The recent European financial crises exposed Africa’s high vulnerability to external factors. This has made a strong case for the importance of Intra-regional trade among SADC countries in order to help strengthen SADC and other African countries to external shocks. Sipho Stuurman speaks to Economist Evans Chinembiri from Trade & Industrial Policy Strategies (TIPS).

Nearly half of Chile's flora is found exclusively in this country and many possess unique chemical compounds. But for now there is no legal way to control their exploitation abroad.

Lion's claw (Leontochir ovallei), a flower native to the Atacama Desert and sold abroad. - Courtesy of INIA

“The departure or flight of biological material from Chile occurs daily and there is no legal framework to regulate it,” Pedro León, an expert with the Ministry of Agriculture's research institute, INIA, told Tierramérica.

More than 11 percent of Chile's native flora species are sold abroad as seeds or nursery plants, without payment of any royalties. This situation involves at least 586 species and 6.5 percent face extinction, according to a study published in March in the INIA journal Tierra Adentro.

Compared to other Latin American countries, like Brazil, Ecuador and Peru, Chile does not have a big variety of native plant species: about 5,200. But a great number — about 2,500 — are endemic to Chile alone, given the country's relative geographic isolation, with the long Pacific Ocean coast to the west and the Andes Mountains to the east.

“That means they have unique chemical compounds,” for example, that make them resistant to drought or cold, María Isabel Manzur, of the non-governmental Sustainable Societies Foundation, told Tierramérica.

About 30 percent of Chilean flora has known or potential uses as food, medicine, forage crops or fuel.

Among the plants that INIA identified as being sold in other countries, there are cactus species of the Copiapoa genus, the lion's claw flower (Leontochir ovallei) and glory-of-the-sun flower (Leucocoryne).

The “Chilean guava” (Ungi molinae), a bush whose berries have food, cosmetic and medicinal uses, is today grown in Australia and New Zealand, although INIA has developed and patented two improved varieties in Chile.

A well-known case is that of a microorganism, Streptomyces hygroscopicus, discovered in the 1960s on Easter Island by Canadian researchers. From it scientists have extracted rapamycin, which has antibiotic, antifungal, immuno-suppressor and anti-aging properties.

“The seeds leave the country because there is a group of people or institutions entrusted with selling them overseas to meet the demands of international seed companies, or nurseries or individual collectors,” said León, who is in charge of INIA's Vicuña Experiment Center Seed Bank.

The authority to regulate access to a country's genetic resources lies with the government and should be subject to national legislation, states the Convention on Biological Diversity, signed in 1992 and ratified by Chile in 1995.

The Convention also promotes the fair and equitable distribution of benefits arising from the use of those resources, especially among rural dwellers and indigenous communities, who have amassed knowledge about the properties of plants, animals and even microorganisms.

But it has taken the Convention's member countries 18 years to adopt a specific protocol on genetic resources.

And 15 years after ratifying the treaty, Chile has yet to draft legislation on the matter. Because there are no laws being violated, León prefers to talk about the “flight” of genetic material instead of “biopiracy,” as the practice is also widely known.

The flowers of the genus Alstroemeria, like the lily of the Incas, are another example of this process. Several wild species were taken from Chile to the Netherlands, where they were improved through crossbreeding — and now the Netherlands is an exporter of the flower.

Due to excessive extraction from their natural habitat, some plant species now face extinction, like the cactus species native to Chile's northern coastal desert. The true scope of the problem is unknown because only three of Chile's 15 regions have “red books” tracking the conservation status of their flora and fauna.

INIA has four germplasm banks, which collect seeds, tissue cultures or plant collections that hold the genetic material of each species. The institute is opening a fifth site to preserve different varieties of the potato.

According to León, Chile maintains about 60 percent of its agricultural diversity and 20 percent of native flora, with the goal to reach 45 percent by 2020. But to protect a plant sample can cost 2,000 to 3,000 dollars, and preservation of fruit species is only in its initial stages.

In order to preserve the different species, INIA wants people or institutions to report when they are transferring genetic materials abroad. Botanical gardens, for example, sign “access contracts.” But most biological samples leave the country with only a certificate from the Agricultural and Livestock Service, which states they are free of disease or pests.

In the last few years, Manzur, of Sustainable Societies Foundation, has seen several drafts of laws aimed at regulating access to genetic resources. “But none of them has reached port because there is no consensus and because one government term ends and the next one has different priorities,” she said.

Meanwhile, Brazil's law on biodiversity is “quite strict,” according to experts. While it prevents genetic materials from leaving the country, it also creates obstacles for research within the country. Costa Rica and the Andean Community (Bolivia, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador) have similar regulations.

The Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from Their Utilization, agreed Oct. 29 in the Japanese city during a meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity, could be the push Chile needs to fill the legal void, according to Manzur.

“Once and for all we have to appreciate the value of our natural wealth, designate the necessary resources to conduct an inventory, conserve them and utilize them in a sustainable way,” said INIA's León.

“Chile participated in the Nagoya Protocol negotiations. The final text will be analyzed by the Executive branch's institutions before determining whether to sign it,” a source from the Foreign Ministry told Tierramérica.

The Nagoya Protocol will be open for signatures from member countries from Feb. 2, 2011 to Feb. 1, 2012, and will enter into force once 50 countries have ratified it.

According to the Ministry source, the government is considering “a law on this matter.”

Argentina has widely expanded the protected area of the Patagonian Sea, but it is less than two percent of the nation's maritime waters.

Rockhopper penguin in Isla Pingüino Park, Argentina. - Courtesy of the Argentine Administration of National Parks

“What the Gulf of Mexico spill (which began in April) showed us, is that even the most modern corporations can take months to seal off a leak, and for us, that would be fatal,” said biologist Santiago Krapovickas, coordinator of the Forum for the Conservation of the Patagonian Sea.

The Patagonian marine ecosystem, situated in the far southwest of the Atlantic Ocean, is home to a great variety of mammal and bird species, as well as mollusks and fish of commercial value.

Argentina has more than three million square kilometers of maritime waters, but just 0.5 percent of the sea was protected, without legal mechanisms and ineffective management, according to the “Synthesis of the State of Conservation of the Patagonian Sea,” published in 2008 by the Forum, which unites 10 national and international organizations.

Until now, there was just one national coastal marine park, the Monte León, in the southern province of Santa Cruz. But on Oct. 27, at the global biodiversity summit held in Japan, Argentina's National Parks Administration announced four new protected marine areas.

They are the Southern Patagonia Coastal Marine Park, in the province of Chubut and already in the implementation stages, the Isla Pingüino (Penguin Island) and Makenke parks, in Santa Cruz, and one set in the ocean, the Burdwood Bank National Marine Park, situated south of the Malvinas/Falkland Islands.

It will take two to five years to fully launch the new protected areas.

The areas will bring Argentina's total for protected marine waters to 1,360,800 hectares, but is a long way from the goal of 10 percent set for 2020 by the Convention on Biological Diversity, which Argentina joined in 1994.

“We are quite behind,” said journalist Flavia Broffini, with the Argentine Wildlife Foundation. “With those parks we will cover 1.5 percent, which is twice what we had under protection,” she added.

It is not a matter of limiting or restricting the use of those areas, she explained, but rather of providing the management tools that permit biodiversity conservation over the long term.

Krapovickas believes it is essential to prevent oil spills, overfishing and bycatches of smaller fish or of species caught using bottom-trawling techniques.

He said because of the volume of the sea, unlike protected land areas, the total hectares of a protected sea area are a mere detail.

There are millions of cubic meters of water with a great deal of life in it — from microscopic organisms to giant mammals, including species attractive to the fishing sector, like squid, lobster, crab, scallops and mussels, he said.

It is “extremely important” to preserve areas where the species of economic value can recover, following the successful examples of South Africa's De Hoop marine preserve and Chile's Punta del Lacho reserve in the Pacific.

The Southern Patagonia Park is one of the areas of greatest diversity of the Argentine seas. “It is a nursery of lobsters, hake and, among the most spectacular wildlife, it has the Magellanic penguin (Spheniscus magellanicus),” said Krapovickas.

In the area chosen for conservation — 132,000 hectares that include 140 islets — there are dolphins and bird colonies of the imperial shag, pelagic cormorant, royal tern and yellow-billed tern, and the southern giant petrel.

Tourism “is very little developed, but has great potential” because of the rocky coastal landscape, intense blue seas and islands with amazing wildlife, he said.

In the Isla Pingüino protected area, with its 170,000 hectares of sea and islands, there are rockhopper penguin, sea lions, and various dolphin species, including Commerson's dolphin (Cephalorhynchus commersonii). It is also an essential area for preserving commercial species. “The sea there is stormy and very cold, but highly productive,” said Krapovickas.

In addition to the Makenke Park (90,000 hectares and numerous penguin and seabird species), the Burdwood Bank is a practically unknown area, till now partially preserved as a precautionary measure.

“It's to the east of the Isla de los Estados, south of the Malvinas archipelago, and is estimated to hold a vast variety of invertebrates, sponges, cold-water corals, unique mollusks and even some new species,” Krapovickas said.

But he stressed: “We don't have experience in this type of monitoring so far from the coast, so it will be a big challenge.”

In that zone, with its natural gas and oil fields, a portion of the Burdwood Bank is under dispute between Argentina and Britain, in the context of the sovereignty conflict of the Malvinas, or Falkland Islands.

“If a company like BP took months to get the Gulf of Mexico spill under control, if that were to happen in our sea, we would have no alternative but to lose sensitive, biodiverse areas forever,” concluded the biologist.

By IPS
MONTEVIDEO, Sep 27 2010 (IPS)

Some two billion people around the world drink alcohol, a practice that has been around since time immemorial. Responsible drinking is only part of the picture; the WHO reports that the harmful use of alcohol affects tens of millions of people and kills two and a half million people every year, from causes ranging from illnesses to traffic accidents.

Carlos Brito Credit: Courtesy AB InBev

Industry self-regulation was one of the components of a global alcohol strategy launched by the WHO (World Health Organisation) in May aimed at reducing alcohol abuse. IPS asked Carlos Brito, CEO of the world’s largest beer maker, why his company invests in campaigns that promote responsible drinking.

Brito said Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev) has “a long history of launching responsible drinking campaigns,” but on Sept. 15 it celebrated for the first time its “Global Be(er) Responsible Day” around the world.

Brito took part in China. “Over 3000 of our employees distributed 100,000 leaflets and 10,000 car and cooler stickers with information promoting responsible drinking,” he said in an email interview with IPS.

Q: Companies are fighting for market share and profits, which means trying to maximise sales. So why engage in efforts to promote responsible drinking, which could be expected to reduce sales? A: As the world’s leading global brewer, we take our role in encouraging the responsible enjoyment of our products very seriously. Promoting responsible enjoyment does not run counter to achieving our business goals.

In fact, sustainable long-term growth through responsible business practices is at the core of our dream to be the “best beer company in a better world”. For this reason, sales involving the misuse or abuse of our products are ones that we would gladly do without.

Q: For some years already, your company has organised campaigns on responsible drinking. Which ones do you personally like the most? A: We are especially pleased with the success of our designated driver campaigns around the world, including running the first-ever designated driver TV ad in China this year.

We have also seen success with educational campaigns that encourage parents to talk with their children to help prevent underage drinking. One such programme is “Family Talk About Drinking”, which was first launched in the U.S. and has now been translated into seven different languages.

Since 2002, underage drinking among adolescents has declined 17 percent in the U.S. The combination of Anheuser-Busch and InBev has given us greater resources than ever to dedicate to expanding the reach of our programmes, and our focus now is on sharing successful campaigns among our key markets.

Q: Young people are a high-risk group when it comes to risky drink patterns. Which specific measures can be taken towards this group? A: Independent and government research has shown that when it comes to preventing underage drinking, parents are powerful influencers. Educational programmes, such as our “Family Talk About Drinking” and “Vivamos Responsablemente” (“Let’s Live Responsibly”) in Argentina, have been particularly successful.

For young people of legal drinking age, we implement programmes that promote responsible drinking and the use of designated drivers. One of our most impactful campaigns, “Check Who Is Driving” in Germany, reached more than 67,000 young people by sending representatives to nightclubs to ask club-goers to pledge to use a designated driver.

Q: Does AB InBev support the WHO’s strategy to reduce the harmful use of alcohol? And how does it plan to contribute to its implementation? A: It is an important and constructive step forward in helping address alcohol issues around the world. The strategy acknowledges the significance of different national, religious and cultural contexts for alcohol and proposes a menu of options that member states may tailor to their cultures in order to reduce the harmful use of alcohol.

It also recognises the need for the involvement of all stakeholders, including the industry, and the importance of self-regulation in helping address alcohol abuse.

We plan to work constructively with the WHO and member states, by supporting and contributing to feasible and effective policies.

Q: Do we need more efforts at the international level to promote responsible drinking and to reduce harmful use of alcohol? How would these need to look? A: While we have seen significant declines in underage drinking and drunk driving, there is always more progress to be made.

There is no “one-size-fits-all” answer to alcohol abuse. The WHO recognized this in the alcohol strategy when it acknowledged the cultural differences between countries. To have the greatest impact, initiatives at the country level must be targeted, proven interventions that impact those who abuse alcohol versus broadly targeting responsible drinkers.

Q: Do you think the WHO strategy will develop further restrictions and a more binding framework like the one imposed on the use of tobacco? A: It is important to keep in mind that alcohol is not tobacco. Used as intended, cigarettes are harmful. You cannot say the same about beer. When consumed responsibly, beer can be part of a balanced and healthy lifestyle for most adults.

In addition, both the medical profession and governments’ health guidelines around the world recognise that drinking moderately may provide certain health benefits for some adults.

The beer industry is a leader in self-regulation. We not only abide by all applicable government regulations, we rigorously enforce our own guidelines when it comes to the manufacturing, marketing and distribution of our beers.

Q: Most of the increase in consumption over the last decades has occurred in developing countries. The WHO notes “a discrepancy between the increasing availability and affordability of alcohol beverages in many low- and middle-income countries and those countries’ capability and capacity to meet the possible additional public health burden that follows.” Do developing countries need special attention? A: Research has shown that the most effective way to address alcohol abuse is through targeted, proven interventions rather than broad, population-based measures, no matter the economic situation of a country.

That said, there is an opportunity that we fully support to increase education and awareness programmes in developing countries as overall consumption in those countries increases. * This interview is part of a series of columns and Q&As about corporate social responsibility, supported by AB InBev.

Excerpt:

Strict laws prevent Brazil's Amazon river dwellers from making use of wildlife that is otherwise destroyed by natural causes anyway, say experts.

Alligators hunted illegally in the Mamirauá nature reserve. - Juarez Pezzuti

Thousands of turtles lay 1.8 million eggs each year in Embaubal, in the eastern Brazilian Amazon. But about 70 percent are destroyed by flooding of the river or by the mothers themselves, which dig up sand where eggs have already been laid, explained biologist Juarez Pezzuti, a turtle and Amazon ecology researcher.

The rigid aspects of the law that banned turtle hunting in 1967 and of another in 1998 that established penalties for environmental crimes prevent local people from making sustainable use of wildlife, wasting one of the country's great riches, according to Pezzuti.

Furthermore, the laws mean that millions of residents of the Amazon are acting illegally, as they rely on hunting and fishing for food, he added.

It is a national “taboo” because the ban on handling turtle eggs follows “bureaucratic, not scientific, criteria,” and ignores the successful experiences in other countries like Costa Rica and Ecuador, said Pezzuti, who is a professor at the Federal University of Pará.

It is a contradictory measure: while fish, mollusks and crustaceans can be commercially exploited in their own habitat, he stressed that the same is not true for turtles, yacaré caimans (of the crocodilian order) or other wild species like the capybara, a large rodent.

Making use of a portion of the turtle eggs in Embaubal and many other locations would improve the diet of the people living along the river and would provide another source of income, without harming the species itself because such actions would only replace the natural destruction of the eggs that is already occurring, Pezzuti argued in an interview with this reporter.

Participatory management of turtle eggs, involving the local population itself, offers the advantages of providing food security and environmental education, and opens the way for greater knowledge of these reptiles, said the researcher.

It could also benefit biological diversity and improve the relationship between the local community and environmental authorities, which are resented because of the repressive nature of the laws because they don't take into account the traditional way of life of those who live along the river, he said.

They are rules that “ignore the tradition and dietary habits” of the Amazon people, and end up being ineffective in their application to Brazil's very different regional realities, agreed Serguei Camargo, professor of environmental law at the University of Amazonas State.

The 1998 Law 9.605 “on penal and administrative sanctions derived from behavior and activities harmful to the environment,” protects the public administrator more than it does the environment, because the environmental matters are “more administrative than penal” and the government is incapable of dealing with them, said Camargo.

Hunting is only tolerated as a way to prevent hunger for the hunter's family, protecting agriculture and livestock, and eliminating harmful animals — and the last two cases require official authorization.

Camargo believes the solution lies in a new wildlife management law that would establish rules for participatory and community management. It would not conflict with prior laws because a specific norm has more power in the regulated activity, he explained.

The yacaré caimans, abundant in the Amazon and in Brazil's west-central Pantanal wetlands, added heat to the debate in which ecologists defend “legislation that is among the most advanced in the world,” and fear that any flexibility would lead to devastating hunting, threatening many species with extinction.

On Dec. 30, the larger black caiman, known in Brazil as the “jacaré-açu” (Melanosuchus niger), tore off most of biologist Deise Nishimura's right leg in the Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve, on the banks of the Solimões River, as the Amazon is known in its middle stretch.

Nishimura, who studies river dolphins, survived — an apparent miracle. Something blocked her femoral artery and prevented a fatal bleed-out before she could reach the nearest hospital, an hour away by boat.

The black caiman, killed the next day with Nishimura's leg still inside, was four meters long. This species, unique to the Amazon, can reach six meters, which makes it a preferred target for hunters seeking its skin.

In recent years such “accidents” have increased, a result of the growing number of caimans, which is causing fear among the river population, George Rebêlo, an expert in crocodilians at the National Institute of Amazon Research, told this reporter.

Precisely in Mamirauá, a pioneer project has been in place since 2003 for controlled exploitation of the caiman, based on a gap in Law 9.985 (2000), which created the National System of Nature Conservation Units.

Of the hunting quota (736 caimans per year), in 2008 just 446 were taken, and none in 2009, reported Sonia Canto, who heads the Amazonas state government's wild animal production support agency.

Because the hunting ban has been in place more than four decades — and is only practiced clandestinely — the old chain of production has disappeared, like the tannery industry, refrigerated cargo boats and the sanitary inspection system. “That is the biggest obstacle today,” Canto said.

The jacaré-açu is no longer on the endangered species list, and its skin fetches good prices for its size and high quality, she said. The exploitation of this caiman species under close management has excellent prospects if the bottlenecks in regulation can be overcome. Furthermore, its meat is “healthy and has no cholesterol,” she said.

In Canto's opinion, caiman hunting should initially be limited to the conservation areas, where it can be monitored. There are 34 such areas in Amazonas state, which allow the sustainable use of their natural resources, she said.

Balanced management maintains biodiversity and the ecosystem itself, improves food security and provides needed additional income for the population, according to the official.

The authorities do allow raising yacaré caimans and turtles on farms. But that is under artificial conditions, in addition to providing little new knowledge about the species, it does not reduce pressure to hunt them because the farms do not provide for most of the river communities that hunt to survive.

In the Sierra Gorda, in central Mexico, a new approach is being tested for protecting the environment in a way that also ends poverty.

Rural worker Esteban Martínez, in Mexico's Sierra Gorda. - Daniela Pastrana/IPS

“I used to go after the jaguars that killed my livestock… and yes, I killed one. But now we protect them. For me, it is no longer worth it to harm the forest,” said Martínez.

From a lookout point on the hill, he explained how 16 residents of the San Juan de los Durán “ejido,” a communally owned rural estate, traded subsistence farming for an eco-tourism project in which they run a campground for visitors interested in nature.

The community is situated within the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve, in the northern portion of Querétaro.

Covering 384,000 hectares, one-third of Querétaro, the reserve is home to a great variety of ecosystems, with altitudes ranging from 350 meters to 3,100 meters above sea level: semi-desert, cloud forest, temperate forest and lowland jungles, among others.

There are 360 species of birds, 130 mammals (including six felines, like the endangered jaguar), 71 reptiles, 23 amphibians and 2,308 plant species.

The zone was recovered thanks to the efforts of Martha Ruiz Corzo, a music teacher, and of Roberto Pedraza Muñoz, her husband and public accountant. Together they founded the Sierra Gorda Ecological Group, in 1987, entrusted with managing the reserve.

The work of 23 years, which included the entire family, won support from private foundations and international agencies, like the Global Environment Facility (GEF), which through the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) provided 6.7 million dollars from 2001 to 2009.

Local efforts led to matching funds of four dollars for each dollar from GEF to implement a protected area management model involving both government and civil society — an approach that is unique in Mexico.

