Panama’s Canal Authority estimates it will take six years to build a new reservoir that will help the country meet the escalating water demands of its trans-isthmus waterway and greater Panama City. At a July press conference, the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) leadership said the US$1.6 billion project would begin with a 15- to 18-month, $400 million “social program” aimed at informing and compensating over 150,000 people living in areas that would be affected by the work. “Only when we’re able to cover the social program of the Canal to understand the needs of the community can we proceed with alternatives that have to do with engineering and projects,” ACP’s Administrator Ricaurte Vásquez said. The July 8 announcement came five days after the country’s Supreme Court issued a decision that empowers the ACP to undertake reservoir development and other watershed projects in a broader geographic area. Specifically...
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Brazilian researchers have discovered cocaine in sharks caught off Rio de Janeiro, likely the result of sharks’ exposure to city wastewater containing traces of the drug. In a study published July 15 in the journal “Science of the Total Environment,” researchers said their findings mark the first time cocaine has been detected in sharks. Brazilian studies have found the drug in brown mussels (Perna perna) harvested along the coast, however. Testing 13 Brazilian sharpnose sharks (Rhizoprionodon lalandii) that fishers caught off Rio de Janeiro from September 2021 to August 2023, researchers found all 13 sharks had cocaine in their muscle and livers. Concentrations of the drug were three times higher in the muscles than in the livers, and female sharks registered higher levels in their muscle tissue than males. Twelve of the 13 sharks tested positive for benzoylecgonine, a cocaine metabolite produced by the liver. The concentrations of cocaine in...
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Brazil and Mexico are receiving project-preparation grants to help them meet Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework goals aimed at placing 30% of the planet under conservation protection by 2030. Groundwork for implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework, which was adopted in 2022 by countries participating in the UN Biodiversity conference in Montreal, Canada, is being supported by an entity set up for the purpose—the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF). The GBFF currently has nearly $40 million earmarked for project-preparation work, and it was announced in March that Brazil, Mexico, and Gabon would be the recipients of that first-round funding this year. “It is a great achievement for two Latin American countries to have been picked for this first round of funding,” says Juan Bezaury, director and founder of The Mexican Biodiversity Foundation (FBM). The GBFF grants are intended to support plans for protected-areas financing, management...
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Despite heightened concern worldwide about the environmental and health impacts of agrochemicals, Brazil’s powerful farm lobby has managed to weaken controls on such substances. In May, the Brazilian Congress overrode a series of presidential vetoes, paving the way for implementation of provisions that experts say will greatly undermine environmental and public health policy regarding the registration and use of pesticides. At issue was congressionally approved pesticide legislation (No. 14,785) that Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed on Dec. 27, a bill that environmentalists have dubbed “The Package of Poison.” Lula did not give the legislation blanket approval. When he signed it he attached 17 vetoes to various articles in the law. Led by farm-sector allies known as “ruralistas,” however, Congress on May 9 overrode those vetoes with a three-fifths vote, reinstating the controversial provisions. Lula did not say why he only vetoed certain measures rather than...
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