Ecobreves – HONDURAS: Pact for Olancho Forest

Timber businesses and environmental groups in the northeastern Honduran department (province) of Olancho announced Oct. 8 that they had agreed on a pact for forestry management, under military supervision, of the Telica River Basin.

Ecobreves – BRAZIL: Banana Pest Genome Deciphered

The Brazilian agricultural research agency EMBRAPA completed, along with U.S., French, Dutch and Mexican institutions, the sequencing of the 11,000 genes of the fungus that causes black sigatoka, which plagues banana plantations around the world.

Ecobreves – ARGENTINA: Forestry Law Awaits Elections

The Argentine Senate will not debate the native forest protection bill until after the Oct. 28 elections, despite an effort by environmentalists that collected 1.2 million signatures demanding passage of the law, parliamentary sources told Tierramérica.

Ecobreves – MEXICO: Hydroelectric Dam Is Dead, Say Farmers

The refusal of Mexican authorities to give up on construction of La Parota hydroelectric dam in the southern state of Guerrero, suspended by a court ruling, is a crude deception, say peasant farmers.

AFRICAN COUNTRIES SHOULD MOVE SLOWLY IN SERVICES TRADE TALKS WITH EU

The outcome of Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) negotiations, set for this December, will change a decades-old reciprocal trading regime between the European Union (EU) and African Caribbean Pacific (ACP) countries. Specifically, negotiations on trade in services under the EPAs have important development implications for Eastern and Southern African (ESA) countries, writes Joy Kategekwa, Programme Officer, trade in services, at the South Centre\'s Trade for Development Programme. In this article, the author writes that the EU is seeking Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status for its service suppliers in the ESA region, which would not only give EU companies unlimited access to the ESA market on terms similar to those enjoyed by ESA countries, in the context of their various regional integration initiatives, but also automatic access to the treatment that ESA countries give to all other trading partners, with whom they have services economic integration agreements, or with whom, the ESA process of liberalisation has led to some form of services liberalisation. In making national treatment commitments for the EU, ESA countries lose the ability to retain any measures that favor local/ESA service suppliers, over EU ones. In sum, the outcome of the EPA on services, along the lines proposed by the EU,would bar ESA countries from implementing certain policy instruments or regulations that could increase the participation of local services suppliers particularly in the context of intra-regional trade. ESA countries should move slowly and cautiously on services liberalisation with the EU. Instead, they should focus on strengthening development cooperation in services with the EU, aimed at developing capacity to strengthen the sector domestically and for export, such that over time, they can have ability to benefit from a reciprocal services trade Agreement with the EU.

CURRENT PACE TOO SLOW ON UN MILLENNIUM POVERTY GOALS

The 2007 UN General Assembly will have to make the honest admission that the world community of nations has not lived up to the solemn undertakings it made to the poor in Africa and the rest of the world in the 2000 Millennium Declaration, writes Thabo Mbeki, President of South Africa. In this analysis, Mbeki cites the grim assessment made by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) about how many of the 53 African countries are likely to achieve the MDGs by the 2015 target date. The ECA says only 13 African countries are likely to reduce poverty to the required degree, 14 to achieve universal primary education; just 7 are likely to achieve gender parity at the level of secondary school education; a mere 8 are likely to reduce child mortality. The ECA tells the dismal and distressing story that the overwhelming majority of countries on our continent will, for the foreseeable future, remain mired in deeply dehumanising poverty, misery, and underdevelopment.

The Unusual Wealth of the Chocó

Colombia's megadiverse Chocó region lacks a sustainable development plan. A handful of researchers are looking for the key to prosperity for its extremely poor communities.

Latin America Has Turned Its Back on the Sea

The seas of Latin America and the Caribbean, the most productive in the world, are left outside the mechanisms for conservation of protected areas.

Ecobreves – BRAZIL: Amazon Pact for Zero Deforestation

Eliminating deforestation in the Amazon by 2015 is the target announced by nine environmental groups Oct. 3 in Brasilia.

Ecobreves – CHILE: Demand for Law Against Agro-Toxins

The Alliance for a Better Quality of Life has asked Chile's President Michelle Bachelet to give urgent status to a bill that bans the storage, transport and sale of pesticides of 1A (highly dangerous) and 1B (very dangerous) pesticides.

Ecobreves – HONDURAS: Local Governments Prepare for Forestry Law

The environmental agencies of 23 municipalities, in four of the 18 Honduran departments (provinces), began last week to study the implementation of the new Forestry Law, passed in mid-September after eight years of pushing from environmental groups.