Thanks to the non-governmental organization Bosque Sustentable (Sustainable Forest), an affiliate of the Sierra Gorda Ecological Group, international credits for more than 28,000 tons of carbon dioxide — the leading greenhouse-effect gas — were put on the international carbon market. That sum is the estimated amount of additional CO2 absorbed by reforestation of degraded forests.

The revenue is earmarked to finance Sustainable Forest projects, but the aim is to use the money to pay local communities for protecting the area.

The team led by Ruiz Corzo, director of the reserve, is developing units of Social Return on Investment (SROI), which combine economic, social and environmental indicators to estimate the economic benefits of the actions taken.

The aim is to create “stock market certificates for planetary health,” which include the protection of biodiversity and fighting against poverty, Ruiz Corzo told this reporter.

“We need the local people to receive payment for conservation,” she added, going on to explain that it requires creating an alliance with the communities living in extreme poverty. “How are we going to ask them to maintain and conserve the environment when they are among the worst off in the world?”

The shifts in recent years of rain and drought patterns led to onslaughts of plant and insect pests, affecting the encino (of the oak family), junipers and 10 species of pine across 27,000 hectares — one-third of the forest in the reserve. “The trees are weakened by climate stress,” said Roberto Pedraza Ruiz, the reserve's chief technician — Martha and Roberto's son.

Pests are not the only threat in the Sierra Gorda, which the federal government declared a protected area in 1997 and UNESCO (UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) proclaimed a World Biosphere Reserve in 2001.

For the past four years the Federal Electricity Commissions (CFE) has been trying to buy up land, including the ejidos, to erect 47.5 kilometers of transmission lines to convey electricity from San Luis Potosí to Guanajuato — both are neighboring states of Querétaro.

“The consequences would be incalculable,” warned Pedraza. “For starters, one out of three amphibian species would be at risk.”

The law on natural protected areas prohibits electrical transmission lines in those zones. But the CFE has twice insisted with its proposal, rejected by the Sierra Gorda administration.

However, members of the Citizen Council of the Sierra Gorda report that CFE representatives continue trying to buy land, and have even paid for some lots.

In Mexico, more than half the population of 107 million lives on less than five dollars a day. Despite the fact that 80 percent of the forests is held as ejidos, or communal property, ownership is not well documented, and most lots are too small to appeal to global markets.

As a result, in Sierra Gorda, only a few of the communal properties receive payment for the environmental services they provide, and it ranges between 18 and 27 dollars annually per hectare conserved.

The overarching goal is for the residents of the Sierra to replace timber production, ranching and farming — the region's only economic activities — with provision of environmental services.

To that end, a state fund has been proposed that would pay compensation to landowners for the ecosystem services of their forests and jungles.

“We need them to get the cattle out of the forest, to maintain water sources for the fauna, to clean up the pests and to maintain active civilian monitoring,” said Mario Pedraza Ruiz, assistant director of Sustainable Forest and expert in environmentally friendly livestock methods.

The youngest in the Pedraza Ruiz family is convinced that conservation and cattle ranching are compatible.

“You confine the animals, they produce manure, and with your feet you break up the crust of soil that has been flattened by their step, you scrape and you plough, and they don't return to that terrain until it has recovered,” he explained.

Two communities, Landa de Matamoros and Arroyo Seco, have begun controlled pasturing using electric fences, which also allows forage plants to recover.

They are also developing hydroponic forage, which is grown in water, without soil.

“The cattle are part of the cultural mindset” of the community members, said Mario Pedraza, “even if they have only two skinny cows… It's impossible to change the mentality,” and in those cases the project does the best it can, within those limits.

The great biodiversity of a protected area on the Honduran Caribbean coast is at risk, despite the efforts of a handful of residents and local institutions.

Howler Monkey in the Capiro Calentura jungle. - Sonia Edith Parra/IPS

Capiro and Calentura are two mountains in the foothills of the Nombre de Dios Sierra, close to Trujillo, capital of the Caribbean coastal province of Colón. The park has 7,542 hectares of tropical and subtropical rainforest, and in it are 20 micro-watersheds that supply water to 32 surrounding communities, including Trujillo.

The park was established after a push from a group of teachers from Trujillo. It forms a natural complex with the neighboring Guaimoreto Lagoon Wildlife Refuge, covering 10,387 hectares along the ocean.

In the last three years, a new threat has emerged here, as it has along the entire northern Honduran coast: drug trafficking.

The natural canal that connects the sea to the lagoon is now a drug transit route — nobody who is not involved in trafficking dares venture there. In the refuge's buffer zone there are several clandestine aircraft landing strips.

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Central America is one of the most important corridors for moving narcotics. In 2007, of the 700 tons of cocaine seized around the world, 91 were intercepted here.

National and foreign drug traffickers buy up land around the wildlife refuge to more closely control their illicit transactions and make use of valuable natural resources.

“It's sad to see how we are losing the most valuable thing we have in the region: our parks and our water sources. So far we have been able to survive, put food on the table, but tomorrow — I don't know,” said a rural worker from the area who asked not to be named.

In fact, nearly everyone interviewed for this article spoke with this reporter only on condition of anonymity.

Living in this area are the Garífuna (descendants of African slaves and indigenous Caribs), the indigenous Pech peoples and small farmers who migrated here from other parts of the country. There are more than 60,000 inhabitants, according to the park's 2007 environmental management plan.

The Calentura and Guaimoreto Foundation (FUCAGUA), created in 1991 to preserve manage these sites, worked with the communities to develop an agro-forestry project in order to diversify crops.

The project includes gardens to produce healthy seeds of coconut palms, decimated by hurricanes and disease, and develop fruit crops and tubers like the ñame, and legumes like the balú — staples of the local cuisine.

Thanks to this initiative, which reinforces food security, next year the Garífuna will harvest their first healthy crop of coconuts.

But all is not good news. There are sectors of the park where the howler and white-faced monkeys, jaguars and deer can no longer be found. As for the park's flora, valuable timber, like mahogany and ceibo seem to have disappeared.

FUCAGUA's actions have been successful in protecting part of the park and the refuge. The foundation utilizes the 1992 Presidential Pact 1118, which established these protected areas.

In November of that year, an executive order banned resource exploitation and exploration in the area and instructed government agencies to delineate the borders and preserve them. But that hasn't happened.

Nearly 20 years later, the ambiguous legal situation continues. Although the borders were drawn up several times — the latest in 2006 — there was no decree to make them legal, meaning that the protected area loses ground day by day.

In the park's buffer zone, land is sold without title, or the titles are issued irregularly by the National Agrarian Institute. As such, cattle ranching and food crops continue their encroachment.

Although Honduras does have a Natural Resources and Environment Secretariat (Ministry) and Forest Conservation Institute, the protected areas are administered by non-governmental organizations through contracts with the state.

But they don't have state financial support, and often lack even technical and legal backing.

Meanwhile, the expansion of tourism continues unabated as well.

The Canada-based company Life Vision Properties is building the Alta Vista and Campo del Mar Nature Park tourism complexes, complete with private neighborhoods in the mountains or on the beach, in the Capiro Calentura and Guaimoreto buffer zone.

“Before, foreigners could not buy land less than two kilometers from the beaches,” a FUCAGUA source said. But that rule changed with legal reforms in the late 1990s.

According to Randy Jorgensen, executive director of Life Vision, the project promotes economic development in the area. A few weeks ago, a bulldozer belonging to the company turned an old ecological path into a highway.

On Jan. 22 and 25, the government issued environmental permits to the two projects. At the time, the country was still under control of the government that took power in the June 2009 coup.

FUCAGUA is now trying to get the Forest Conservation Institute to present the demarcation of the zone to Congress to make it legally binding.

To do so, it will use some of the financing from the sustainable resource management project of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor in the Honduran Atlantic, provided by the European Union.

By IPS
WASHINGTON, Dec 15 2009 (IPS)

There are broad prospects for developing countries to build on complementarities and leverage South-South Cooperation for development, according to Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, Ambassador of Qatar to the U.N.

Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

“The complementarities among the countries of the South provide them with unique opportunities to increase their share of international trade and expand investment possibilities,” Al-Nasser, who serves as the president of the U.N. General Assembly High-Level Committee for South-South Cooperation, said in an interview with IPS.

The sharing of appropriate technologies and experiences among developing countries promotes solidarity among the countries of the South, and at the same time promotes convergence of efforts with donors and partners in the North working toward similar development goals.

“In general, countries tend to share experiences with peers and learn from them when facing similar problems and challenges,” said Kenzo Oshima, senior vice-president of the Japan International Development Agency (JICA), at the high-level segment of the Global South-South Development Expo in Washington, DC, Monday.

The outcome document of the Nairobi High-Level U.N. Conference for South-South Conference, held in Nairobi, Kenya, Dec. 1-3, also stressed that, “proximity of experience is a key catalyst in promoting capacity development in developing countries”.

Excerpts from the interview with Al-Nasser follow:

Q: Why is the South-South Cooperation more important today than it has been in the past? A: The landmark United Nations Conference in Buenos Aires held in 1978 adopted what came to be known as the Buenos Aires Plan of Action (BAPA), which provided a road map and laid the foundation for promoting and implementing technical cooperation among developing countries.

In the past cooperation was limited to an exchange of technical expertise among the countries of the South. Today, the importance of South-South Cooperation has increased, qualifying these countries – especially in light of their economic weight – to play an effective role and became a full partner in the international economic system.

Most importantly is that, with the break-up of the colonial empires a newly self-confident, Global South has emerged.

Many developing countries are now very much in the mainstream of globalisation, and some are more important players in trade and finance than smaller countries of the North. This evolving context – together with the end of the Cold War, newly emergent centres of power and increasing technological innovation – has changed the global landscape, with major, far-reaching implications not only for the South but also for the whole world – both North and the South.

Q: What are the main challenges to South-South Cooperation becoming an even more important engine in promoting social and economic growth? A: The international situation is currently undergoing profound changes. The concept of technical cooperation among developing countries has undergone a process of transformation into South-South Cooperation, subsuming, and further strengthening the dynamics of implementing BAPA, as a response to the need for new directions, especially towards achieving the internationally agreed development goals, including the Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s).

South-South trade has expanded and is expanding faster than any other trade flows, but there are still significant tariffs and barriers impeding market access for southern exports. Agricultural subsidies of Northern countries are another factor that negatively affect the exports of developing and least developed countries.

Furthermore, the South has been seeking policy space and an appropriate role in the international financial and economic decision making process – especially following the current international financial and economic crisis.

The delay in the conclusion of the Doha round of World Trade Organisation is a major challenge for the South.

Developing countries also face major challenges in addressing climate change and associated rising sea levels. The way in which current negotiations are conducted does not augur well for a binding agreement that would provide sufficient resources to developing countries, to help them mitigate the effects of climate change and meeting their obligations in this respect.

Other challenges for the South include HIV/AIDS, migration and food crisis.

Q: What are the strategic issues to consider in scaling up South-South Cooperation? Can you give us some specific examples? A: The South is no longer the peripheral actor that it used to be in international policies and economics. It is very much a part of the global mainstream. The growing strength of the South has created capacities for new dynamics for South-South Cooperation. It is, therefore, critical for the South to be at the forefront of the development of ideas and proposals addressing global issues.

While public policy will continue to be critical for the Southern countries, it has become far less dependent on the state for its economic and social advancement. Today, non-state, especially business sector and civil society actors have become central players.

The South must recognise the need to build its own institutional framework – both governmental and non-governmental – to shape future policies, agenda, and strategies.

Excerpt:

By IPS
NAIROBI, Dec 5 2009 (IPS)

Fifty-five years after the Asia-Africa Conference in Bandung, Kwame Nkrumah’s exhortation to the developing world to unite for socioeconomic transformation remains resonant.

Omotoso: 'The South must take measures to protect itself from the impact of the global financial crisis.' Credit: IPS

The need for South-South cooperation does not stem from a failure of North-South collaboration, nor is it a substitute for it, according to Edward Omotoso, Senior Special Advisor, U.N. Special Unit for South-South Cooperation.

He urged countries in the North to meet the target of transferring 0.7 percent of their GDP to developing countries, while stressing that the governments in the South must cooperate among themselves if development goals are to be met.   IPS spoke to Omotoso during the High Level United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation held in Nairobi Dec. 1-3.

IPS: What are the most critical areas for South-South cooperation? EDWARD OMOTOSO: Removing barriers of movement. Countries will always have borders; they are very jealous about their sovereignty and particularly in this era of heightened security.

However, for exchange of expertise, knowledge and technology between countries, governments have to agree to loosen up applications for visas to facilitate this exchange. It is very important that experts move freely, and even for people to trade freely, even though one must safeguard their borders.

Trade is extremely important among developing countries. Trade among these countries per annum is currently about 12 billion dollars and it is expanding.

(Countries of the South) have a lot of things in common culturally, geographically and infrastructure-wise. Many of them are raw material commodity-based economies, or are single commodity-based economies. They can trade amongst themselves instead of looking at outside markets which cost them more.

This commonality calls for South-South countries to strive to harmonise their trade agreements and facilities.

Another opportunity lies in remittances. A lot of these countries have their citizens residing abroad and they send money back to their homes, subsequently reducing poverty. Remittances are a very big part of the economy in many of the countries in the South.

This can be regulated to strengthen competition in the region, even though there may be fears of remittances declining due to the financial crisis.

IPS: How is the South-South cooperation addressing the issue of the global financial crisis?

EO: The problems like banking are cross-border problems and the global financial market is truly global. What happens in Wall Street for instance affects the world; what happens in the North affects the South. It is a ripple effect, when the North sneezes, the South catches a cold.

And so it is for the South to try to take measures to protect itself from the impact of the global financial crisis.

There are some proposals such as the Bank of the South, and financial collaboration, where some people are talking in fact about a Nasdaq, like a Wall Street of the South.

Those issues are on the table, they are being discussed.

IPS: What next after this conference? EO: As you know this conference comes 31 years after the first one held in Argentina, in Buenos Aires. It was to be held last year marking the 30th anniversary of the conference.

In thirty years a lot of progress has been made in the South, and this conference was to evaluate progress made, assess the current situation and look at the way forward. This conference has examined all that and come up with an outcome document after protracted negotiations which started in New York almost two years ago.

The document is forward-looking, and serves as a roadmap to take South-South cooperation to new levels. It is big on areas of collaboration such as trade.

Excerpt:

A biological process in which blue-green algae produces ethanol will be the basis for fuel production by a Mexican company beginning next year.

A digital rendering of algae-ethanol production pools. - BioFields

The BioFields corporate office is located on the twelfth floor of a luxury tower in Lomas de Chapultepec, an exclusive Mexico City neighborhood. For now, the company doesn't sell anything, but it plans to revolutionize the biofuel market.

Before the end of the year, BioFields will begin construction of a pilot center to obtain ethanol from algae in Puerto Libertad, a town of 3,000 people in the northern state of Sonora, corporate affairs director Sergio Ramírez told this reporter.

The biofuel plant will be completed in the second half of 2010, said Ramírez, who was also the first employee recruited by the company, founded in February 2007.

BioFields holds the rights to use “direct to ethanol” technology in Mexico. The method, developed and patented by the Algenol company, produces biofuel using hybrid blue-green algae, he explained.

The algae produce ethanol naturally, and the technique optimizes the process so it can be done on an industrial scale. The ethanol produced can be mixed with gasoline in different proportions, helping reduce emissions of greenhouse-effect gases generated by vehicles.

“The great success of this technology is that we found an algae that secretes ethanol naturally, saving two industrial steps: fermentation and synthesis into ethanol. This makes each microorganism a mini-factory,” Ramírez said.

The algae will grow and reproduce in pools of salt water that is pumped from the Sea of Cortés, which is just a few kilometers from the plant, he said.

In addition to the sun's rays, the algae will feed on nitrates and on the carbon dioxide produced by one of Mexico's most polluting thermoelectric plants, also located in Puerto Libertad.

In order to absorb that carbon dioxide, the pilot plant will be built on a 1.5-hectare area within the thermoelectric complex, which is owned by the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE for its Spanish initials), a federally owned energy company.

If the project goes as planned, the CFE will keep the funds generated by capturing CO2, as provided under the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

The CDM allows the industrialized countries, which are required under the Protocol to reduce their greenhouse emissions, to offset their emissions by financing projects in developing countries that help fight climate change. Once the algae-to-ethanol process proves itself, an industrial-scale plant will be built next to the CFE installations, in a desert area of 22,000 hectares. The aim is to produce more than 946 million liters of ethanol in 2014, and 3.8 billion liters in 2020.

The investment will be 850 million dollars, coming from the founder and director general of BioFields, Alejandro González, owner of the Gondi Group, one of Mexico's largest cardboard recycling companies.

BioFields' first customer will be Mexico. In 2012 the government-owned oil company Pemex plans to replace gasoline oxygenates (which represent five percent of each liter) with ethanol, which means it will need more than 3 billion liters per year.

But BioFields also plans to export. “We are less than 300 kilometers from California, Arizona and New Mexico,” in the U.S. southwest, which are a major ethanol consumer market, said Ramírez.

The firm is also setting its sights on Japan and Europe. Mexico has signed trade agreements with those parties that would reduce import taxes.

But Ramírez acknowledged that BioFields will face big challenges before it can become a profitable company. First of all, the global biofuels market will have to be consolidated.

If a new technology is developed in the next few years that allows low-cost, deep-sea oil drilling, enough to drive up world petroleum reserves, the energy supply argument in favor of biofuels would not be as persuasive.

Researcher Michelle Chauvet, of the Autonomous Metropolitan University of Mexico, said in an interview for this article that biofuels are only profitable if oil prices surpass 50 dollars a barrel.

The other challenge for BioFields is the consolidation of the carbon market – an economic approach to reducing greenhouse emissions.

The firm needs to know if it will receive compensation for eliminating CO2 from the atmosphere, and if so, how much it can charge per ton.

According to Rodolfo Quintero, researcher with the university's technology and processes department, “there is great interest in developing cheap and renewable fuels that don't come from hydrocarbons.”

“The era of cheap petroleum is over, and even though there will still be oil, it will be more expensive and scarce,” he said. Mexico's own proved reserves of petroleum are for just nine years, Quintero said.

Another aspect to consider is the negative side of first generation biofuels – ethanol and biodiesel from maize, sugarcane, soy and wheat – because they are made from food crops, which drives up food prices.

Quintero also pointed out that those biofuels do not provide environmental advantages over fossil fuels, especially when one takes into account the environmental effects of the entire process from cultivation to consumption. The BioFields approach “isn't bad, but they have to prove that it works on an industrial scale,” said the researcher.

Chauvet, who studies the social effects of biofuel production, believes that beyond the BioFields project it is necessary to keep in mind the experiences of other countries.

Malaysia, Indonesia, Sumatra and Borneo deforested their jungles in order to supply biofuels to Europe. Argentina has seen rural population displaced as a result of the expansion of genetically modified soy, which has also led to desertification, thus further contributing to climate change.

According to Chauvet, who also holds a doctorate in economics, the move towards ethanol production from algae is a more acceptable option for Mexico than other ethanol sources, though she says there must be monitoring of the labor conditions because the treatment by some companies in some places “is almost like slavery.”

BioFields calculates that the construction of its energy plants will create 1,500 temporary jobs, and once they are up and running, 350 permanent jobs.

The people of Puerto Libertad work in fishing, which is seasonal, and are hopeful that they will see some benefits from the biofuel project, according to Lauro Urial, secretary of Pitiquito municipality, where the town is located.

The idea of “wilderness” also encompasses its opposite: urbanized, exploited or altered lands. That is why it is beyond the traditional conceptions of the world's indigenous peoples.

The Bitterroot Salish, Kootenai and Pend d’Oreilles tribes all share the Flathead Reservation in Montana. - Wildland Recreation Program Confederated Salish & Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Nation

Illion Merculieff, an environmental activist from the Aleut community in the northwestern U.S. state of Alaska, said the idea of wilderness is “an interesting concept; it is a Western concept. Our people have always lived and interacted in the environment.”

The Aleuts have inhabited the islands and coast of the Bering Sea, in the northern Pacific, for more than 10,000 years. They have learned to adapt to the extreme and difficult climate.

“Adaptation is absolutely essential,” according to Merculieff, “but not adaptation as it is understood in the scientific community. This is adaptation that comes from retrieving information and communicating with the environment, so the environment would tell us what is happening.”

He explained that since he was a child he has communicated with the ocean, which has told him when there will be high tides and where the best places are for fishing.

To the east of Alaska, in Canada's Northwest Territories, lives Gerald Antoine, former Grand Chief of the Dehcho First Nations. “The word 'wilderness' is not in our vocabulary,” he said, “but the people are always talking about protecting the wilderness. For us it is natural, the land sustains us, and we need to be respectful, because nature provides us things.”

