “game changer” for the economy, but some observers say its impacts could be felt as far away as the Amazon basin. The port is built on private land, with China’s state-run Cosco Shipping Holding Co. in possession of a 60% ownership stake and Volcan Compañía Minera, a mining company owned by the Swiss commodity trader Glencore, holding the remaining 40% stake. Officially inaugurated Nov. 14 during a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in Lima, the port in Chancay, 80 kilometers (49.7 miles) north of Lima, will cut about 10 days off shipping time to Shanghai and is built to handle vessels carrying up to 24,000 containers. Peru’s central bank has said that once the port complex is fully operational, it could add as much as one percentage point to the country’s...
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Environmental experts welcome news that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon declined by an estimated 30.6% in the 12-month period ending on July 31, 2024, thanks to a tightening of enforcement by the administration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. But they worry that the Lula government’s infrastructure plans could nevertheless undermine the goals of forest protection, greenhouse-gas emissions reductions and development of a bioeconomy in the region. The National Institute of Space Research (INPE) announced Nov. 6 that 6,288 square kilometers (2,428 sq. miles) of the region’s rainforest was destroyed from August 2023 through July 2024, an estimate it is expected to confirm in the first half of 2025. Though that’s an area the size of the U.S. state of Delaware, it is far smaller than the 9,064 square kilometers (3,500 sq. miles) lost over the previous 12 months and stands as the biome’s lowest annual deforestation...
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Ecuador has increased the size of two important protected areas in the country’s south, the Machángara-Tomebamba Wildlife Refuge and Río Negro-Sopladora National Park. Machángara-Tomebamba Wildlife Refuge now covers 42,000 hectares (104,000 acres) following its expansion by 16,667 (41,185 acres) hectares, and Río Negro-Sopladora National Park has grown to 75,000 hectares (185,000 acres) with the addition of 31,800 hectares (78,579 acres). The enlargement of the wildlife refuge, which straddles the provinces of Azuay and Cañar, has created an ecological corridor that connects the protected area to El Cajas National Park. Like El Cajas, the refuge is home to extensive evergreen cloud forest. It also features páramo, montane lake grassland, and a wide variety of flora and fauna, the latter of which include Andean condor (Vultur gryphus) and the spectacled bear (Tremarctos ornatus). The refuge’s expansion makes it nearly as large as El Cajas National Park, which since...
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