Ecobreves – VENEZUELA: Parks on Yellow Alert

A "conservationist meter" applied to eight of Venezuela's 43 national parks by the non-governmental organization Vitalis shows "yellow alert", between red for "danger" and green for "satisfactory".

Ecobreves – CUBA: Prize-Winning Eco-Construction Technique

A Cuban approach for constructing and repairing homes with ecological materials that are resistant to natural disasters received the World Habitat Award on Oct. 1, awarded annually by the Britain-based Building and Social Housing Foundation.

BIO-FUELS: NO SILVER BULLET AGAINST FOSSIL FUELS

While increasing the proportion of biofuels in the fuel mix for motor vehicles is a step in the right direction, it is not the \'\'silver bullet\'\' that will break the world\'s dependence on fossil fuels, writes Vicente Paolo Yu III, Coordinator of the Global Governance for Development Programme at the South Centre. In this article, Yu writes that biofuels should be seen as a part of a broader strategy of diversifying the energy mix that allows society to shift to more sustainable energy sources with minimal economic and social disruption. It is crucial that biofuel production does not compete directly with food production, especially in developing countries, and that the latter\'s poor not be made to vie for food with the livestock and automobiles of those in developed countries. More research, development, and investment needs to be made in other climate-friendly energy alternatives (i.e. biogas, solar, wind, tidal, water, geothermal, hydrogen), for power generation, transportation, and daily consumer use, to expand the use of these alternatives as future replacements for fossil fuels.

VAN GOGH, STALIN AND THE TRAPS OF THE FUTURE

The macabre contrast between the multi-million-dollar transcendence of Van Gogh\'s paintings and the life the painter led, of privation and uncertainty, reveal in an exemplary fashion that the present is not always able to render individuals even a small measure of justice, not to mention a glimpse of what the future would hold for his work and memory, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a ten languages. In this article, the author writes that although the events of the past cannot be changed in the present, when we see that a few of Van Gogh\'s irises and a self-portrait have become symbols of the beauty of human creation across the world, we understand that the memory of the future is adjusted with a perspective and equity that the present lacks. How many of the owners of the truth or the adored of the moment will be denied \'\'not three but many more times\'\'? However much they try to reinforce their pedestals, many of their statues will be gone tomorrow. Will those who live only for posterity ever learn this lesson? I doubt it, but the lesson will have an effect, in general sooner than later.

Conservation Expands in Latin America

One park ranger for every 30,000 hectares is the Latin American average that best demonstrates the lack of resources earmarked for conservation, though the total protected area is on the rise.

Forests Join the Carbon Market

How to include forest protection in the mechanisms for curbing climate change is reaching the fore of scientific and political debate.

Ecobreves – BRAZIL: Prize for Microfiltering Membranes

The Brazilian company PAM, awarded Sep. 19 as the best firm "incubated" by the National Association of Promoting Entities of Innovative Enterprise, is the first producer of microfiltering membranes in Latin America.

Ecobreves – MEXICO: Illegal Timber Reaches the Government

Part of the tables, shelves and other wooden objects that the government of Mexico purchases -- this year for a total of some 180 million dollars -- comes from forests that were logged illegally, charge environmentalists.

Ecobreves – ARGENTINA: The Better to Recycle With

With the aim of sharing experiences in urban recycling policies, Latin American officials, business leaders, academics and activists met recently in Buenos Aires.

THE HIDDEN COSTS OF CHEAP FOOD

The industrial agriculture system that supplies Americans their cheap food is predicated on cheap labour, lax enforcement of already weak labour regulations, often hazardous working conditions, and physical and sexual abuse, writes Mark Sommer, host of the award-winning, internationally-syndicated radio programme, \'\'A World of Possibilities\'\'. In this article, Sommer writes that this is not just an American problem. In an increasingly integrated global food system, affluent consumers in North America, Europe, and elsewhere have come to expect low prices for food from far away and far out of season, much of which is grown and harvested by marginal farmers in distant places who receive a tiny portion of what we pay for it. Driven from the land by impossibly low commodity prices, they crowd the cities of the developing world in search of work. Failing to find it, their desperation becomes a breeding ground for extremist movements. Our abundance must not be built on their indigence. How much are we willing to pay for the food we eat to assure that those whose labour brings it to our tables are paid enough to eat it too?