Merculieff and Antoine met in the southeastern Mexican city of Mérida with other chiefs, leaders, advisers and members of the world's indigenous communities, at a session of the Native Lands and Wilderness Council at the 9th World Wilderness Congress, Nov. 5-13. These lands, which in many cases are indigenous territory, are faced with problems of all kinds. And the ways the challenges are dealt with reflect the unique identity of the peoples who inhabit them.

For example, the community of Santa Clara Pueblo, in the southwestern U.S. state of New Mexico, suffered fires that destroyed 10 percent of its forests. For Joseph Gutiérrez, a resident of Kha'po Owinge, or Valley of the Wild Roses (the traditional name of the community), the response of his nation has kept with traditions and customs.

Gutiérrez said that when the tribal council realized that the forest fires had also affected fishing, it became clear that it would be “a blow to our culture.”

The community created a forestry and restoration department managed by the tribe, “and since then we have planted more than 1.7 million trees,” he said.

In the Amazon region of southern Colombia, Rose Mary Parente was elected governor of the indigenous Tikuna community of Castañal de los Lagos, population 536.

“If you work with the people, the people tell you what they want to do. As governor, one collaborates in the management of resources for community work,” Parente said in an interview.

One of the biggest problems of Castañal de los Lagos is deforestation, despite having its own government. “Many trees have been cut down, but we haven't been the ones to do it. They are people from other parts. Our elderly also cut down some and now they realized that what we really need is trees, and they are collaborating with this project,” she said.

Under the precept of governing by obeying, Parente has taken on the task of managing projects with international groups not only to reforest but also to preserve Lake Yahuarcaca and to promote productive initiatives of “la chagra,” the traditional small farm.

There are many other examples of initiatives on indigenous lands around the world. Thanks to its sense of unity, the Yawanawá people of Brazil were able to escape lives of virtual slavery and obtain independent territory in the northwestern Amazonian state of Acre, where they preserve their culture and protect the land.

In Ecuador, the creation of the Indigenous Federation of the Cofán Nationality was able to unite 13 grassroots communities and, among other achievements, started up a program of certified park rangers.

Inherited traditional values also allowed the Flathead Nation, in the northwestern U.S. state of Montana, to become the first to designate one-seventh of its territory as protected area, as well as taking action for the conservation of the bison, the northern plains buffalo.

“The global community needs to return to its origins, to the earth, and in that way change its mentality,” said Brazilian Yawanawá chief, Tashka Yawanawá.

The rate at which the planet's species are going extinct must be halted by next year in order to meet the terms set by the international community in the Convention on Biological Diversity.

The world's indigenous people are demanding recognition for the role that they can play in that effort.

Julie Cajune, of the Flathead Nation and coordinator of the session in Mérida, said indigenous peoples should be the principal agents of conservation, but at the same time there must be mechanisms for decision-makers to hear and take into account their point of view.

Terry Tanner, also of the Flathead Nation, told this reporter that the tribe's elders have many stories to tell about “our mountains, hunting, berry picking and about our people.”

Merculieff summarized this combination of spirituality and knowledge: “We have to know how to listen to our heart… The mind can lie, but the heart never lies.”

Environmental awareness is dawning as a source of inspiration for a new generation of fashion designers.

Clothing from the Potencial Pandemia collection, by designer Juana Díaz. - Courtesy of Raíz Diseño

“There are many design students making [green] items, but there are few spaces where they can show and sell those products,” said Josefina Heiremans, member of the design management agency MH Design & Networking, representative in Chile of the Italian brand Remade.

The annual contest that MH Design & Networking has held since 2007 has given a certain amount of visibility to designers with environmentally sustainable approaches. But there are still few who dare to set up companies of scale because the local market is so small.

The Modulab company, created by a married couple of industrial designers, Felipe Ferrer and Pamela Castro, made a splash in 2006 with handbags, hats and boots made from PVC (polyvinyl chloride) canvas printed with advertising from the film industry.

Inspired by the work of the Swiss company Freitag, Modulab partnered with film distributors to make use of the discarded advertising panels. Later, they began producing purses, belts and other accessories from the rubber recycled from car tires. And now they are experimenting with plastics.

Modulab's designers produce made-to-order items, distributing their wares in small shops, but they also export to Britain, Japan, Netherlands and the United States. “We generate exclusive deals from design to recycling,” said Ferrer, given that all of Modulab's products are made by people with otherwise scant resources, “who are paid very well and on time.”

Another design company that has made a mark is Duotipo. Among its products are buttons made from recycled 1.44 megabyte computer diskettes, with hundreds of red, blue and yellow buttons sold in shops.

The choice of diskettes emerged from an “analysis of obsolete products that are no longer being used in homes and were accumulating because they had been replaced by others that performed better,” said Duotipo designer Francisco Véliz.

“Our basic premise is to generate products of mass consumption,” he said.

Visual artist Consuelo Riedel creates accessories with materials discarded by the textile industry and designer Paula Vidal makes jackets from reused industrial felt.

Under the Mantis brand, Alexandra Guerrero and Ricardo Cheuquiante manufacture hats, dresses, vests and blankets from the filters of cigarette butts.

First they separate the filter from the paper, and then they remove the toxic substances, like nicotine and tar, in an autoclave using steam, pressure and heat. The clean fiber is untangled and dyed, and then mixed with sheep wool. The skein of yarn is about 10 percent cigarette filter, and the products are knitted by hand.

Student Camila Labra had the idea to make colorful women's boots from plastic bags and Betzabé Ortiz came up with the notion of creating earrings and necklaces from plastic bottles. Another group makes vests and belts from the tape of old cassettes.

Giovana Altamirano makes purses, belts and other accessories from strips of x-ray films, and Pamela Jerez creates jewelry from bottle corks.

The fashion-environmental link has its novelty factor, but that doesn't eliminate tensions and contradictions, which emerged in interviewing the designers. Is making and selling new products more or less polluting than leaving the materials in the garbage? How much waste are they actually reusing?

Some designers say there is little impact a single designer can make on the environment. Alliances with larger companies could turn that around.

“The 3,000 handbags I sold in London one Christmas season do not make a substantial difference for the environment. We prevented many square meters of PVC from going to the garbage and we generated local jobs. But now we are looking to partner with a company and trying to make a small difference with mass-distributed products,” said Modulab's Ferrer.

They are working with waste from companies so that it returns through the company doors, for example, in the form of corporate gifts.

The original focus of Remade, created by the government of the northern Italian region of Lombardia, was to stimulate companies to make new products from waste, in order to comply with Europe's strict legislation on recycling. The project has been replicated in Portugal, Argentina and Chile.

Both Ferrer and Heiremans, of Remade, challenge the weak Chilean policies on recycling.

For Argentine designer Laura Novik, analyst of fashion trends and founder and director of Raíz Diseño, sustainability is not only synonymous with reuse and recycling.

“It is also sustainable for emerging communities to work on your product, and for your product to allow artisanal traditions to survive in the contemporary world. All of that is sustainability: cultural, social and environmental,” said Novik, who has lived in Chile for the past six years.

Standouts in that context are designers Martín Churba and Alejandro Sarmiento (Argentina), Ronaldo Fraga (Brazil), Ana Livni and Fernando Escuder (Uruguay), Juana Díaz (Chile), among many others, and independent shops that distribute “conscious design” and “slow fashion”.

In 2008, Raíz Diseño organized an international eco-design fair in Santiago, and repeated this year, Oct. 17-18, with the slogan “Simple Life”.

This year, Novik convened designers who use natural fibers and who create jobs for artisans and indigenous peoples, such as Chileans Andrea Onetto, María Paz Valdivieso and María Inés Solimano, considering that the United Nations declared 2009 International Year of Natural Fibers.

Controversy is also found in the area of supporting traditions. For example, some “purist” designers defend faithful conservation of indigenous practices, even when they are not considered sustainable. And trade with communities that provide labor is another issue of constant debate.

“If sustainability is a door so narrow that only a chosen few can enter, then we will never change anything,” said Novik. “Design is a powerful tool that can transform consciences.”

“The idea is to open many doors from different points: from those who work with natural fibers to those who work with recycling. But also from those who decide to drink Coca-Cola as well as recycle,” she said.

To understand the link between global climate change and coastal erosion requires an integration of the otherwise reductionist specialization on the issue, says Argentine scientist Jorge Codignotto.

Argentine geologist Jorge Codignotto. - Gabriela Cerioli/IPS

“All of the deltas in the world are on the way to disappearing,” except for the one formed where the Paraná River runs into the Río de la Plata (River Plate) estuary, said Codignotto, who sat on the IPCC from 1999 to 2007 and has spent years studying Argentina's coastal areas.

“By deforesting the Yungas jungle, in the northwest, in order to grow soybeans, the Bermejo River continues to provide more sediment that ends up in the delta. If that situation continues, in 2050 the delta will extend to Buenos Aires, and it will be polluted,” he said.

This is one example of the factors, in addition to climate change, that affect nearly 5,000 kilometres of shoreline – from the Rio de la Plata estuary to the Beagle Channel – that make Argentina one of the 25 countries with the most coastline.

It is necessary to “diagnose” coastal erosion in a “holistic” way, and the government should regulate human activities in those areas, says Codignotto, who holds a PhD in geological sciences from the University of Buenos Aires, and is lead researcher for the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research.

TIERRAMÉRICA: What is the current outlook for Argentina's coasts?

JORGE CODIGNOTTO: The Argentine coast is affected by a broad phenomenon of erosion, which has been increasing since the 1970s.

This has normally been attributed to global warming, because as the planet heats up – the causes of which are being debated – the anticyclones (areas of slowly rotating high atmospheric pressure) move towards the poles, which means more frequent and more intense storms in more southerly areas that normally don't have them, so there are more waves, more energy, and stronger currents in coastal areas.

But there is also an increase in erosion from human causes.

TIERRAMÉRICA: How does the rising sea level influence erosion?

JC: Actually, the sea level rises just three millimetres per year, but the important thing is the domino effect: there are more coastal currents that cause erosion, and it is raining more in some places, and that carries soil towards the sea, which modifies ecosystems.

It is estimated that in 2025 there will be one billion more people on the planet and a notable shortage of food, because the key ecosystems will have collapsed. Ecosystems can adapt, but they need more time.

By 2025, the United Nations calculates that 85 percent of the world's population will be living in coastal areas, which are inherently unstable and will suffer even more from human pressures.

And there is another problem: pollution. A 1,000 to 1,200-metre stretch of the Río de la Plata coast in this country is contaminated with mercury, cyanide, chromium, detergents, etc., from waste that is not treated because it would be very expensive.

Fourteen million people in this country drink water that comes from the Río de la Plata. At the rate the delta is advancing, it is going to reach Buenos Aires by 2050, with all its pollution.

TIERRAMÉRICA: How is erosion affecting the Argentine coast?

JG: Erosion varies from area to area. On the Buenos Aires coast, concrete houses and coastal avenues have collapsed. That is basically money dumped into the sea out of ignorance. People build in coastal areas, but aren't aware that the land moves in all directions and more so along the coasts.

It's hard to understand that coastlines change. However, when the Spaniards reached the Río de la Plata, they sailed to Escobar, 50 kilometres north of what is now Buenos Aires. And 19,000 years ago, you could reach the Malvinas Islands (known by local inhabitants as the Falklands) on foot.

Another problem is flooding. The town of General Lavalle, in the bay of Samborombón (Buenos Aires province), is practically at sea level. It has tidal canals that fill with rubble and they sell off the plots. This, in a context of rising sea level, makes no sense.

TIERRAMÉRICA: In the city of Buenos Aires they added, on average, 20 hectares of land per year with coastal landfill since 1925. What do you think of these efforts to gain land from the river?

JC: We should spend money on something that is more useful and economical, such as discouraging people from populating coastal areas.

TIERRAMÉRICA: Is it feasible to educate the population about these issues?

JC: First we need legislation for rational land use. In the resort cities of the Buenos Aires province coast there are often streets perpendicular to the shore. When it rains and southeasterly winds come up, the runoff isn't absorbed by the sand to prevent erosion, but instead ends up out at sea, leaving big channels on the beach – a phenomenon that is worsening due to the destruction of the sand dunes in order to facilitate access to the beaches.

In Villa Ostende, 365 kilometres south of the city of Buenos Aires, they designed broad, green areas along the coast that every so often have a depression for rainwater to accumulate and filter into the ground.

TIERRAMÉRICA: Do municipal governments have adequate solutions?

JC: No, but one thing we do have is Decree 3202 on coastal management, which the province of Buenos Aires enacted in November 2006.

We are lucky that our Civil Code, with regard to the coasts, is based on the ancient Roman concept of the “tow line route.” Back then, a 35-metre wide strip along seas and rivers was reserved for public use, so that horses pulling tow lines could move boats that couldn't use sails so close to land.

The Argentine coast cannot be privatised thanks to Dalmacio Vélez Sarsfield, author of the Civil Code. Although on occasion it has been bought off.

TIERRAMÉRICA: Is there any possible long-term solution?

JC: Information with a holistic outlook is essential. There are many experts, but specialisation tends to narrow people's focus. Specialists should integrate their studies with the broader context. And the government must establish regulations.

In the ocean depths off the coast of southeastern Mexico, galleries of human sculptures are to be installed as an artistic attraction with environmental ends.

A coral reef on the Mexican coast. - Courtesy of the Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas

The Subaquatic Sculpture Museum will be situated in the West Coast National Park in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo, on the Yucatán Peninsula. The park receives nearly 300,000 visitors each year. The museum's mission is to attract some of those tourists, reducing the pressures on important natural habitat.

The watery museum will become even more attractive when the sculpture area fills with thousands of colorful fish. The concrete of the sculptures is pH neutral, which allows rapid growth of algae and incrustation of marine invertebrates.

“With the underwater museum we ensure a diversion of tourists, which permits us to give a rest to the natural reefs. It's as if it were a restoration process,” explained national park director Jaime González to this reporter.

“In becoming healthier, the coral reefs will be more resistant to hurricane damage,” he added.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (PCC) has warned that extreme weather phenomena, like hurricanes, will become more intense and frequent as a result of global warming. The panel also predicts higher acidity of ocean waters and consequent bleaching of coral – which can kill it.

“Coral bleaching is akin to us losing our skin pigment. The ultraviolet rays from the sun would harm us,” explained Roberto Iglesias Prieto, of UNAM's (Autonomous National University of Mexico) Institute of Sea and Lake Sciences.

The whitening process stresses the coral, which expels the algae that live within it and which provide nutrition, leaving the coral to starve, Iglesias added. The coral also reproduce less and are more vulnerable to disease.

The phenomena associated with climate change threaten the survival of coral reefs around the world. In July, experts meeting at the Royal Society of London agreed that these rich sea formations could disappear within a century if climate-changing gas emissions aren't sharply reduced.

What would the world be like without coral? “On this planet, 200 million people make their living from fishing for species that inhabit coral reefs,” said the UNAM expert.

Another 300 million people benefit from reefs as a form of coastal protection. “In a hurricane, 99 percent of power in waves is dissipated in the reef and doesn't reach the coast, thereby protecting human lives and property,” said Iglesias.

“Given the global threat of climate change, local protection of reefs is very important,” said the researcher.

We need to gain time against climate change, he says, for example, by curbing the number of tourists visiting coral reefs.

In the West Coast National Park of Isla Mujeres, Punta Cancún and Punta Nizuc, the challenge is to draw tourists away from natural habitats without losing the 36 million dollars they bring into the area each year.

Events in recent years have left clues on how to achieve that.

González recalls that in 1997 a cruise ship destroyed 500 square meters of coral of the Cuevones reef in Punta Cancún. Since then, all tourist access has been banned.

In 2005 the park administration submerged 110 hollow domes and concrete structures in layers to create an artificial habitat in the area known as Sac Bajo.

“At first the people of Isla Mujeres told us that they were never going to bring tourists there, but after a few years it became a must-see attraction,” said González.

The Cuevones reef, where the cruise ship grounding occurred, is now the area's reef in the best state. “The only difference is that there are no tourists,” he said.

“If they swim near the coral, the divers with little experience might kick them with a fin or hit them with the oxygen tank,” he added.

“Before it was declared a park, the tourists even climbed up the coral and walked on top of them, breaking them, shattering them,” González said.

Now there are buoys that mark the borders and tourists must wear lifejackets to prevent them from submerging. Once the underwater museum opens, it will require divers to have experience in artificial habitat.

With those measures, they hope to extend the lifespan of the coral and the services the reef provides, including the production of the white sands for which Mexico's Caribbean beaches are famous – the result of natural erosion.

Corals also “have the potential to contain substances or pharmaceuticals that can be useful to humanity,” says Ernesto Enkerlin Hoeflich, national commissioner of Protected Natural Areas in Mexico (CONANP).

“Furthermore, they act as carbon sinks (absorbing greenhouse gases) and, for their incredible beauty, they serve as a tourist attraction and an opportunity to reconnect with nature,” said the commissioner. For these reasons, CONANP is supporting the Subaquatic Sculpture Museum with resources and by facilitating permits.

Last year, the commissioner himself went diving in the Caribbean waters to observe the results of the concrete structures submerged in 2005, and which serve the same environmental principle as the statues.

“It's a unique experience… to witness the rapid colonization of the spheres by thousands of fish of different species and to see how, although we sometimes damage nature, humans can also do something to restore it,” said Enkerlin Hoeflich. The national park director González calculates that by April 2010 there will be some 250 sculptures installed in the underwater museum. The total cost of the project is about 350,000 dollars.

The artistic director is Jason de Caires Taylor, famous for his underwater sculptures, but other artists will also be involved.

The museum isn't expected to have much effect on the flow of tourists to Isla Mujeres, though most agree the site will provide a new identity for the park.

Each sculpture will be human sized, with a base of four square meters. There will be theme-based galleries as well.

One of them, “The Dream Catcher,” will be the figure of a person who sorts bottles that arrive with messages sent by castaways. Another will be titled “Coral Collector”. Also in the works is a sculpture of a Maya army.

Brazil could take advantage of the electric car boom to build up the industry at home, given the threats of climate change and petroleum crisis – and the death foretold of the combustion engine.

Electric car prototypes developed in Brazil. - Alexandre Marchetti, Courtesy of Itaipú Binacional

Today's automotive industry “will be buried within 15 years” if China's electric vehicle production meets its goals, says economist Gustavo dos Santos, of the government's National Economic and Social Development Bank.

As a result, the expansion of ethanol fuel (which burns cleaner than gasoline) will be smaller than planned by the Brazilian government and will stop by 2020, predicts Santos.

The private Chinese vehicle assembly company BYD (Build Your Dreams), which began as a battery manufacturer, expects to sell 700,000 electric cars in 2010 and its annual production goal will increase to reach eight million units by 2025, with half for export, Santos told this reporter.

In addition, the Chinese government aims to turn the Asian giant into an automotive superpower, and subsidizes the sale of electric or hybrid (a combination of battery and combustion engines) vehicles.

The advance of these new automobiles, which are more energy efficient than combustion engines, was blocked from the beginning by the vast political power of the oil companies, Santos pointed out. The automotive sector itself is resisting the changes because it means the loss of an entire system that has grown over the course of a century.

But now the threat of climate change is making it “inevitable” that there will be a revolution of the energy and entire automotive manufacturing sectors, with consequences in two other main industries: electronics and chemical, not to mention urban planning, said the economist.

The gases emitted by automotive transport fuelled by petroleum products like gasoline and diesel oil contribute to the greenhouse effect, which drives global climate change.

A technology race has taken off around the world, and is reflected in the numerous electric car models on exhibit at the 63rd International Motor Show in Frankfurt, Germany, Sep. 17-27. It is further evidence of trends seen at similar shows elsewhere. Nearly all major car manufacturers are now producing some type of electric vehicle.

The governments of wealthy countries generously subsidize the development and sale of these alternative cars. General Motors, saved from bankruptcy by the U.S. government's bailout, hopes a boon to its recovery will be the Volt, a rechargeable hybrid that can run 98 kilometers on one liter of gasoline, and will hit the sales floors in 2010.

China is tipping the balance of the game because “it doesn't have commitments with the petroleum industry nor with the old automotive industry,” noted Santos in an article published in the June/July edition of the journal “Costo Brasil”.

China's goal of widespread car ownership among its citizens, necessary to sustain current economic growth, is impossible if it's based on petroleum, due to the insufficient global supply, according to Santos.

Batteries, which are still large and costly, need many hours to recharge even for short distances, and remain the Achilles heel of the electric car. But bringing the batteries up to speed, as it were, is only a matter of time. Vast investments have gone into battery technology in the automotive, cellular phone and information technology industries.

Santos believes that the future of the electric car depends “more on political disputes than on technological factors.” In addition to pressures from the entire metal manufacturing chain and from the oil companies, the United States, Europe and Japan will try to prevent China from becoming an automotive superpower, he says, and does not rule out a protectionist reaction that could plunge the world into another economic recession.

The electric vehicle could drive a technological revolution that would spur investment, supporting environmentally sustainable growth by “destroying a good portion of the global productive capacity,” says the economist.

With a sharp decline in consumption, the price of oil would begin to fall in the next 10 years. In that case, Brazil has little time to make the most of its vast petroleum reserves discovered in 2007 under a layer of salt in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean, according to Santos.

Paulo Cesar Lima, an adviser to the Chamber of Deputies in Congress specialized in energy issues, agrees with Santos.

Based on the sector's forecasts, which state that 30 percent of the vehicles manufactured in 2030 will be electric, Lima warns that underwater drilling could be nonviable in four decades because of oil's predicted low prices.

Discovered at depths of 7,000 meters, Brazil's new oil would have high production costs, nearing 40 dollars per 159-liter barrel, according to energy officials.

The “determining factor,” in Lima's opinion, will be the environmental question, which will force the primacy of the electric car. In turn, the electric car “could affect the ethanol market” and its shift to the commodity market.

But the electric revolution will not impede the survival and expansion of ethanol, says Lima, because this fuel reduces emissions of greenhouse gases.

Brazil's sugarcane ethanol is recognized for its environmental benefits, unlike ethanol from maize or other crops in the United States and Europe. But it faces criticism for the harsh labor conditions its production entails – and for displacing food crops.

The replacement of liquid fuels “will be a slow process,” and for a long time to come we will see the predominance of the hybrid vehicle, which uses a combustion engine to generate electricity for propulsion, predicts Pietro Erber, president of the Brazilian Electric Vehicle Association.

For the hybrid, ethanol offers advantages over petroleum derivatives, especially diesel oil, which Brazil imports for its trucks and buses, says Erber. The advantages will be bigger if petroleum is taxed in order to discourage consumption and benefit the environment.

Oil would lose market share, but would not, because it is a “more homogeneous” fuel, which can be mixed with gasoline to improve performance and reduce emissions, according to Jayme Buarque de Hollanda, director of the non-governmental National Institute of Energy Efficiency.

And it is not just ethanol, says Buarque, but also biomass that will see booms as renewable and “clean” sources of energy. In addition to sugar and ethanol, sugarcane is also a source of electricity (using its pulp) and fertilizer (from distillation waste).

The diversified use of biomass is a special area for Brazil, which has abundant water, sun and land. Lying ahead is a broad future for research and development to replace most of the “3,000 petroleum products,” according to Fernando Siqueira, president of the engineers association of Petrobras, the mixed capital Brazilian oil giant.

For that future, Brazil should invest in fuel cells as a way to replace batteries, said Santos. The electro-chemical device converts fuel energy into electricity with greater efficiency than a battery, and would give ethanol long-term viability, despite the predicted death of the combustion engine.

In the economist's opinion, the current paradigm shift, by limiting obstacles it is creating a unique opportunity for Brazil, like China, to create a national automotive industry of electric vehicles. For that purpose, Brazil has vast energy resources and the technological capacity, affirmed Santos.

A variety of new methods for making best use of rainwater are being tested in Mexico, which faces water shortages that will only grow worse in the coming decades.

Geomembranes to collect and filter rainwater. - Emilio Godoy/IPS

Although the lack of water is a historic trait, Mexico today is suffering a severe crisis as a result of the depletion of underground springs and scant rainfall.

In Mexico City, one of the hardest hit areas, one option is to make use of what rain does come, which otherwise goes to waste. Some 17 cubic meters of rainfall go down the drain every second.

A good example of utilizing rain is under way in the municipality of San Felipe del Progreso, some 150 kilometers from the capital, where a rainwater collection and purification plant is operating.

With technology developed by the International Center for Demonstration and Training in Rainwater Usage (CIDECALLI), of the Postgraduate College, and with funding from private donations, the non-governmental Pro Zona Mazahua Sponsorship invested 1.5 million dollars in the project launched in 2006 to supply marginalized areas and to prevent gastrointestinal diseases.

“It has been difficult to introduce the water that we purify, because people have gotten used to drinking soft drinks,” Manuel Figueroa, head of the plant, told this reporter.

The site has a slope with a geomembrane that channels rain to two enormous basins with more geomembranes, low-permeability sheets made from plastic resins. They filter out particulate from the water, which passes to a tank, from which it flows into purification machines and into 19-liter bottles. This final phase takes five hours.

The installed capacity is five million liters, and 4,000 liters are processed daily, of which 2,500 are utilized and the rest goes to irrigating the plant nursery of forest species being grown as part of the project.

The project's brand, “Más-Agua”, is distributed to the rural homes and schools in the area, populated by Mazahua Indians. The prices vary between 75 cents on the dollar and 1.10 dollars per bottle.

“We began to look skyward and we asked ourselves why weren't we taking advantage of rainfall, which is a valuable resource and easy to treat and make potable. Our project is 30 years old and they asked me when it would be viable. I responded that it would happen when we reached a crisis. That moment has come,” Manuel Anaya, CIDECALLI coordinator, said in an interview for this report.

A group of professors from the College of Postgraduates, specialized in agricultural sciences, and the autonomous universities of Chapingo and Antonio Narro, created CIDECALLI in 2004.

The Mexican capital, with some 12 million inhabitants, consumes 33 cubic meters of water per second. Due to leaks in the pipes, every year around 150 million cubic meters are lost. From the city's aquifers, water is consumed at a pace of 55.5 cubic meters per second.

Given the lack of rain in the last three months, the government's National Commission on Water, and the capital's water system have reduced the supply. Officials warn that if the crisis continues, the capital will have no water in February 2010.

The rainwater collection systems are “replicable, economical, accessible and give good results,” said Enrique Lomnitz, director of the non-governmental International Renewable Resources Institute-Mexico.

Within the “Urban Island” project, Lomnitz and his team have set up five collection systems in homes in a low-income district in southern Mexico City. The parties involved provide the materials and the project sets it up, free of cost.

The system involves a pre-filtration mechanism, a cistern with chlorine to disinfect the water, and a filter, for a total cost of 115 to 190 dollars. Each meter of rooftop can supply one liter of water.

“We are concentrating our efforts on a specific site in order to create a prototype on a neighborhood scale, one that can be monitored and easily managed,” explained Lomnitz, an industrial designer with a degree from the Rhode Island School of Design in the United States.

Faced with a worsening crisis, the non-governmental Center for Research on Development (CIDAC) designed a pilot project for rainwater collection at 120,000 houses, equivalent to 10 percent of the city's residences.

CIDAC proposes that the governments of the capital and of the neighboring state, also named Mexico, finance the initiative, whose cost per house is 350 dollars, and which would lead to savings of approximately 7.2 million cubic meters of water annually.

The use of rainwater collected by households in tanks has proved successful in other arid regions of the world, such as the Brazilian Northeast.

The promoters of “Más-Agua” purchased a bottling machine that handles 48 half-liter containers per minute. But San Felipe del Progreso, a city of some 100,000 people, faces a common national problem: lack of rain. And if water doesn't fall from the sky, the factory won't have anything to purify. The alternative will be, then, to process water from the area's springs and wells.

But, if done right, the water collected during rainfall is enough to cover the dry months – from November to May.

Over a span of eight years, a Mexican engineer visited areas thrashed by hurricanes. His goal was to design a home capable of withstanding nature's worst.

An elevated house resistant to hurricanes and floods. - Verónica Díaz Favela/IPS

The house created by this engineer from the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) is a response to the United Nations recommendation that countries should develop housing units that can stand up to severe weather phenomena.

The fourth report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN entity, warns of an increase in hurricanes as a result of warmer average global temperatures, as well as rising sea levels – by as much as one meter by the end of the century.

Martínez developed the new approach at his company, Ingeniería Creativa en Acero (Creacero – Creative Engineering in Steel), with the support of the National Science and Technology Council and of the IPN.

“I came up with several designs for building cyclone-proof houses and, for years, for each hurricane that happened, I was going to see how it affected them,” he recounted.

He grew up in the city of Madero, in the eastern state of Tamaulipas, along the Gulf of Mexico. More than once, he saw that in the wake of the cyclones people and animals were killed by stepping on exposed electrical cables or disappeared in the flood currents.

His mission became to find an answer to nature's challenge. Since the end of July, visitors to the IPN's Dissemination Center for Science and Technology (CEDICYT) in Mexico City can see two prototypes of houses and one classroom-refuge, built by Martínez.

They don't look much different from any building painted white and violet. But their construction makes them resistant to category 5 hurricanes, the maximum intensity on the Saffir-Simpson scale, which measures wind intensity.

The house “is a cage of steel covered with concrete,” Martínez explained.

The houses are prefabricated and the floor area measures 42 square meters. Each has two bedrooms, a living/dining room, bathroom and kitchen. They also have a dome and small windows located both low and high in the walls.

These specialized windows serve as “a system of air convection; the warm air rises and, in this case, the upper windows are to let the warm air out, and the lower windows are for intake,” said Martínez. The windowpanes are protected by a film to prevent dwellers from being hurt if the windows are broken.

The houses were conceived for construction in coastal zones. Mexico has 15 states with ocean coasts, and are “very hot, and vulnerable to the effect of hurricanes,” Víctor Manuel López, coordinator of the IPN's climate change and sustainability program, told this reporter.

Along the nation's coasts, “everything that is there – people as well as infrastructure – is vulnerable to hurricanes, floods and rising sea level,” he said.

In the southeastern state of Quintano Roo, on the eastern side of the Yucatán Peninsula, “there are fishing communities that have already asked for an eight-kilometer breakwater to be built, and then to be relocated; some witnesses say the sea level was at one place and now is at another,” López said.

To deal with flooding associated with tropical storms, one of the houses Martínez developed is mounted upon pillars 2.8-meters tall.

“The floods pass below the house without damaging it, unless the water rises above three meters, which would be a very special case,” said the engineer.

If there is no impending threat of flooding, the area under the elevated house can be used as a carpark or a shaded patio. But it should be left without walls that would impede the flow of floodwaters.

A single-story, cyclone-resistant house costs approximately 32,000 dollars, and the elevated house costs 64,000, based on one-off construction costs. But the prices would drop by as much as two-thirds once they are mass produced. Construction time would also be reduced.

It took eight months to build the CEDICYT prototypes. “With industrialized production our capacity would be five minutes to build the steel profile and sheeting for one house,” Herón Colín Suárez, Creacero's administrative director, said in an interview for this report.

Prefabrication “will allow them to be built in a very short time, and at any site, even where there is no electricity because it can be screwed together. It would have an instruction manual, there will be prefabricated parts so that its construction is very fast, and skilled labor is not needed,” he explained.

Creacero is looking for financial contributions to set up a factory. Two machines need to be manufactured for production, a freight lift is needed, as well as trained staff. The total required investment is about 2.5 million dollars.

In addition to homes, the factory could make materials to build classrooms, hospitals or just about any type of smaller building. One example is the third prototype, on view at CEDICYT, a classroom-refuge measuring six by 15 meters. It is intended for classes, but also to be used as a safe place for people when hurricane-force winds hit.

The prototypes, created to stand up to cyclones, can also resist other extreme phenomena, such as tornadoes, avalanches and earthquakes, according to the engineer.

López said that in Japan they are developing hurricane and flood resistant houses, constructed in Bangladesh.

The advantage of the Mexican model is that it eliminates the major costs of importing technology, he said.

Mexico could face economic losses of up to 1.7 billion dollars from damage along its Atlantic and Pacific coasts during the current hurricane season, warned insurance companies at a seminar held at the beginning of the year.

According to the National Meteorological Service, Mexico's coastline could see the effects of as many 24 cyclones.

“The government has already streamlined the procedures for shelters where there are services available and people can gather,” but “those solutions are intended for larger populations and not for rural populations,” said López.

The value of the houses created by IPN and Creacero lies in the fact that they are intended for easy assembly in rural areas.

Manure, Argentina's leading source of climate-changing emissions is beginning to be used as raw material for clean energy.

Beef cattle in a corral. - Germán Miranda/IPS

Biogas is a fuel that is generated from the biodegradation of organic material in an airless environment. But to achieve sustained development of this source it will be necessary to break through some bottlenecks, according to experts consulted for this report.

“Biogas is in full upswing. We completed a study of potential and an expansion plan, and we are trying to push pilot projects and concrete applications in agro-industry,” Jorge Hilbert, head of the National Bioenergy Program of the National Agricultural Technology Institute (INTA), told this reporter.

To promote this type of energy, INTA this year published the Biogas Production Manual and the Atlas of Potential Biogas Production in Argentina. It is receiving cooperation from Germany, where this technology, subsidized by the government, is used in turbines that generate electricity equivalent to three nuclear power plants.

In Argentina, 86 percent of energy comes from the burning of fossil fuels (mostly petroleum and natural gas), six percent from hydroelectric dams, and 1.6 percent from nuclear. The rest comes from firewood, pulp, coal and alternative sources.

Meanwhile, farming activity is the main source of greenhouse-effect gases that contribute to climate change, accounting for 29 percent of Argentina's total emissions, according to the last official measurements.

Those emissions, principally methane gas – whose greenhouse effect is much stronger than carbon dioxide – could be avoided by turning the organic material that produces it into biogas, which burns even cleaner than natural gas.

Hilbert maintains that in Argentina there is great potential for biogas. “What is lacking is investment,” which is not related to technology but rather to the shortage of financing in general for the agricultural sector, he said.

Eduardo Gropelli, head of non-conventional energy at the chemical engineering department of the National University of the Coast (Litoral), said in an interview for this report that from the technological perspective, “the solution has been developed, it's available and has great potential.”

“If production is blocked, it's due to lack of financing,” he said.

“The companies with the financial capacity have access to the technology and are advancing,” said Gropelli, for example at primary production ranches and in the agro-food industrial sector.

One of the companies that has achieved transformation of its own waste into energy is Cabañas Argentinas del Sol, a pig farm with 10,000 head on 22 hectares in Marcos Paz, 50 kilometers west of Buenos Aires, and only three km from the city limits.

“We were concerned about the methane pollution from the manure, as well as the stench and the flies,” said agricultural engineer Hugo García, owner of the company. After trying some homemade approaches, he traveled to Brazil, where he saw a “biodigester” in operation – and bought one.

To obtain biogas, the biological degradation of the organic material – the manure – must be the result of anaerobic bacteria, microorganisms that live and reproduce without oxygen. This controlled process can capture a biological fuel rich in methane that when burned releases much less carbon dioxide than a coal or oil fueled power plant.

Even better, biogas production is an efficient solution for handling animal waste.

The manure from livestock on dairy farms, feedlots, meat-packing plants and other sites, like García's farm, can be turned into the raw material for fuel, as can waste from the production of cane alcohol, processed fruits and vegetables, and even sawdust.

To obtain biologically-based methane, in addition to the fermentable raw material, a biodigester is needed. It is a hermetic reactor where the fuel is generated and collected to then be used to generate heat for ovens and water heaters, or to fuel an electric turbine.

After he purchased his first biodigester in Brazil, García added a second, and then a third larger one, with a capacity for 2,250 cubic meters of manure. The system for transporting the animal waste to the reactor and the pipeline for carrying the gas are simple and economical, he says.

With biogas, the entrepreneur replaced the tanks of natural gas he used to buy in order to heat some of his barns, and to process the soybeans used for feeding the pigs.

Each of these steps, which used to require fossil fuels, now are run on biogas. “The pigs, with their waste, provide their own caloric energy,” he summarized. Furthermore, as a byproduct, the liquid from the manure is used for a fertilizer with a high concentration of nutrients to grow the soybeans that feed the animals.

The savings total about 5,200 dollars per month, just on the gas bill. “In two years we paid off the biodigester,” said the farmer.

According to Gropelli, the biggest developments in biogas are being seen in agro-industrial companies, like big breweries, and factories that make gelatin, yeast and other foods.

He also underscored the cases of pig farms, feedlots and dairies where large volumes of manure accumulate and an environmental solution is needed for its disposal. “In less than four years the investment can be paid off,” he said.

However, there is another less developed area that would require a cultural shift: urban solid waste. In this sphere, there are experiences in small towns. In the eastern province of Santa Fe, the town of Emilia, with 1,000 residents, has its own organic waste recycling plant.

Other towns of 3,000 to 7,000 people have been put to the test. “In this case, the Achilles heel is in separating the organic from the inorganic waste. People are used to throwing out the garbage and aren't aware of the environmental responsibility. What is needed is a cultural change, which takes time,” said Gropelli.

Chilean neighborhoods are making progress – on a human scale and at a human pace – towards environmentally sustainable communities.

Women working in the Cuatro Alamos garden. - Daniela Estrada/IPS

“An ecobarrio (eco-neighborhood) is a place where people voluntarily join forces to revamp human relations and take ownership of public space in order to improve the environment and quality of life,” explained Luis Márquez, president of the Ceibo Cultural, Social and Environmental Center, in Maipú's Villa Cuatro Álamos.

The municipality of Maipú, Chile's second most populous, is situated on the west side of Santiago. In 2003, the Villa Cuatro Álamos began a process of ecological transformation. Three years later, when a landscape student approached the community as part of her graduation thesis, it took on the guise of an “ecobarrio”.

“We are in the process of creating the first ecobarrio in Chile,” Márquez told this reporter. The project is constantly evolving and is borrowing some ideas from similar efforts in Europe.

The town was built in 1971 by the government of President Salvador Allende (1970-1973) as part of an urban project for the working class, and was to be implemented in phases.

But the 1973 coup d'état, which turned into a 17-year military dictatorship, thwarted the plans for the district that covers 10 hectares and is home to 3,500 people. There are 28 apartment blocks with a total of 808 units, each more than 50 square meters.

In the 1970s and 80s, the community stood out for its active resistance against the military regime, but the sense of unity began to dissipate following the return to a democratic system in 1990.

In 2003, the Santiago government decided to cut down 120 trees in a nearby park to clear the space to build a secondary school. The neighbors' protests succeeded only in saving one tree, a ceibo, or cockspur coral (Erythrina crista-galli).

The next year, the park's defenders founded the Ceibo Center, and in 2005 took over a project of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) to set up a showroom for renewable energies and environmental education. From that moment on, the group has been successful in obtaining government and community funds to bring its ecobarrio plan to life.

Today, the Demonstration Center has a greenhouse and an organic garden, as well as a bioreactor that produces organic fertilizer from compost in 20 days, which is then transformed into humus soil by introducing earthworms.

Since 2005, they have created a botanical garden, planting more than 500 native trees and bushes, as well as a plaza with fruit trees and a garden with medicinal plants.

Among the town's children, “eco-leaders” and “eco-artists” receive training, and in the coming months a pilot project will begin to recycle water from dishwashers and sinks, and another initiative will separate garbage for recycling.

The residents of Cuatro Álamos want to install photovoltaic panels to feed streetlights, and they hope to build an amphitheater.

The Ceibo Center and the Cuatro Álamos Neighborhood Council are working with other organizations, like the Union of Maipú Women, who weave bags and table covers from discarded plastic bags, and an indigenous Mapuche group.

But the town's ecological transformation has not been easy, admit those involved. The volunteer effort is growing weary, there is an obvious lack of technical knowledge, and the resources are limited for so many ideas.

Some residents have protested the changes of spaces that they previously used for parking, washing or repairing vehicles.

Citizen participation occurs at various levels, said Márquez. Some collaborate directly in specific efforts, while others only take part in voting. But the majority participates in recycling, he added.

The neighbors interviewed for this report agreed that the project has not only helped clean up and beautify their surroundings, but has also improved the feeling of community and curbed problems like drug dealing.

Based on the experiences of Cuatro Álamos and other towns – Valle Verde and Esperanza – this year the municipality of Maipú has drawn up a policy and plan of action for five ecobarrios by 2012, said Mayor Alberto Undurraga.

The initiative is part of the Neighborhood Development Plans that the municipality drafts in an attempt to meet citizen demands and to better focus community efforts and resources, said Undurraga.

The towns of Valle Verde and Esperanza are participating in the “I Love My Neighborhood” (Quiero mi barrio) program, promoted by President Michelle Bachelet.

Alejandra Vio, executive secretary for this plan to improve 200 vulnerable neighborhoods, explained for this article that “the environmental dimension is present in all the projects developed,” but that it is still too early to talk about ecobarrios.

At this point they are just getting started on “building appreciation of the concept of community and neighborhood identity, and on reorganizing the social fabric,” she said.

But the “growing resident concern about the environment” is already translating into “green initiatives” with economic objectives, like installing solar panels as a way to reduce the need for natural gas, Vio said.

The Ceibo Center works closely with another Maipú neighborhood, Villa Serviu, which the municipal government is also considering turning into an ecobarrio. Some 250 low-income families live there, in 39-square-meter apartments built in 1985.

Since 2006, the Neighborhood Council has tried to obtain project funds to fight the serious problems caused by a hill of “pomacita” – pumice sand that contains toxic metals like lead, arsenic, chromium and cadmium – which rises like a wall in front of the apartment buildings.

Without considering the health impacts caused by exposure to those substances, a local construction company cut the hill in half and did not cover it to prevent erosion.

The dust that rises from the hill causes stomach, respiratory and skin problems, and leaves people's homes under a constant layer of grime. The residents have worked to produce compost and humus soil in order to cover the hill with vegetation.

“With the plant cover, the dust has lessened by 70 to 75 percent,” said the president of the Neighborhood Council, Vitelia Musrri, who would like to follow the model established by Cuatro Álamos. But to do so, “we would need double the support we're receiving,” she said.

They have established organic gardens of medicinal plants and planted fruit trees, and they separate out recyclable materials, and reuse plastics.

Beginning this month, a free school of the Ceibo Center will promote the creation of other ecobarrios across Chile, with the support of the Environmental Protection Fund of the National Environment Commission, a government agency.

What is needed, according to Márquez, is a law to foment ecobarrios and a strategic partnership with the universities.

“The ecobarrio is a utopia. Some tell us that utopias never materialize. We believe it can be done, but we have to work hard for it,” said the Ceibo Center president.

In Mexico City there are more than 8,000 square meters of public building rooftops covered with vegetation. This novel approach for bringing green to the cities is now reaching hospitals and kindergartens.

Employees and patients alike enjoy the green roof of the Belisario Domínguez Hospital. - Verónica Díaz Favela/IPS

Eight months ago, the first “nature” roof was installed at the Belisario Domínguez Hospital, in Mexico City, in the Iztapalapa district. With 1.8 million inhabitants, it is the country's most densely populated area.

The green roof of this three-storey hospital is divided in two: the larger is over a portion of the first storey, the smaller is over the third.

“Having direct or visual contact with a green area helps a great deal in the patients' recovery. In Japan, nearly every hospital has a 'nature' terrace,” Tania Müller, head of the project, said in an interview.

According to the hospital's director, Osvaldo González La Riviere, “the workers enjoy the space. Initially, the smokers used it, but we have been able to regulate that. Some patients found out about it and now they ask to go for a stroll there, with the help of family members.”

Installation of such a roof requires a waterproof treatment that prevents roots from taking hold in the building material, and then there is a polyethylene layer to prevent runoff. A geotextile product is added to prevent fine particulate of the underlayer from reaching the roof itself.

And finally, the underlayer is put in place, a mix of volcanic stone material, lighter than soil, and organ material to feed the plants, which are then planted on top. It is not necessary to water the plants.

One section of the hospital's green roof is alongside the gynecological/obstetric ward. For the women who have just given birth, “it is more pleasing to look out the window to see nature than see a vending cart or a truck emitting exhaust,” said Evangelina Sandoval, the deputy medical director.

Also, “working with patients and confronting death produces stress. Now, instead of leaving by their usual route, many workers now use the emergency exits in order to pass through the roof garden,” she said. The hospital employs about 1,000 people.

The green roof measures 1,000 square meters – one-tenth the total roof area of the hospital. The area was transformed from a concrete space to a lush place that attracts bees, butterflies and birds, standing in stark contrast to the dense traffic and the concrete structures surrounding it. Three native species from the Valley of Mexico were planted there. “All are sedums (leaf succulents), of the Crassulaceae family,” explained Müller, director of urban, park and bikeway reforestation for Mexico City.

The heat from “a normal rooftop can reach 80 degrees Celsius, contributing to the 'heat-island effect' (the increase in temperature in urban areas with few green spaces and lots of pavement), especially in a city as urbanized as this one,” she said.

With the vegetation, the roof's temperature is maintained at 25 degrees Celsius, creating a microclimate that returns moisture to the environment and retains dust and particulate matter that could otherwise harm people's lungs, Müller added.

Furthermore, it won't be necessary to re-waterproof the roof for 80 years.

That is why the Secretariat of Health gave the Mexico City government the green light to create green roofs for its 28 hospitals.

All of this “is viable, but we need resources,” said Müller. “Everywhere budgets have had to be adjusted, and that is what we are evaluating.”

Planting a rooftop can cost 95 dollars per square meter, whether in Mexico, Europe or the United States.

But the positive results are obvious. Take the Center for Child Development (CENDI), which provides services for 400 children of the city's subway train workers, and is located in Mexico City's historic central district.

“Fifty percent of the city's chickens are concentrated in the surrounding blocks, which causes heavy soil and air pollution. In addition, there is traffic and a high crime rate,” said CENDI director Nadia Tapia.

Even so, this kindergarten has generated many of the cutting-edge programs that are ultimately implemented nationwide. In keeping with this trend, in mid-2008, the city government inaugurated a green rooftop – 1,190 square meters – on this two-storey building.

Since then, once the children reach the age of two they are introduced to the roof garden. Those ages three to six practice gardening skills in a small plot, where they make compost, and grow tomatoes, potatoes, parsley, chamomile and cactus.

“The children relax, they explore and they are more calm and cooperative when they reach the teaching area, increasing their capacity to learn,” said CENDI pediatric expert Araceli Becerra.

These children, explained the director, come from low-income families. “Seventy-five percent live in very small apartments, and because of crime concerns, they don't have access to parks.”

When they visit the rooftop, “they get excited and they want to touch and observe everything,” teacher Rosa Muñoz said in an interview for this article.

According to Müller, the green roofs are an “alternative for sustainable urban development, especially in a city like this, where even if we wanted to create a ground-level park, there is no place to do so.”

In the cities of Latin America, the average for green areas overall is 3.5 square meters per person. The World Health Organization recommends nine to 12 square meters per person.

“In Mexico City, we would have nine million more square meters of green space if we put one green square meter on every roof,” said Alberto Fabela, who is in charge of the roof at the Secretariat of Urban Development and Housing (SEDUVI).

Since April 2008, the SEDUVI six-storey public building has set aside 900 square meters of its roof for green space. The technique employed here is hydroponics — growing plants suspended in water.

So far, it has produced about 21,000 ornamental plants, donated to the districts of Coyoacán and Azcapotzalco, where they adorn gardens and median areas of their boulevards.

Geranium, marigolds, kalanchoe, petunia: “all strong and resistant to stress of the streets: cars, noise, smog, people,” said Fabela.

The plants are produced with the help of the 800 SEDUVI employees, who have the option of dedicating one hour of their workweek to maintaining, sowing or transplanting the flowers.

“We teach them to remove wilted leaves and to sow seeds. Obviously, it is a sort of therapy. We give them one hour, but the time passes quickly. The most receptive are the young people, 18 to 25, and elderly women,” Fabela added.

The capital government hopes that the more than 8,000 square meters of green roofs created so far in public buildings will serve as an example for the private sector.

For now, the city plans to ask businesses requesting construction permits to dedicate 10 to 20 percent of their rooftops to green space – in exchange for tax benefits.

“The day we all decide to eat fresh and local, to eat less meat… we will have a revolution,” says Paolo di Croce, secretary-general of Slow Food International.

Paolo di Croce - Miren Gutiérrez/IPS

The question was put to Paolo di Croce, secretary-general of Slow Food International, who spoke about the challenges ahead for “good, clean and fair” food, and the movement itself.

IPS/IFEJ: The Slow Food movement presents itself as a defender of biodiversity. But what exactly have good cuisine, tradition and culture to do with coral reefs, polar bears and rainforests? And what has the movement done to contribute to protecting biodiversity?

PAOLO DI CROCE: I think that one key issue for good food is the promotion of diversity. Globalization, the endangerment of species, the standardization of the markets tend to homologize, reduce diversity.

It is estimated that all apples that we eat belong to only four varieties. However, hundreds of varieties of apple exist. It is fundamental for environment, history and culture to preserve the variety of food.

Slow Food has lots of projects around the world to fight against the extinction of species. For example, there is a Slow Food project in the Amazon rainforest to protect the Bertholletia excelsa, a nut that grows on 40-meter trees in indigenous communities. We try to create markets for the nut, and so preserving its existence.

Another reason to preserve biodiversity is because we all are personally affected by this. For example, if we continue to eat tuna at this rate, in a few years there will be no more tuna.

Food is fundamentally related to agricultural diversity. Wolves and polar bears are not our main priority, but people who are associated with us care about them too because the ultimate goal is to preserve our cultural identity and our environment, including wild species. In fact, we also have programs that have to do with traditional music and clothing, indigenous languages…

IPS/IFEJ: At the summit of the Group of Eight (G8) most powerful countries, held this month in the Italian city of L'Aquila, they spoke of “mobilizing 20 billion dollars over three years” to fight the food crisis, and it was said the money could be used to promote agriculture rather than as traditional aid. What was your reading of that announcement?

PDC: I try to see the positive aspects in everything. In L'Aquila they discussed biodiversity, they committed more money to agriculture. This is all positive. Not only the G8 countries (Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, United States), but everyone else on this planet realizes there is a huge risk if we do not do anything about the food crisis.

But we have to wait and see whether this investment is good, clean and fair. We have now an opportunity to influence how this money is used. The current system has failed. Look at the number of people suffering from hunger, at the financial crisis, at the health crisis in rich countries: obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular problems… The food production industry created by this system has to be changed. We all have the right to good, clean and fair food.

Also, I think it is wrong to respond to the food crisis with “crisis money,” because it has been 20 years in the making, it didn't happen overnight. FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) and other United Nations agencies talk about an increasing number of people who suffer hunger and malnutrition. We have to change the model that caused this situation, not patch the gaps with some crisis money.

IPS/IFEJ: During the summit, Oxfam International released a report, “Suffering the Science: Climate Change, People and Poverty”, which shows that changing seasonal patterns are already affecting the ability of farmers to plan the sowing and harvesting of crops. The consequences will be millions of people suffering food scarcity and forced to give up traditional crops, possibly leading to social upheavals such as mass migration. What do you think?

PDC: Of course, climate change has an enormous impact on agriculture, and therefore on people. Entire populations will have to move away from their territories. As temperatures get warmer in Sweden and Norway, we have seen Sami communities move along with reindeer herds, on which they depend. Reindeer are abandoning their traditional habitats, moving north, and so are the Sami.

Traditional crops can be a tool. In Mexico we have a project to grow amaranth, a traditional cereal that was abandoned as a crop when the Spanish Conquistadors arrived. This crop's nutritional value is important, and the good thing about it is that it can grow in dry areas. We are trying to replant amaranth as an alternative to maize, which is very dependent on water.

IPS/IFEJ: Slow Food says we can be co-producers, not just consumers, by being informed about how our food is produced and supporting those who produce it. But producing and consuming good, clean and fair food is much more expensive. Michael Pollan, author and co-narrator of the documentary film “Food, Inc.” wonders why 99 cents can buy a cheeseburger but not even a head of broccoli? The Slow Food movement has been criticized for being elitist…

PDC: We have to start by making a serious analysis of two issues. One is the percentage of our income that we devote to food. An interesting figure that comes from a U.S. survey shows that in the 1970s, families spent about six percent of their income on healthcare and about seven percent on food. When they did the same survey recently, they discovered that U.S. families now spend about 15 percent on healthcare and 10 percent on food. The expenditure on food has not increased much, but that on health has more than doubled.

There is probably a correlation. You have to consider all the excess costs related to a deficient diet in terms of health: the money people spend on nutritionists and doctors. I feel that 10 percent of a household income on food is not enough, especially if you compare it with other expenses, like mobile phones.

The other thing is the real price of food. There are lots of externalities to fast food. I have mentioned healthcare. But there is also the environmental cost of the current food industry, which we are paying with taxes that go to repair environmental damage or to finance subsidies, and that the next generation will continue to pay. Cheap food is only possible on subsidies, and as long as society picks the environmental bill.

In Italy in 2008, one of the products whose sales grew by 10 percent was pre-washed salad. If you compare prices with the salad you buy in a local market, you realize that the pre-washed is eight times more expensive. And it is less environmentally viable because it comes in a plastic bag.

If you take 100 grams of potato chips, for example, it is nine times more expensive than going to the local market and cooking potatoes with extra virgin oil. Nobody will say fried potatoes are elitist.

Finally, there is the issue of the food we waste. In Italy we throw away about 22 kilograms of food every second.

If you add what you spend without knowing, the health and environmental externalities and the waste, this system is unsustainable. Instead, you can have good, clean and fair food without paying so much.

IPS/IFEJ: But this message is not exactly mainstream. Don't you feel frustrated?

PDC: In the last five years I have seen a lot of changes. Everywhere I go now there is more interest. I am not talking about the World Bank, but about normal people, who are the ones who can change the world, the “co-producers.”

The day we all decide to eat fresh and local, to eat less meat… with these, simple daily choices we will have a revolution. But this has to be massive. It is fundamental to work with other organizations, with whoever believes eating different is possible. And one day we will able to change the system.

El Tatio, the world's third largest geyser field, is in the sights of energy, tourism and conservation interests.

El Tatio Geyser field in northern Chile. - Public Domain

“For us, the geysers are the fountain of life,” Julio Ramos, president of the Council of Lickanantay-Atacameño Peoples, an umbrella group of 25 communities, told this reporter.

El Tatio is the largest geyser field in the southern hemisphere and the third largest in the world, with more than 100 springs erupting at an altitude of more than 4,000 meters in the Andes Mountains.

Chile is rich in thermal energy due to its location on the Pacific Ring of Fire. Geothermal heat is used to produce some 9,000 megawatts worldwide, with the United States, Philippines and Mexico leading the way. Various measurements indicate Chile's potential geothermal energy production at 3,000 megawatts.

El Tatio, located in the community of Calama and owned by the Ministry of National Goods, was declared an area of touristic interest in 2002. But because the territory is claimed by the indigenous communities, in 2006, its administration was handed over to two of them: Toconce and Caspana.

According to Ramos, most of the Atacaman Indians oppose the deep perforations that the Geotérmica del Norte consortium began in July 2008 in the Zoquete Ravine, four kilometers from the geysers.

In fact, the governmental National Indigenous Development Corporation issued a negative report in the process of assessing the project's environmental impacts.

However, Toconce and Caspana leaders reached an agreement with Geotérmica del Norte, controlled by the National Geothermal Company, a consortium itself whose ownership is shared: 51 percent by the Italian state company ENEL and 49 percent by the National Petroleum Company of Chile.

Gilberto Anza, president of Caspana, said in an interview that the project had brought his community a variety of benefits, such as placement of signs in the geyser field. The communities opposed to the project “haven't informed themselves very well,” he said.

Geotérmica del Norte's 18-month plan entails drilling four 2,000 to 2,500 meter perforations to assess the technical and economic feasibility of electrical production. Part of the extracted liquid is reinjected into the earth.

If the feasibility results prove satisfactory, the company will apply for the necessary permits to build a geothermal energy plant. The decision could be made by the end of the year.

“The project, which is already being executed, showed in practice that there was no negative effect on the availability of water or on biodiversity,” a Geotérmica del Norte spokesperson told this reporter.

The company also rules out any future impact on the geysers because “the thermal eruptions on the surface are fed primarily by water coming from rain or snowmelt… and those sources are not affected by the project.”

According to Energy Minister Marcelo Tokman, water scarcity and tourism justify citizen concern about the energy project. The government hired a U.S. consultant to analyze the environmental impact report that Geotérmica del Norte presented.

“What they have told us is that they are carrying out perforations following all imposed restrictions, and that there has not been – as the scientific analyses anticipated – any negative impact on the geysers or water availability,” Tokman said in an interview for this article.

However, the indigenous groups opposed to the project, backed by environmental organizations, local authorities and tourism operators, are convinced that sooner or later the energy project will contaminate surface and underground water sources, threatening the geysers and harming vegetation and animals.

In this High Andean zone of fertile plains and its areas of vegetation, the “llareta” plant grows like a green carpet. This is also habitat for the vicuña, a member of the camelid family, and the vizcacha, a rodent of the chinchilla family.

In a bid to halt the project, the Atacama Council and the Women's Network of El Loa staged street protests and appealed to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Citizen distrust increased in March, when the Regional Environmental Commission of Antofagasta slapped the company with a fine equivalent to 180,000 dollars for irregularities and non-compliance. The company is refusing to pay.

In 2000, a geothermal concessions law was enacted, and in the context of diversifying the country's energy matrix, the administration of President Michelle Bachelet provided incentives for exploration of this unconventional renewable energy source.

In addition to the Zoquete Ravine, there are other zones with perforation projects. On Jun. 1, international bidding began on 20 areas of exploration, 15 in the Chilean north.

El Tatio's future is also of concern to scientists. Pedro Zamorano and Rubén Araya, of the University of Antofagasta, study the bacteria that survive in the geysers where temperatures reach 80 degrees Celsius. There is great biotechnological potential for these bacteria in industrial processes.

In an interview for this article, the researchers refrained from predicting possible negative effects of the geothermal plant on El Tatio. The see the main problem as being the lack of protection for the country's biological wealth in microorganisms, given that foreign researchers are constantly visiting the zone, they said.

The 2014 soccer World Cup has created a dilemma for the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre: real estate and tourism development or environmental preservation?

View of Brazil's Porto Alegre from the Guaíba River. Ponta do Melo could end up like this. - Clarinha Glock/IPS

Chosen as one of the 12 sites for the 2014 World Cup in soccer, the capital of Rio Grande do Sul state, with a population of 1.4 million, faces a dilemma.

In August, the citizens will vote on whether to allow the construction of apartment buildings in the Ponta do Melo zone on the banks of the Guaíba River. The referendum takes place in a context of major plans, including the expansion of sports stadiums and road construction, to better receive fans for the soccer championship.

But some of these projects are facing legal challenges because of their potential for harming the environment. The Porto Alegre Fundamental Law establishes that the areas along the river are permanent preservation zones.

Ponta do Melo, situated between the central and southern parts of Porto Alegre, was at one time a shipping port and of national security interest. From 1952 to the early 1990s the shipbuilder Estaleiro Só operated there. In 1976, the city exempted the company from paying for the land it occupied: 60,000 square meters.

Once Estaleiro Só went out of business, the court ordered an auction to pay off its labor debts. In 2005, the land was auctioned by the SVB Participações Empreendimentos company, which transferred it to BMPar Empreendimentos.

At the time, municipal law 470/2002 authorized only construction of commercial buildings, with several urban restrictions.

In 2008, BMPar interested a group of city councilors in the idea of a major economic project, saying that a mixed commercial and residential site would improve security in the area.

The city council reformed the law 470 to allow construction of residential buildings at the site, which was then named Pontal do Estaleiro.

That's when the protests began. “The project did not respect the participation of society,” argued councilor Beto Moesch, who voted against law 470 in 2002 and opposed its reform last year.

At several public hearings, company representatives were seen embracing council members, while citizens shouted “sellouts!” at them. The attorney general opened an investigation into charges that municipal lawmakers were bribed to favor the reform, but the case was shelved.

The reform of law 470 was approved in a tense session in February of this year.

Given the public reaction, Mayor José Fogaça vetoed the project and submitted a different one to the council, which included an amendment that the citizens should be consulted. Meanwhile, another amendment was approved, which expanded the construction-free strip of land between the river and the buildings from 30 to 60 meters wide.

As a result, BMPar declared that it would not build anything at the Pontal site. Even so, the Council voted on the reform of law 470 and set a 120-day period to convene a referendum.

According to the Movement in Defense of the Guaíba Waterfront, a “yes” at the ballot box for the residential buildings would set a dangerous precedent for the city's areas along the waterfront.

Ricardo Gothe, head of the Porto Alegre city government's special office for the 2014 World Cup, responded for this article that “it is already a privately-owned area, and will have appeal, qualifications and protection.” According to Gothe, if land is not occupied will end up destroyed.

Environmentalists point out that originally the Pontal was granted by the city to the shipbuilding company for a specific purpose. Once that ended, it was to return to public use.

Architect and urban planner Nestor Ibrahim Nadruz said in an interview that the project will cause traffic problems in the area and damage the riverbank.

The other lots in the area will lose the breezes and natural light from the waterway, there will be an increase in sewage and garbage, and the population will be deprived of the famous sunset over the Guaíba.

While the future of Ponta do Melo is being decided, there is a citizen effort under way to prevent potential harm to other areas designated for permanent protection.

A petition for injunction, presented by ecologists, asks for immediate suspension of the January authorizations to expand the stadiums of two soccer clubs, the Sport Club Internacional and the Grêmio Foot-Ball Porto Alegrense.

The petition states that the project calls for construction that is higher than allowed under the city's codes and a greater concentration of buildings per square meter, which would negatively affect the urban landscape, the environment and aerial safety.

The Beira-Rio complex of the Internacional club, in addition to a roof for the stadium, includes apartment towers, parking ramps and roads through a park, which are not among the requests of FIFA, the international soccer governing body, admitted the club's directors before the Municipal Environment Council.

Gothe said he had not yet received from FIFA the list of city obligations for sports installations, infrastructure and services. But the special office has released some initiatives, presented as essential, for receiving the crowds in 2014.

“They are projects that have been on paper for 30 years and, taking advantage of an event with the magnitude of the World Cup, will obtain the financing they need,” argued Gothe. The riverside zone will be revitalized, and will attract tourism and progress, he said.

That perspective puts Porto Alegre in the sights of major real estate companies. “It's possible that Goldsztein Cyrela is going to operate” in Ponta do Melo, stated a lawyer for the construction company that is part of the Cyrela Brazil Realty firm, the largest dedicated to residential real estate.

At the base of the discussions is the Guaíba itself, although it has not been determined if it is to be treated as a river or a lake.

Federal law 4771/65 establishes that buildings may not be less than 500 meters from riverbanks, to ensure preservation of water resources. But if the Guaíba is declared a lake, the area of protection is reduced to 30 meters.

According to city statute, changes like those planned for the soccer World Cup can only be decided with participation and approval of the citizens.

The environmentalists have learned from previous experiences. In 2007, at a public hearing to study changes to the city's codes, the Municipal Environment Council denounced that residents from other towns had been bused in to fill the hall and prevent participation of local residents and activists.

If not for pressure from the Municipal Environment Council and the non-governmental Fórum de Entidades, say the environmentalists, the changes would have been approved, attending only to the interests of the construction companies.

More than 70 percent of the Peruvian Amazon was divided up into concessions for oil investments between 2003 and 2008, according to a non-governmental report.

Workers clean up oil spill in the Amazon - Ben Powless

Everyone there looked at the oil spill with concern. Some touched the black liquid, which mixed with the mud resulting from a recent rainfall.

“That oil will reach the Marañón River, with our crops growing on its banks,” added Antonio Chu Pumpunchig, who was harvesting plantains when he heard about the leak in one of the pipes of the Norperuano line, run by the government-owned Petroperú company and which has several pumping stations in Amazonas.

Station Number 6 in particular was taken over earlier in June by indigenous groups in Bagua province as part of protests against laws threatening their territories, and was an epicenter of violent clashes in which 24 police and at least 10 civilians died, although the protesters say the number of dead was much higher.

The populations most affected by the oil spill are situated in the Cenapa and Nieva river basins. But the indigenous communities that live closer to cities like Bagua, capital of the province, also fear that their rivers will be polluted, as occurred with the Achuar Indians. The Achuar live along the Corrientes River in the neighboring region of Loreto, in the country's far northeast, where the Argentine oil company Pluspetrol operates.

Petroperú workers who arrived in Jayais to clean up the spill refused to talk about the cause of the break in the pipeline, which stretched across a ravine.

Amazonian families make their living from fishing, hunting, growing plantains, maize and cocoa along the rivers and manioc in the hills. Along the roads, merchants buy plantains from them, and sell the product in the markets at four times the price.

“We are not making demands because we are savages, but because we need these resources to survive. The earth is our mother, and the forest is the pantry for feeding our families,” said Umpunchi.

The most likely is that part of the spilled crude will reach the Chiriaco River and will subsequently end up in the Marañón, he said.

More than 70 percent of the Peruvian Amazon was divided into concessions for hydrocarbon investment between 2003 and 2008, according to a March report by the non-governmental organization Law, Environment and Natural Resources (DAR, for its name in Spanish), based on official data.

To promote private investment in the jungle, the administration of President Alan García approved a dozen legislative decrees as part of the implementation of the Free Trade Agreement with the United States, which triggered indigenous protests in 2008 and this year.

Faced with the tragedy resulting from this month's clashes, the government backed off part of the policies and Congress overturned two of the more controversial bills.

EYE ON EXTRACTION

The Awajún and Wampí peoples, who live in Amazonas, feel threatened by the mining and oil drilling activities, which are located at the headwaters of their rivers. Many of the areas are protected and most are ecologically very vulnerable, which gives rise to disputes between the companies and the residents over water and land resources.

“This is my house. Here is where my grandparents lived and I want my children to inherit it,” said Julia Esamat, 53, an Awajún from the village of Wawas, in the Chiriaco district.

“We have moved forward ourselves, without the government,” she told this reporter. “Now the authorities can't come and take from us what is ours.”

There are nearly 60 petroleum concessions, 15 of them approved in an irregular way, overlapping 12 protected areas in 10 of the country's regions. Among them is the Santiago Comaina protected zone in Amazonas, according to the DAR report.

For lot 116 of Santiago Comaina, the French firm Maurel & Prom holds a permit for exploration. To reach the area, the company signed an agreement with the presidents of the indigenous federations of Condorcanqui province. But because those leaders did not consult the communities, they were removed from their posts, according to a report in La República newspaper in May 2008.

Furthermore, in Amazonas gold and uranium exploration projects have been authorized in the Cóndor mountain range, bordering Ecuador. According to native groups in the Cenepa watershed, those concessions were transferred in an irregular way from the Dorato Perú company, a subsidiary of the Canada-based Dorato Resources.

In a press statement in November 2008, Dorato Resources said it had acquired all shares of the Peruvian mining company Afrodita. The transaction would have occurred through Afrodita and front organizations as buyers, according to Marco Huaco, of the NGO Racimos de Ungurahui.

Huaco says the project violates Article 71 of the constitution because in order to authorize foreign investment along the border, the Executive branch has to issue a supreme decree declaring it a “public necessity,” which did not occur.

In addition, it would have violated Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization, a 1989 agreement that requires prior consultation with local indigenous communities about economic activities that affect their means of livelihood.

The Development Organization of Cenepa Border Communities, one of the four indigenous entities of Amazonas, in April presented three complaints about the case to the Mining Concession Directorate.

The authorities replied that they were not aware of the Canadian company's participation, that the concessions were granted to Peruvian entities, and that they would investigate the claims, said Huaco, an advisor to the Development Organization.

The group also brought the Cóndor case before the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights and freedoms of indigenous peoples, James Anaya, who was in Bagua Jun. 18.

The document presented to Anaya, to which this reporter had access, states that the project affects 9,636 indigenous peoples in Cenepa because it is situated at the head of the main tributaries to the Marañón River, and crosses the protected Ichigkat Muja National Park, which the government recognizes for its “great vulnerability” in ecological and human terms.

In several statements of rights to title issued in favor of mining entities, the National Institute of Natural Resources recognized the impossibility of carrying out mining activities in Awajún territory, states the text presented to Anaya.

“If mining is carried out in that area, it would mean the partial extinction of that Amazonian peoples,” said Huaco.

The indigenous leaders will bring the case before the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the UN special rapporteur on Genocide Prevention and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

China beat the United States to the punch and has cornered production of rare metals used in environmentally friendly technologies that the world needs to curb climate-changing pollution.

Hybrid buses at the 2005 International Expo in Aichi, Japan - Public Domain

The production of neodymium and wide range of uses reflect the quiet competition over raw materials in the area of green technologies.

José Luis Giordano, associate professor of engineering at Chile's University of Talca, noted in an interview that there is a battle between the United States, China and Japan over neodymium, samarium and praseodymium, over ceramic superconductors, and for alternatives to these materials, still in the experimental stages.

These elements belong to Group 15 of rare metals whose unique properties — like their great magnetic capacities and resistance to high temperatures — make them indispensable for a wide range of new technologies that the world needs urgently to confront global problems like climate change.

Magnets made from neodymium help generate energy in electric vehicles and the rotation of wind turbines.

China and the United States are the world's leading producers of neodymium, but the Asian giant is also a powerhouse when it comes to manufacturing green technologies.

In the early 1990s, rare materials that China produced at low cost, like neodymium, became abundant on the mining market, and prices fell from 11,700 dollars per ton in 1992 to 7,430 in 1996, or from about 12 dollars to 7.4 dollars per kilo.

Because of China's influence, the market volume jumped from 40,000 tons annually to 125,000 tons in a few short years.

In 2006, nearly the entire world production of these minerals — 137,000 tons — came from China. But in recent years, China has reduced its exports in order to feed its own industries. That trend pushed up international neodymium prices to 60 dollars per kilo in 2007.

Global demand is expected to surpass 200,000 tons per year in 2014, with China holding most of the supply.

Independent consultant Jack Lifton, who specializes in supplies of nonferrous strategic metals, said a U.S.-China trade dispute over neodymium production could be just over the horizon.

In a presentation to U.S. lawmakers on Jan. 29, Mark Smith, director of Molycorp Minerals, acknowledged that limited manufacturing capacity had created a gap and that although the United States has the knowledge it has lost the necessary infrastructure.

Molycorp owns Mountain Pass mine in the western U.S. state of California, the richest in neodymium outside China and which could supply more of the mineral.

The history of business development around neodymium shows how China has imposed its conditions. In 1982, the U.S.-based General Motors, Sumitomo Special Metals and the Chinese Academy of Sciences invented a magnet made from neodymium, boron and iron. In 1986 they put it on the market through a new division of GM known as Magnequench.

The Chinese companies China National Nonferrous Metals, San Huan and Sextant MQI Equity Holdings bought Magnequench in September 1995.

Then, Neo Material Technologies arose from the 1997 merger of Canada's AMR with Magnequench. The new company is based in Canada, with production centers in China and Thailand.

In May, two Chinese companies invested in two Australian mining companies, Lynas and Arafura (acquiring half plus one of the shares of the former and 25 percent of the latter) that are beginning operations to extract and, in the case of Lynas refine, large volumes of rare metals.

Lifton believes that China will not allow western nations to purchase neodymium for future delivery outside of their territories nor for domestic use in China if it is for export.

This means the Asian nation could harden its strategy to acquire companies abroad and that the industrial powers and developing countries would have to seek other suppliers of green technologies.

Smith predicted that if the United States does not renew its capacities, in the best case it will become a source of raw materials for China's production and not a manufacturer itself of advanced clean technology.

So far there are no viable alternatives to the rare metals. Substitution of neodymium is possible in wind turbines. The rare metal reduces the weight of the magnet mechanism, which will be heavier using other metals. Heavier turbines need stronger bases, which implies fortified concrete and higher costs.

Neodymium magnets have a magnetic force nine times stronger than conventional magnets.

The most similar alternatives, but even more expensive, are made from samarium and cobalt or from samarium, praseodymium, cobalt and iron, Chilean expert Giordano said.

In this field, “if there is not a priority and incentive for basic technological research and development, including with natural reserves, one is condemned to being an importer,” he said. “Countries aren't wealthy from their natural resources, but rather for having invested in research and development.”

Lifton, meanwhile, noted that it is likely there will be more economic advances in both magnets and batteries, due to the limits of neodymium and lithium supplies, and that there could be a return to steel and aluminum if demand for those technologies keeps growing.

Research has been under way since 1987 on semiconductors and ultraconductors of electricity, made from polymers, but none has been produced on a massive scale. They are characterized by their high capacity to transmit energy, durability and heat resistance.

Unless production of green technologies is supported outside China by new mining in North America, Africa and Australia, the only place to manufacture them will be China, predicts Lifton, adding that if China decides not to export those rare metals, there won't be any other place to obtain them.

*This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS – Inter Press Service and IFEJ – International Federation of Environmental Journalists, for the Alliance of Communicators for Sustainable Development (www.complusalliance.org).

Two worlds join forces in Mexico — academia and common folk — to confront environmental problems.
Graciela González answers phone calls, organizes meetings and gives interviews as part of her work to save a river from ecological disaster. Thousands of kilometers away, farmer Gonzalo Rodríguez helps take air samples in a region polluted by petrochemicals.

Neither of them had planned to become a defender of the environment. González left her job as a teacher to work for her cause in the western state of Jalisco. Rodríguez raises livestock in Veracruz, in southern Mexico.

Like them, more and more citizens have begun to alternate their jobs with work to stop the destruction of the environment in their communities.

Last year, around a hundred citizen groups formed the Assembly of the Environmentally Affected (AAA for its Spanish name), which is active in 12 of the 32 states in this country of more than 107 million people.

So far they have met four times to share experiences and plan joint strategies to call attention to their efforts.

In 2006, academics and researchers from across Mexico, dissatisfied with the national scientific policies of the last 30 years, founded the Union of Scientists Committed to Society (UCCS), and today has some 400 active members from fields like biology, physics, mathematics, economics, sociology, anthropology, political science and law.

Now, those two worlds have joined forces.

UCCS, based in the national capital, created the Socio-Environmental Observatory with the goal of “documenting the most serious cases of environmental deterioration in Mexico,” explained one of its members, economist Rolando Espinoza.

Its main source of information for drawing that map of socio-environmental problems is the AAA. Already it has registered 150 cases, most of them related to “mining and petroleum activities, hydroelectric projects, development of road infrastructure, construction of sanitary landfills, and waste disposal,” said Espinoza.

The most common have to do with water. For example, the Santiago River, situated in the municipality of El Salto, Jalisco, where González lives. “First we noticed that each time we had to go farther away to fish and to gather fruit,” she says.

“Then we realized there was disease and death. We couldn't find the origin of the cases of cancer, kidney failure, dermatitis, damaged lungs and spontaneous abortion,” recalls the founder of the community association “Un Salto de Vida” (A Leap of Life).

In the 1970s, metal manufacturers, pharmaceutical, food, construction, petrochemical and solvent companies set up shop there, with nearly 200 firms discharging contaminants into an environment its inhabitants used to refer to as “paradise.”

Today its notable characteristic is the odor of rotten egg.

In the last couple years, activists have sought clean-up of six kilometers of the river network, the contamination of which threatens the health of the 150,000 people who live in El Salto.

When they began to file complaints, the state authorities reacted by downplaying the activists' arguments.

“They told us: 'Show me how what you are saying has any relation to contamination, that you have cancer from the runoff',” recalls González.

According to economist Espinoza, that is a typical response from government officials.

In the southern state of Puebla, he says, it reached the absurd point of the government asking the residents to provide a study of the wind directions and speeds in an area affected by a company that recycled x-ray films and emitted toxic fumes.

“Citizens need information, they need someone from a public, educational, or scientific institution, an informed local person who will support and advise them in organizing the information and making it meaningful,” Espinoza said.

That is why “we invited the network of UCCS researchers to generate or share studies to provide scientific support to the arguments in defense of the environment and health,” he added.

The collaboration of UCCS and the AAA is perhaps the most prolific, but there are many partnerships between scientists and citizens in Mexico.

The defenders of the Santiago River are already working with researchers from the Western Institute of Technology and Higher Studies, in Guadalajara, capital of Jalisco. They plan to publicize the case in the international media and to carry out environmental monitoring of the area.

Meanwhile, students at the University of Guadalajara “are analyzing the water and biopsies from the animals we are eating and samples from the pastures that feed the cattle,” said González.

In Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, the U.S.-based non-governmental group Global Community Monitor has been advising the Association of Tatexco Ecological Producers (APETAC). The group taught farmers to take air samples that are then sent for analysis by a U.S. laboratory.

According to farmer Rodríguez, in the Coatzacoalcos area there are 500 oil wells, four petrochemical complexes, 30 companies from other industries and a refinery. The result? Periodically, a toxic cloud forms, polluting the air breathed by the surrounding communities.

The initial findings of the air samples show high concentrations of benzene and toluene, both carcinogenic substances.

“They also analyzed the eggs from yard chickens and they found a harmful substance called dioxin,” a highly toxic byproduct of certain industrial processes, Rodríguez said.

APETAC, in operation for 13 years, has produced results. “In 1997 we were the first in the country to win a lawsuit for environmental damage against (the government-run) Petróleos Mexicanos,” for its constant oil spills and leaks.

“Before, they were very common and nothing was done. They covered it with dirt and quicklime and that was it,” he said.

These cases can be a threat to powerful private sector interests. According to UCCS, that is why there are efforts to sweep them under the rug.

That is what happened to the residents of the impoverished settlement of El Tigre II, in the municipality of Zapopan, Jalisco. El Nixticuil forest, 1,800 hectares of oak and pine, was threatened by a luxury real estate project.

One early morning in May 2005, municipal authorities sent machinery and workers into the forest, where they cut down 400 trees. When women from the settlement forced a halt to the logging, problems began.

“We had police dressed in civilian clothes hounding us outside our houses, and there are still signs saying that anyone who opposes the project will be written up,” says Sofía Herrera, a psychology student.

Herrera is part of El Tigre II Save the Forest Committee, made up of 10 families. Its greatest achievement so far has been getting 1,500 hectares declared a natural protected area. But pressure on the forest has not ceased.

The committee, a member of AAA, also works to care for the forest. “We have a brigade that collects and plants acorns, digs furrows (around the trees to maintain soil moisture), applies fungicides and fights fires,” said Herrera.

For some of these activities, the committee gets technical support from people at the University of Guadalajara.

If everything goes as UCCS plans, in a few years there will be a scientific tribunal in place, “of an ethical nature, that will judge the authorities for each one of the cases, based on the technical and scientific information gathered. Something like the Latin American Water Tribunal,” according to Espinoza.

Meanwhile, the AAA strategy is to maintain unity among its groups in calling public attention to the environmental problems they face. The focus now is to publicize the next Assembly meeting.

The date has not been set, but the location has already been decided: Valle del Perote, in Veracruz. The area is very polluted and rose to fame in recent weeks as home to the pig farms that may be the origin of the swine flu virus H1N1.

The touristic city of Neochea, Argentina, is putting together a pioneering plan for the compulsory collection of used cooking oil from restaurants in order to produce biodiesel.

The Biodiesel Program - Courtesy of the Municipality of Necochea

“We are preventing used cooking oil from reaching the sewers and contaminating water sources, saving fuel, creating environmental awareness and giving a project to a town that was dying,” summarizes Martín Issin, deputy secretary of production for the municipal government of Neochea and head of the Biodiesel Program that manages the collection, production and consumption of this renewable fuel.

Necochea, a tourist destination on the Atlantic coast, is 500 kilometers southeast of the Argentine capital, located in Buenos Aires province. In the summer it receives thousands of visitors, but the permanent population is about 100,000.

Necochea isn't the one that is “dying”, but rather the inland town of Ramón Santamarina, 65 kilometers away. The seemingly unstoppable desertion of the town led authorities to move the Agricultural School there.

The School was the site chosen for the municipal biodiesel processing plant, which reinvigorated life and activity in Ramón Santamarina.

“That's why we say this project has rescued productive potential and retained the rural population,” said Issin.

Argentina is the world's third leading producer of biodiesel, after Germany and the United States, with more than 1.4 million tons a year. But production is concentrated in the hands of a few companies dedicated to export, and does not supply local demand, which is set to increase beginning next year.

Argentina's 2006 biofuels law states that as of 2010 gasoil (petroleum-based fuel for diesel motors) must be mixed with at least five percent biodiesel (plant-based), which produces lower greenhouse emissions.

But experts fear it will be difficult to comply with the law because biodiesel producers prefer the more lucrative foreign market.

From when Necochea began its Biodiesel Program in 2004 to last year, plant-based cooking oil collection increased from 7.4 to 94.8 tons annually. “Collection is constantly increasing,” said a pleased Issin.

The town decreed in 2004 that all food establishments must register as suppliers of used vegetable oils and request the collection of this waste, in exchange for an identification decal placed in the window to show their participation.

Hotels, restaurants, factories and cafeterias are subject to inspections and fines from the Sanitation Directorate, which regulates what is put down the drains. Participation by individual households is voluntary.

The program today involves 700 businesses that provide used oil year round, and 3,000 more during the summer season. The cooking oil is collected by a city truck that itself runs only on biodiesel.

The authorities decided to include the re-use of empty agrochemical containers in the scheme. The otherwise polluting containers undergo a triple wash before being used in the process of collecting oil from the participating businesses.

“We are open all year, but the summer is when we work hardest. We have to call so they'll bring us more containers, because we end up with between 80 and 100 liters of oil per week,” said María Isabel García, owner of La Taberna Española restaurant.

“It's a success, because in Necochea now there are cars for hire that run on biodiesel,” she added.

Gustavo Aguirre, head of the Hereford restaurant, commented that the plan is “a solution and at the same time a service… The municipality sends us the containers and comes with the truck to take them away. It's good for us because we don't have to look for where to dispose of the oil.”

The oil is taken to the processing plant in Ramón Santamarina. There it is stored in a tank to be filtered. The organic waste is used for worm culture. The fluid oil is decanted and the water content is extracted.

Once the biodiesel has been with distilled, with methanol and caustic soda, the glycerol is separated out, a byproduct that can be used as raw material to make soap, according to Issin.

At the Agricultural School the town's only fuel pump has been installed, which supplies the school buses, the city's vehicles, and individual vehicles, including the cars for hire.

“We are in the self-supplying category because the volume doesn't allow us to sell it. But we can save on fuel for our fleet,” explained Issin. The municipal government has 70 vehicles, which run on mixtures of 50 percent to 100 percent biodiesel.

Two buses from a Necochea public transportation company gave a six-month test run, using a mixture of 20 percent biodiesel, with “excellent” results, he said.

The town's production office presented the program to the Argentine Carbon Fund, run by the national Environment Agency to facilitate investment in energy efficiency and development of renewable energy sources.

With Fund certification, the program could have access to financing under the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, intended to mitigate production of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.

With that prospect, the plant, which now employs five people, could be expanded.

The pioneer project motivated the government of Buenos Aires province in 2007 to launch Plan Bio, through which a couple dozen non-governmental organizations collect used cooking oil, free of charge, and sell it to private refineries at market prices. The income generated is used by those groups to finance their social campaigns.

Rio de Janeiro's largest slum has halted construction of a much-criticized wall in exchange for ecological and recreational corridors between the impoverished neighborhood and a city forest.

Work begins on eco-paths in Rio's Rocinha slum. - Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

This may also be an answer for other slums, known in Brazil as “favelas”, where high walls have been planned. Many see such construction as an attempt to create a sort of apartheid between the rich and poor of this coastal city.

To reach the highest point in Rocinha, where a government agency is beginning to build the eco-boundary, one should climb aboard a motorcycle-taxi, the best way to get around the narrow, curving streets of the slums, which are mostly spread across the sides of the “morros”, the hills that give Rio its signature look.

When the Portuguese conquistadors reached these lands some 500 years ago, they saw the Atlantic Forest (Mata Atlântica, in Portuguese), which stretches across another 16 eastern Brazilian states. It is one of the planet's most biodiverse biomes, but today just seven percent of the original forest is still standing.

At Rocinha's summit, the shacks hanging precariously over the ravine and the still-abundant vegetation mark the limit of the slum. This is where the cutting and burning of trees ended, at the edge of this community of 200,000 residents, one of Latin America's largest slums of this type.

With the declared goal of halting deforestation and preventing construction in areas at high risk of landslides, the Rio government had proposed building 15 kilometers of three-meter-high walls in 14 of the city's favelas.

But the project, which began to take shape with a wall of steel and concrete in the southern favela of Santa Marta, triggered a great deal of anger.

The wall is “an offensive metaphor that is a blow to the favela residents,” said Silvia Ramos, coordinator of the Center for Studies in Security and Citizenship (CESC), in an interview for this article.

It is a “kind of cage,” in the opinion of information technology worker Nadson Ribeiro, resident of Santa Marta. The “bars” of the cage are the police, who “constantly keep watch over the area” from below, and the wall above, he said.

That image is a reality in Rocinha.

While an impressive deployment of police destroys the sales carts of the informal market in the lower areas of the favela, above, among the trees, the drug traffickers ply their trade. The dense vegetation provides an escape route, and many believe that is the true reason behind the wall construction plan: to fence in the drug trade.

Icaro Moreno, head of the public works agency, rejected the comparison with apartheid. “The border used to be virtual, and now it is physical. What the government did was to say, 'if you cross it or break it, you will be violating public property',” he said.

But some in Rocinha told him “no” to the “eco-boundaries” as well. “Any wall is separatist,” said Antonio Ferreira de Melo, president of the Rocinha Neighborhood Association, in an interview.

The mobilization of this community, and of the Favela Federation of Rio de Janeiro, has led at least to a truce.

The government accepted the Rocinha proposal to substitute the walls with a combination of stretches of nature paths, including handrails for people with mobility problems, bicycle and skating paths, and playgrounds, alternating with stretches of walls — but which stand no higher than 90 cm.

The three-meter walls will be built only in areas at risk of landslides.

The Association also proposed training forest rangers from the community who would ensure respect for the established boundaries.

Ocimar Santos, content editor for Rocinha's official website, is satisfied with this solution. “It wouldn't interrupt the right to movement and the nature park will benefit the community,” he said.

In his opinion, the community knows that its disorderly expansion creates problems, such as in sanitation and garbage collection. But the idea of the wall “is not a positive symbol in any part of the world,” he noted.

For the governor of Rio de Janeiro state, Sérgio Cabral, the walls are intended to “protect” the communities, who receive in exchange benefits from the government, such as basic sanitation, education and urban planning.

It is a way for these investments, “over time, are not lost in the unregulated expansion of the community,” said Cabral, member of the PMDB, Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement, allied with administration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

The doubt now lies in whether the agreement reached in Rocinha will be extended to other favelas in Rio.

Reactions have come from beyond even national borders. Jurist Álvaro Tirado Mejía, of the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, challenged the “geographic discrimination” of the walls.

Luisa, a Rocinha resident, summarized it this way: “The wall isn't for separating the trees, it's for separating out the poor.” She is not convinced either that the nature paths are the best option.

“They say it's a park, but down there, in the city of middle and upper classes, the nature parks aren't cages,” Luisa said.

The alarming loss of Atlantic Forest had contributed to the idea of the wall, which had also been proposed by previous governments.

The Atlas of Forest Remnants of the Mata Atlântica, produced by the SOS Mata Atlântica Foundation and the National Institute for Space Research, revealed last month that the state of Rio de Janeiro alone had lost 176,714 hectares of this ecosystem since 1985.

According to the study, the annual rate of deforestation nearly doubled in the last three years. Today, Rio has just 18 percent of the forests that once stood in that state.

Fires, urban expansion and human occupation are the main causes of deforestation in Rio, SOS Mata Atlântica director Marcia Hirota said in an interview for this article.

But the Foundation does not believe that the “pressure on the native vegetation” comes only from the favelas. There are also luxury condominiums and homes, hotels and inns, as well as “other types of occupation that suppress the native plant coverage,” Hirota said.

A study by the municipal Pereira Passos Institute indicates that half of the city's 750 favelas, which are home to 1.5 million people, doubled in size between 1994 and 2004.

Pressed between the hills and the ocean, the city and its favelas, as well as its mansions and middle class neighborhoods, keep growing into the forest.

Hirota believes in raising awareness among the people “who live in urban areas… about the importance of protecting the native flora.”

Furthermore, she said it is essential to plan urban expansion and establish “systematic control by the public authority with society's participation,” Hirota said.

The CESC's Ramos agrees that without establishing “an environmental culture” among the local population, the effort is worthless.

Many Rio governments have tried, unsuccessfully, to reforest the hillsides of the favelas, even attempting to include the residents.

There are additional problems: Brazil has a deficit of eight million housing units, especially in the southeastern states of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Minas Gerais.

“When the government decides to build a wall, it's because it doesn't want to invest in low-income housing, for example,” said Marcelo Freixo, a state lawmaker of the opposition Party of Socialism and Liberty.

Freixo believes the wall “is truly absurd,” and “the government is once again saying that the favelas are a problem.”

The government's aim is “to control the poor communities” and to try to prove to the southern part of Rio de Janeiro, where the middle and upper classes live, that the authorities do indeed “govern”.

Amidst the violence of civil war and the illegal coca trade, a handful of Colombian farmers have embraced chocolate production in the Amazon forest.

Harvesting cacao in Remolino. - Courtesy of Rodrigo Velaidez/Chocaguán

Chocaguán produces chocolate from cocoa beans grown in the Amazon by 115 members in the southern Colombian province of Caquetá. One-fifth of its members are women heads of households.

Catholic priest Giacinto Franzoi launched a crusade in this area 20 years ago: “No a la droga, sí al caucho y al cacao” (No to drugs, yes to rubber and cocoa).

The Italian missionary had arrived in 1978 in Remolino del Caguán, a jungle village on the Caguán river around 100 km southeast of Florencia, the provincial capital of Caquetá.

Coca arrived at around the same time. A few men, including a Vietnam War veteran from the U.S., brought the new type of seed, telling local residents that it would lift them out of poverty.

The promoters of the illicit crop jealously guarded the information on how to turn coca into cocaine. But the growers themselves eventually figured out how to process the leaves into coca paste, the intermediary step towards producing cocaine.

The coca paste kingdom

For years, coca paste was the main product of the village of Remolino del Caguán. The numbers of buyers multiplied and they competed among themselves, offering sums never before imagined by the local villagers.

“Those were crazy years. The farmers who had been left out of the bonanza asked us for coca seeds,” local farmer Simeón Pérez tells Franzoi in the book “God and Cocaine: How a Missionary Survived in El Caguán”, written by the priest and published this month in Bogotá.

In his book, Franzoi describes those times of boutiques and jewellery shops, the latest home appliances run on diesel generators, prostitution, clandestine airstrips and piles of cash that disappeared as easily as they had appeared.

The communist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which in May celebrated its 45th anniversary and whose central demand was agrarian reform, had first arrived in Caquetá in 1964.

Beginning in 1962, the growing concentration of the best lands in the hands of a few was compounded by government incentives for settlers to clear forests in exchange for land titles and an expansion of the agricultural frontier.

One of the consequences was the rise of coca in the 1980s as the most profitable crop in remote areas, far from traditional crop transport hubs.

The Amazon jungle has paid a steep price for the drug trade and Colombia’s 45-year armed conflict.

During the coca boom years, money flowed freely in the area, said Rubén Darío Montes, the Chocaguán company’s legal representative and former president of the Committee of Cocoa Growers of Remolino del Caguán and Suncillas, the latter a tributary of the Caguán river.

“There was no control by the authorities,” he recalled in an interview for this article.

But the first incursion by the anti-narcotics forces, in 1988, destroyed one of the 20 drug labs operating in the area at the time.

The cocoa miracle

As the government began to crack down on drug crops, many people fled. But “Father Jacinto (as Franzoi is known in the area), the Remolino parish priest, began to think about what to do to keep local people from being displaced to the slums surrounding the cities,” said Montes.

Eight people attended the first meeting held by the priest to discuss a switch to alternative crops, and in 1994 the Committee of Cocoa Growers and the Chocaguán company were officially registered. More farmers joined the effort over time.

Rubber, or natural latex, was ruled out because it takes eight years for the trees to start to produce, but improved varieties of cocoa can be harvested after a year and a half. The first bars of 500 grams of raw chocolate were manufactured in 1993.

The new chocolate factory defied the logic of the market.

In 1993, one ton of coca paste was sold every Sunday in Remolino, at 1,350 dollars a kilo, according to the exchange rate at the time. Meanwhile, the local cocoa growers sold a combined 20 to 50 kilos of cocoa beans a week to the recently-created Chocaguán, which paid them just 2.70 dollars a kilo.

At first, Chocaguán manufactured 50 small packets a week of nine little chocolate balls, with cinnamon or clove flavours.

Everyone bought them, even the guerrillas and the drug dealers. The business flourished. “Thanks to God, and the coca economy, we were able to sell everything we produced,” commented Rodrigo Velaidez, an agronomist who specialises in cocoa and is an adviser to Chocaguán.

Caught between coca and ‘Plan Colombia’

In 1996, the rural crisis caused by the liberalisation of trade devastated at least one-fifth of the area in Colombia planted with traditional crops and led to the loss of more than 300,000 rural jobs, according to Darío Fajardo, a former consultant to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

The crisis proved a boon to the coca industry, which continued to destroy Colombia's jungles.

But the resulting oversupply of coca paste drove down prices, leading to marches in 1996 by coca growers who demanded action from the government to compensate their losses.

Initially, the FARC rejected coca. But when drug trafficking money began to finance the far-right paramilitary groups that were allied with the army in the counterinsurgency effort, the guerrillas began to take an active part in the business, to throw a wrench into the gears.

The U.S.-financed “Plan Colombia”, launched in 2000, sought to cut the FARC's drug revenues by destroying coca crops using aerial spraying with glyphosate, an herbicide.

Meanwhile, the members of Chocaguán gradually expanded their cocoa crops and acquired machinery to set up their factory in Remolino, using their own resources, aid from national and local governments, and international support drummed up by Franzoi.

Today, the company’s chocolate products are sold in Caquetá and neighbouring provinces, as well as the French international hypermarket chain Carrefour, through U.N. efforts, and health food shops.

Of the 200 hectares planted with cocoa bean, 70 are in production, belonging to half of the members, which supply Chocaguán with between three and 200 kilos of beans per week. Seven operators work at a time, of which three or four are women, to process the chocolate.

Now the company is planning to move part of the processing to the nearby town of Cartagena del Chairá, which will cut costs, reduce the risks of transporting the product by river through a war zone, and facilitate commercial expansion.

Every six months, Chocaguán holds “field days” to catch up with the latest environmentally friendly techniques. “At least 70 percent of the members apply the ideas and knowledge acquired,” said Valeidez.

The leaders of Chocaguán attribute the company's survival to the fact that it belongs to four national alternative production and anti-war networks, supported by development aid from countries like Switzerland and the Netherlands.

“We are not eradicators (of coca crops). We are promoters of gradual and voluntary replacement of illicit crops… The people have never been forced into anything,” Velaidez said.

Montes himself has just one hectare of cocoa. “It's very little. The minimum to ensure profitability is three hectares per family. It is due to lack of money, because I do have the land. And that one hectare I planted at my own risk,” he said.

The war creates uncertainty. “If I plant, it means taking out three million pesos (1,350 dollars) to cultivate. But then they come and spray (the coca crops). And there is no guarantee that they won't spray the cocoa as well,” said Montes.

In El Caguán, aerial fumigation with glyphosate has been carried out in 1996, 1999, 2002 and 2005.

The last spraying was most painful to the cocoa farmers because it came after they had won the prestigious National Peace Prize in 2004, in recognition of their work in civil resistance based on security and food sovereignty at the time of a massive military offensive.

“Caquetá has been one of the target areas of U.S. military and anti-drug assistance,” said Adam Isacson, a leading expert on Plan Colombia and the director of the Latin American Security Programme at the U.S.-based Centre for International Policy.

Since 2004, 17,000 soldiers have been deployed to Caquetá, but information is unavailable about the proportion of Plan Colombia's military and intelligence resources that go to this province.

In what he described as a “very conservative” personal estimate, Isacson told this reporter that “U.S. support for operations in Caquetá has totalled at least five million dollars per year, or almost 50 million dollars since 2000.”

“They could have spent that money on projects for the region, to improve housing or access roads, or on programmes for health and education,” lamented Montes.

In 1995, the organised communities drew up a proposal for the complete substitution of coca in El Caguán, at a cost of 19 million dollars (based on the exchange rate at the time).

Persecution

San Vicente del Caguán, near Remolino del Caguán, and local residents were left stigmatised as a result of the failed peace talks that were held here from 1998 to 2002 between the government of Andrés Pastrana and the FARC.

With the FARC there have been “moments of tension” and “friction,” according to a member of the chocolate company, who said “the key is to stay on the sidelines.”

But the members of Chocaguán have not escaped persecution and prison. Even Franzoi was accused of handing over 68,000 dollars to the FARC and of keeping weapons for the guerrillas. But in June 2008 the government prosecutor excluded him from the investigation, and soon after, the priest returned to Italy.

“If they don't respect the priest, they're even less likely to respect one of us,” commented Montes.

The Italian priest, who is now 66, patiently guided this reporter in 2005 through a garden of cocoa, two kilometres from the village, planted with different cocoa varieties in order to produce seeds and to preserve genetic types, which stand as a testimony to the search for alternative crops in this corner of the Amazon.

“What matters is neither he who plants nor he who irrigates, but God who makes it grow,” said the wooden sign at the garden entrance at the time. In 2007 it was replaced with a new sign: “Chocaguán, a life choice for a solidarity economy.”

While learning to recycle electronic waste, young Brazilians are acquiring skills and greater awareness about the impacts of material consumption.

Student Keith Garcia Reges in action - : Clarinha Glock/IPS

By the end of 2009 they should reach 2,500 computers, which will be distributed to schools, child daycare centers, non-governmental organizations and computer centers, bringing technology to people who otherwise are excluded from it in this city of 1.5 million people, capital of Rio Grande do Sul state.

CRC's raw material is electronic waste from the federal government, banks, private companies and individuals, who get rid of outdated computers to make way for newer ones, or because they aren't able to repair the ones they have.

Before, these computers, printers and tech accessories would have been dumped in landfills, but now they are seeing a renewed life of usefulness, or even recycled as part of works of art.

The project is part of the Brazilian Program for Digital Inclusion and emerged from a partnership between the Ministry of Planning and the Marist Network for Education and Solidarity, part of the Roman Catholic order of Marist Brothers.

Centers like the one in Porto Alegre have also opened in the states of Minas Gerais and São Paulo, and in the federal district of Brasilia, the capital.

As in the others, CRC of Porto Alegre is located in an outlying neighborhood. There, 88 young people from poor families receive a scholarship that allows them to learn to dismantle, recondition, adapt and rebuild equipment, install free software, program and configure computers.

But, most important, they discover the value of each part in the process, not just of the computers, but also of themselves as citizens. “The course is important for its professional side and the personal side, because here people interact,” says Keith Garcia Reges, 16.

In the “disposable era”, these students are an exception. “We stop throwing away many things and we learn to use more of what we have at home,” says the youth. There are few people who can poke around inside a computer without fear of breaking something, but at CRC they have learned that anything can be fixed.

Reges repairs computers, mobile phone rechargers, speakers and fans. And the knowledge multiplies. Reges invited two classmates to present their work on electronic waste in a demonstration at the local school.

In the pavilion at the Marist Social Center (Cesmar) in the city, Rafael de Vasconcelos, 17 and passionate about robotics, went even further. He began as a volunteer when he was 15, working as a class monitor, then hired as an apprentice and is now a teacher. With the scholarship money he is paying for his studies in electrical engineering at the university.

“When I'm in class, I'm happy to see that I'm learning to mix these things that help improve the world,” he said.

Vasconcelos is only partially aware of the advantages of the speed and efficiency of the computers he makes operational. But he does know that manufacturing a new computer has more costs for the environment than consumers imagine.

Everything that arrives at CRC is put to use. Many pieces that cannot be repaired are dismantled and are studied in the robotics classes – the world of Vasconcelos.

Anyone who sees the mountain of junked electronic slot machines on the Cesmar patio is unlikely to realize the number of products created from the illegal gambling machines, seized by the federal tax authorities and donated under one condition: re-use the materials.

Vasconcelos proudly tells how he transformed an old computer screen into an illuminated sign. “It took us two months to map out the electronic part, and then we plugged in the computer's parallel port and made a program to post words and letters,” he explained, mixing English technical jargon with his own Portuguese.

The knowledge acquired is passed on to the new students. The wooden parts of the slot machines will also be used to make stools, decorations and tables, in a new project this year to create new jobs and income.

In the back of CRC, electronic waste that cannot be returned to technological used is turned into art. The cover of an enormous, outdated IBM computer becomes a graffiti-covered work of art with an Easter theme, which decorated Cesmar during Holy Week.

When it was new, 12 years ago, the computer cost 27,000 dollars, noted Tarcísio Postingher, the center's technical coordinator. “The technology evolved so much that it can no longer operate with the current models,” he explained.

Dismantled, it became a series of works that express the youths' creativity and talent. From its metallic parts emerged small figures of soccer players, painted and set in bases, which are used as trophies for this popular sport.

When there are materials that CRC cannot re-use, the center itself makes sure they are properly disposed of. Still in its early stages, a market is developing in Brazil in which companies collect electronic waste – in Portuguese: “e-lixo” – that comes from computers, electronics and cell phones.

One of the companies is Lorene. “We process some 200 tons of e-waste per month,” says production manager Eduardo Manuel Ribeiro de Almeida.

From that processing come precious metals like gold, silver, platinum, palladium and copper, which are put back into the productive chain, reducing the demand for mining, according to Almeida.

CRC coordinator Postingher, who holds a graduate degree in information technology and studies in theology, pointed out future challenges. “In 2008, there were 12 million computers sold in this country. That means that in two or three years they will need to be disposed of.”

In addition to adapting to new technologies, he said, it is essential to train professionals with a global vision.

Attuned to the debates about green computer technologies, Postingher noted that one of the main problems of technology centers is how to save electricity.

One possibility, he said, is to use one virtual computer server that administers 10 services at the same time, reducing the number of computers needed – and thus reducing the energy consumed.

“This change in mentality is difficult, because everyone wants to consume. We must prepare people for the future, and that requires education,” Postingher said.

The frozen treasure of Peru's glaciers is melting away, leaving the population facing a dry future.

Marco Zapata on the shrinking Pastoruri Glacier in the Blanca range in the Andes. - Courtesy of Marco Zapata

This warning is being sounded from a variety of sectors.

As of February 2009, 48 percent of the 218 social conflicts recorded by the People's Defender of Peru, a national government agency, revolve around socio-environmental problems, many of them related to “water management,” states the report “Water Faces New Challenges: Actors and Initiatives in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia”, published by the international anti-poverty organization Oxfam on Mar. 20.

Two southern departments, Moquegua and Arequipa, are at loggerheads over water. The rural communities of the high Andean region of the Yauca River have experienced violent clashes that have claimed lives.

The irrigation projects Chavimochic and Chinecas, in the northwest, have entailed ongoing disputes over water resources. Chavimochic irrigates some 155,000 hectares, 66,000 in what is otherwise desert, and encompasses Trujillo, the principal city in the region of La Libertad.

Chinecas, in the Ancash region, has expanded irrigation of 24,000 hectares and pushed the agriculture frontier 10,000 hectares into previously unfarmed areas.

The regions of Piura and Lambayeque, in the north, are fighting over the use of the Huancabamba River, which originates in the former, but is used for irrigation in the latter.

Water is not only in short supply in Peru, but it is also poorly distributed in relation to the population. Seventy percent of the people live in the arid strip along the Pacific Ocean, where just 1.8 percent of the country's freshwater supply is found.

Lima, on the coast, is home eight million people, or 30 percent of the national total. It is the world's second largest city located in a desert, after Egypt's Cairo. It is estimated that between one million and two million people do not have potable water.

Carmen Felipe-Morales, an engineering expert with the Institute of Water Promotion and Management, underscores the fact that Lima does not have a large enough water supply for its inhabitants.

At one point in his first term (1985-1990), President Alan García proposed moving the enormous population of Lima to another site, but that idea has not been mentioned again during his current term.

Instead, he turned his campaign promise of “water for all” into a strategic program of his administration, which proposes hefty investment in 185 potable water and sanitation projects.

The stated objective is to expand potable water services from 76 to 88 percent of households; sanitation from 57 percent to 77 percent; and sewage treatment from 22 percent to 100 percent by 2015.

This would achieve one of the targets set under the Millennium Development Goals, adopted by the international community in 2000: Halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.

But the question remains about the lack of water available.

For Felipe-Morales, “if we don't put the brakes on the increase in the capital's population, the problem will get worse, not only due to the demand, but because of a very serious aspect: water contamination,” she said in an interview for this article.

According to the Oxfam report, more than half of Peru's rivers with highest demand for use are severely contaminated. In the north, it's the Chira, Piura, Llaunaco, Santa and Huallaga rivers; in the central region, the Chillón, Yauli and Mantaro; and in the south, the Chili River.

In the opinion of Felipe-Morales, water management seems to be missing from the government's policy agenda.

“Appropriate management is especially about prevention and education, and compliance with standards, because in Peru we have many, many laws and rules about the environment, but are the obeyed?” she wondered.

In addition to this outlook is the Law on Water Resources, enacted on Mar. 30, and challenged by citizens and politicians alike, because “very clearly it opens the doors to the privatization of water administration,” said Nationalist Party lawmaker Yaneth Cajahuanca.

Meanwhile, a crucial source of freshwater is melting before the very eyes of Peruvians. The glaciers, enormous masses of ice in the Andes Mountains, are disappearing as a result of global climate change, warn experts.

Of the world's glaciers found in tropical latitudes, 71 percent are in Peru. Twenty-two percent are in Bolivia, four percent in Ecuador, and three percent in Colombia.

Peru's total glacier-covered area has shrunk from 2,042 square kilometers to 1,596 square kilometers in the last 30 years, says engineer Marco Zapata, head of the Glaciology and Water Resources Unit of the National Water Authority, in the northwest province of Huaraz.

That is 446 square km fewer glaciers, which represents an estimated 7 billion cubic meters of water – the equivalent of 10 years of water consumption in Lima.

In the Cordillera Blanca, the highest and most extensive range of its type, and situated in Ancash, glacier coverage shrank 187 square km between 1970 and 2003. That is a 26-percent decline in 33 years. But 10.5 percent occurred just in the last six years, between 1997 and 2003, noted Zapata, who has been studying the phenomena for more than three decades.

“In 1989 the first national inventory of glaciers was published, based on aerial photos from the years 1970 and 1974, encompassing 18 snowy ranges or large glacier areas. The volcanic range of Arequipa was not inventoried because the photographs had many clouds, nor was the Barroso de Tacna (both in the south), because its glaciers had already disappeared,” he said.

In 2007 “we started working on a new inventory of glaciers and high Andean lakes or proglacial lakes, beginning with the Cordillera Blanca,” said Zapata.

That latest inventory was made using satellite images from 2003. If in 1970 the Cordillera Blanca glaciers covered 723 square kilometers, the results from 2003 showed just 535 square kilometers.

That range holds a quarter of the world's tropical glaciers, says the study “Alpine Lakes and Glaciers in Peru: Managing Sources of Water and Destruction,” published by Edward Spang in 2006.

The rivers of the Peruvian coast originate in the mountains and are fed by the glaciers, the yearly winter snowmelt and other precipitation at higher altitudes. “When the glaciers disappear, we will only have the water from rainfall,” warned the expert.

Peru has some 12,200 lakes and “those will have to be used, as will those valleys that have the conditions to store water during the rainy season,” he said.

Crops will have to be determined based on the availability of water, according to Zapata, adding that irrigation systems must be improved and leaks in the channels must be reduced, because that loss is 70 percent of the sierra's water.

The exchange of goods and services without involving money rises and falls in Argentina in inverse proportion to national prosperity, and is apparently far from sinking in the stormy waters of the globalized economy.
In May, barter will celebrate 14 years of new life in Argentina. After a peak in this form of trade, following the 2001 economic collapse, today it keeps a lower profile, though it involves tens of thousands of people around the country. Despite its survival, economists question its long-term viability.

In Argentina, there are some 500 “barter clubs” operating, no longer with the three million people who in 2002 sought support in this economic system. But promoters say there are twice as many in the clubs now as there were last year.

“El Club del Trueque” is a space for exchanging clothing, school supplies, homemade food, household repair jobs in carpentry, bricklaying and electrical work, medical and dental services, tutoring and tourism, among other goods and services.

Organizers have seen a 50-percent hike in the number of barterers since 2008, coinciding with the beginning of a feeling of economic uncertainty linked to the conflict between the government and farming unions about higher export taxes.

Because of this expansion, the country's oldest barter club, created May 1, 1995, in Bernal, a southern Buenos Aires suburb, is moving to a bigger space.

“The relaunch will take place in the next few weeks,” announced Rubén Ravera, one of the founders of the Club del Trueque, or Global Barter Network (RGT) in Argentina. “It's recommended that the number of participants at each location is no more than 100, the only way to establish face-to-face relations and reinforcing trust between the members,” he said.

Ravera said it is difficult to measure the volume of trade. But “it's been growing slowly since 1995. The barter agreement is made by phone, e-mail and in person,” he said.

In order for a barter market to function in a “multireciprocal” way, all participants must consume in the same proportion in which they supply goods and services. This is known as “pro-suming”.

“That has an incredible effect on people's self-esteem, especially among the youth and the homemakers, who can place value on abilities that had not been valued before,” Ravera said.

Belén Rodríguez, a woman in her thirties who has never had a formal job, initially prepared food and recycled clothing. “That work with my hands gave me the ability to create crafted items that I exchange for services,” she explained while attending to a hairstylist interested in her items.

Ángela Mariño appreciates “that simple contribution of the people that shows warmth. The pastries aren't always identical, the meat pies have that homemade crust, a sweater with a loose thread. Nothing perfect, but everything is abundant,” she described.

But not everything is so “homemade”. This “pro-sumer” recognizes that what she most gets out of the Club del Trueque is getting to know a group of young people who help her keep her computer updated. People also come to the club as families. Fausto Torres and his family visit once a week. “The result is highly positive,” he said.

“We bring pies, croissants, empanadas, pastries and sweet breads that we trade for an unimaginable range of things, from food and beverages, cleaning supplies, household goods (batteries, flashlights, light bulbs, compact discs), clothing and even eyewear,” Torres said.

But isn't the world now too globalized to return to this primitive form of trade focused on subsistence?

“This system has a future in today's world to the extent that we are seeing with new eyes the attraction of collaborative deals. Barter is not synonymous with subsistence, or with separating from the economy. It is a complement in order to incorporate those who are excluded from the system,” says Horacio Krell, head of the Unión de Permutas de Argentina, an entity that promotes exchange of goods and services.

The return of the barter system would be possible, says Krell, through education, “revaluing a culture of work that promotes a form of capitalism sustained in the real economy and not on financial profits.”

In Ravera's opinion, the inclusive model of the Club del Trueque has “enormous potential for developing the economies of small communities and containing the approaching crisis.”

But the system as unviable in the long term, according to the several economists interviewed for this article. The Ministry of Economy, meanwhile, did not respond to repeated attempts to obtain comment.

The concept of sustainable development has to do with the level of consumption, which is difficult to reduce, said Carlos Leyba, professor at the University of Buenos Aires. “If we stop consuming, the army of unemployed would grow,” he said.

Leyba, who heads the research team at the Strategy Center for the State and Market, believes that analyzing the return of barter belongs in the sphere of philosophy.

“It sounds like a big step backwards, because it happens when currency no longer makes sense. In a world that advances in function of international trade, with multinational corporations that fragment production and manufacture in different countries, physical compensation is impossible without money,” he said.

UBA economist Carlos Melconian, founder and director of M&S Consultores, was categorical in his reply: “Barter has neither a place nor a future.”

Consultant Roberto Cachanosky, graduate of the Argentine Catholic University, agrees. Barter “is a prehistoric mechanism… In the case of an international monetary collapse, any attempt to reestablish it would be temporary, very short-term, and a way out until the monetary system is rebuilt,” he said.

Antonio Brailovsky, economist, historian and university professor, introduced another dimension to the question.

“Barter functioned in Argentina at a time of emergency. But do people accept an economy without money or prefer to be scandalously poor and handle some sort of currency? Managing money is related to identity, and is a very important cultural aspect,” he said.

Because of that, “the idea of barter in an economy of poor people without money is unstable,” believes Brailovsky, former assistant ombudsman for the environment in the city of Buenos Aires.

In contrast to that instability are the microcredit social networks, suggested Brailovsky. Microcredit originated in the Grameen Bank as a long-term approach, a project led by Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.

But against all predictions to the contrary, the barter clubs have not disappeared. And the reasons are not always about economics.

Ricardo Jordan has been a pro-sumer for many years. That is how he covers approximately a quarter of his basic needs. Of Scottish descent, he is a skilled artisan, but his current specialty is organic gardening and carpentry.

“When I arrived at the Club del Trueque, I came from losing everything: my job, my self-esteem and my dignity. I was dead,” he said. “But now I have found life again.”

Cancún, a resort destination in Mexico, began to lose tourists who were demanding a more natural vacation. As a result, several companies have set out on the path towards a more sustainable hotel industry.

Tourists enjoying Le Méridien Hotel. - Claudio Cruz/IPS

Why? To ensure that the waste has been properly separated out for recycling, he explains. The containers are “blue for plastics, yellow for cardboard, grey for metals and green for organic waste.”

With 213 rooms, Le Méridien Resort & Spa, where Moreno works, is one of the more than 60 hotels in Cancún and the latest to receive sustainable tourism certification. The seal is granted by the Australia-based Green Globe, says Alma Quiñones, head of human resources.

Three other hotels in the area are ready to begin the process to earn certification, and nine already have it, according to Green Globe's representative in Mexico, Gustavo Ramos.

All are located on a 130-kilometer stretch of coastline in Quintana Roo state, which includes Cancún, Isla Mujeres, Playa del Carmen, Cozumel and Tulum — together known as the Mayan Riviera. Renowned for its turquoise waters and white beaches and coral reefs, the strip has more than 70,000 hotel rooms and receives three million tourists each year. In the past three decades, this part of Mexico, home to the Maya culture and important archeological sites, including the monumental pyramids of Chichén Itzá and Tulum, has been a magnet for visitors from the United States, Canada and Europe. Here they find sun, beaches and culture. In return, they bring in revenues totaling 5 billion dollars annually.

However, the lack of environmentally sustainable practices has led some of those tourists to turn their backs on Cancún.

“There are groups of tourists who research whether we are truly environmentally friendly before they make their reservations,” said Quiñones.

Hotel officials here estimate that they lost 260 million dollars in revenues last year for this reason. To their surprise, hundreds of tourists asked for their money back when they arrived in Cancún and did not find what had been touted in travel brochures and websites. The colorful reefs and broad beaches were victims of Hurricane Wilma in 2005, leaving in their place just a narrow strip of sand and many rocks.

According to Gabriela Mercado, tourism director for the national Secretariat of Environment, Mexico is losing its competitive edge due to the lack of sustainable management of its natural resources, and in 2008 that was reflected in the decline of tourism from Europe, where many travelers choose their destinations based on environmentally and socio-culturally friendly practices.

According to the representative of the non-governmental Mexican environmental law center, CEMDA, Alejandra Serrano Pavón, the Cancún hotel companies destroyed the mangrove forests to build their resort complexes, without taking measures to protect the sand dunes, which further accelerated coastal erosion.

To reverse this process, the federal government wants to recuperate the beaches through a 60-million-dollar project — but that doesn't appear to be a real solution either.

Officials from the beach areas where the federal government plans to take sand complain that this now precious resource will be used in coastal areas by the very ones who destroyed them.

They also criticize what they see as the hotels' indifference to the local community. There are doubts ranging from whether economic benefits from tourism remain in the region, as the Secretariat of Environment official herself admits, to the fact that the residents of Quintana Roo no longer feel that the beaches are theirs, especially those in Cancún.

The hotels create a barrier that prevents public access to the sea. “Ten years ago, in the hotel area of Cancún, there were 'ecological windows' where we could still see the sea. But no longer,” says Moreno, of Le Méridien.

If someone wants to reach the water, she or he must pay the hotel, as publicist José Uriart does. “I pay my 20-dollar day pass and I can use the pool, showers, recliners, towels,” he said.

But if one were to use the beach without paying, the experience of crafts vendor Jaime García serves as a warning: “The guards are arrogant. They say the beach belongs to the hotel. Once I told them that the beaches are public, but they turned on the water hose and doused me until I left,” he said.

As a result, one never sees “a Maya who works there go and lay out a towel on the beach outside the Hotel Presidente,” says CEMDA's Serrano Pavón

Perhaps because of this some hotels feel compelled to improve their image, and work to obtain sustainability certification voluntarily. They set up water treatment plants and use the water to irrigate their golf courses; they use biodegradable detergents; they decorate their grounds with native plants, and make an effort to improve relations with the community by adopting schools and social services centers, giving talks about sustainable practices and donating the money they obtain through recycling metal and glass containers.

But it's not just a question of image.

In one year, Le Méridien Hotel cut its electricity consumption five percent, water consumption four percent, gasoline 13 percent and gasoil 24 percent, reports facilities manager Cristóbal Gudiño Nava. Furthermore, the hotel went from an output of more than one kilogram of garbage per day per person to just over half a kilo per person. Next year these numbers need to continue to improve in order to ratify the certification.

In Playa del Carmen, the Mayan Palace Hotel, also certified by Green Globe, “set aside an area for a crocodile preserve and an island on a lake as a home to pink flamingos. We also have an area for composting and a nursery for native species,” says Erica Lobos, head of the certification project.

“We offer the tourists a bicycle tour through those areas and explain why we are working to protect the plants and animals, which are the fastest to recover after a hurricane,” she added.

But, Lobos went on, although these efforts are important, implementing a culture of sustainability is a slow process. “There is a certain apathy. We advise about sustainable practices, and when there are just one or two hotels per month expressing interest in working this way,” it is too few.”

Meanwhile, the Secretariat of Environment is drafting national standards for sustainability requirements for the region's tourism industry. It will include criteria to determine whether a hotel is sustainable or not and will be the basis for rankings. A hotel's poor ranking in sustainability is likely to bring negative publicity.

According to CEMDA, even if the standards are well received, they are still not enough, because there are hotels that do not comply with existing regulations and yet continue to receive permits and authorizations from the federal authority. The Secretariat of Environment declined to comment on these criticisms.

The indifference of some hotel operations, especially the newer ones, when it comes to truly sustainable development of their business is due in part to the fact that they don't see the economic benefits of taking care of the area, says Serrano Pavón.

They still believe that the environmental issue “runs counter to development and job creation, but it's just not the case. It is quality of life for the resident, and it is going to allow them to continue with tourism and generate profits,” concluded the CEMDA spokeswoman.

Waste composting has opened a new path for a southern Brazilian beach destination towards its goal of becoming a “sustainable city”.

Compost in Garopaba, Brazil. - Clarinha Glock/IPS

Garopaba, with its green hills ending in white sands of the Atlantic beaches, is already a “Transition Town”, a model being followed in more than 100 towns, neighborhoods, islands and forests of Australia, Brazil, Britain, China, Japan, United States and other countries.

As they have been doing since 2001, families and educators will gather at the end of the year in the town's main square to celebrate and demonstrate what they have learned about reusing rainwater, community gardens and holistic health practices — using things like mock-ups and music to do so.

With these and other initiatives, Garopaba, with a population of 16,400 (which balloons to 40,000 in the summer months) took on the “Transition Town” challenge, which began in Totnes, Britain in 2005 as a search for solutions to two major problems humanity is facing this century: climate change and the end of petroleum.

“The intention is to do a 'redesign' in order to boost cities' resilience in the context of climate changes and in the creation of a new energy matrix,” explains May East, a consultant in sustainability issues and member of the group that trains the leaders of Transition Towns or neighborhoods.

The ecological concept of resilience refers in this case to the ability of communities to withstand crisis and find ways to resolve social, environmental and economic crisis. In Totnes, the initial training helped in raising awareness of the population and enabling the local residents to take part.

In that British town, there is a local currency circulating, the Totnes pound, accepted by 65 companies and shops. This allows the money to be reinvested in the system itself, providing an incentive for the people and reinforcing the new sustainable economy.

The process involves investigating the town's own past. By recovering the history of earlier residents, the population learns what life was like when much less energy was consumed. In the schools, children learn to consume in a more balanced way.

Dreaming is important, says East. The people are encouraged to think about the kind of world they want to live in, and to look for ways to make it a reality, so ultimately they take ownership of creating change.

That is what is happening in Garopaba. Known for its beaches and for whale-watching tours to see the southern right whale (Eubalaena australis), it is now a reference point for sustainable development.

One of the first measures taken by Mayor Luiz Nestor, who took office this year, was the return to composting — the production of natural fertilizer based on organic waste — begun in 2002 and interrupted by political matters.

The first composting experience was part of a response to the government of Santa Catarina state, which required the municipality to find appropriate disposal of the solid waste that had been accumulating in open-air dumps, recalls the president of the city council, Mauro Santos do Nascimento.

The municipal government then turned to the Gaia Village Environmental Project (GV) that was already working on composting.

GV itself has its roots in 1997, when environmentalist José Lutzenberger was invited to educate owners of a private area in ways to help the natural environment to reconstitute itself. With the work of the Gaia Foundation, created by Lutzenberger, the native vegetation recovered and the project multiplied.

After that contact, experts from within Brazil and abroad arrived to discuss with the community issues like sustainable construction, permaculture, eco-villages, organic food, and wind and solar energy — which contributed to a shift in the town's worldview.

“GV and the Gaia foundation are proposing to establish a connection between the movements and the demands,” observes Dolizete Zilli, coordinator of the Project.

Every year, GV, the Gaia Foundation and the Garopaba Education Secretariat celebrate the “Friend of the Environment School – Professor José Lutzenberger Exhibit.”

As in Totnes, during the exhibition the community currency is in circulation, known as the “ecco”, allowing participants to “buy” admission into workshops, seedlings of local native plants, and books about the environment in a special shop.

And composting has opened the way for some profound changes. It means big savings in the cost of transporting waste: in 2008, the city government spent about 390,000 dollars in trucking garbage 250 kilometers to the Biguaçu dump.

The new system also improved health, according to agro-engineer Gerson Koenig Junior, president of the non-governmental Associação Orgânica.

“Organic waste generates disease vectors when they are not properly disposed of,” he said. People on the beach have even become sick due to the lack of treatment of fish remains, he adds.

According to Joaquim da Silva Pacheco, president of the Reciclagem e Limpeza Ambiental company, head of the composting system, the resulting fertilizer will be distributed to organic farmers and to schools and daycare centers that have vegetable gardens.

The general manager of the Banco do Brasil, Elmar Alves de Oliveira, says the bank is interested in participating: “The Fundação Banco do Brasil has lines of financing that could support the recycling.”

A campaign is also to be launched to encourage residents and tourists to join the spirit of the ecological efforts, says Marcelo Zanoni, municipal secretary of Tourism, Sports, Industry and Commerce.

One idea is to train health agents to guide people about how to separate out waste and recyclables at home.

The supermarkets, meanwhile, are still considering a proposal to distribute biodegradable shopping bags to their customers. The bags are made from cornstarch and potato waste, and could be used for depositing organic household waste.

Zanoni, who owns a restaurant, plans to invest in wastewater treatment. Beginning in July, nearly all the water that circulates in his restaurant will be recycled in some way.

For Silci Mattana, who prepares the snacks for the children in a local school, the improvements began at home.

Worried about the environment in Santa Catarina, Mattana started separating out the different types of household waste two years ago.

“It doesn't take much effort,” she says. The neighbors on her street are contributing as well. The collected material is sold to recycling companies, and with the money she buys a cake that she shares with her neighbors. The first was shared by 18 people. The next will have to be cut into 35 portions so that everyone can enjoy they taste of doing their part.