MILLENNIUM GOALS NOT ON COURSE – TIME FOR URGENT ACTION

Where do we stand on the UN Millennium Development Goals halfway to the 2015 deadline? asks Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and founder and president of Realising Rights: The Ethical Globalisation Initiative. In this article, Robinson writes that a new UN report shows that significant strides have been made in some countries while in other places, like sub-Saharan Africa, no country is on track to meet the goals of halving extreme poverty, ensuring universal primary education, or stemming the AIDS pandemic by 2015. This is tragic and unacceptable because we know what works and what kinds of actions are needed to make faster and more equitable progress. The experience of the past seven years tells us that where political will exists there can be positive results. Even some of the poorest countries, like Rwanda, Mozambique, and Bangladesh, are on track to achieve many of the MDGs, precisely because there is political will and responsible donor support. Developed countries have an obligation to provide timetables for delivering on their promises concerning aid volume, aid effectiveness, and debt cancellation.

Forests The Battle of Statistics

Authorities say that deforestation in Mexico has been reduced by nearly 100,000 hectares annually since 1990 and could be halted in five years. But environmental activists refute those figures, saying forests continue on the road towards disappearing.

Uncertainty in Carbon Absorption Project Near Galápagos

Just off the environmentally protected Galápagos Islands, a company is preparing to enrich seawater with iron in order to promote phytoplankton growth and the absorption of carbon from the atmosphere.

Ecobreves – ARGENTINA: Residents Put Brakes on Real Estate Boom

The residents of the Argentine capital who want to see a halt to the uncontrolled construction have scored a victory in stopping work on about a hundred buildings.

Ecobreves – MEXICO: Hydrogen from Organic Waste and Plastics

Mexican researchers are developing a system to produce hydrogen from solar energy, gasification of biomass and plastic waste.

Ecobreves – PERU: Oil Firms Asked Not to Contact Isolated Tribes

The Inter-Ethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Jungle on Jul. 5 asked international oil companies to refrain from oil exploration in areas inhabited by indigenous tribes who live in isolation by choice.

DEATH PENALTY NOT A DETERRENT BUT A CAUSE OF VIOLENCE

Fortunately for humanity, the death penalty is being eliminated from the world. Executions have dropped by 25 percent between 2005-2006 and the countries that still have the sanction are growing fewer and fewer, writes Fatima Aburto, Socialist spokesperson for the Commission on Foreign Affairs of the Spanish Chamber of Deputies. In this analysis, Aburto writes that while a moratorium is not the same as abolition, it does offer the opportunity to demonstrate that the death penalty is not a deterrent but a cause of violence and vengeance. The moratorium also frees its supporters from the feeling of complicity, however indirect, in causing the death of a human being through execution. This is all the more relevant today in the context of international terrorism, which can be easily manipulated by those in power to convince the people that a barbaric punishment like the death penalty might increase security. Apart from the fact that this argument is flat wrong, tapping people\'s fears in order to awaken their instincts for vengeance and cruelty is absolutely despicable. The fight against terrorism will only succeed when it is rooted in a complete respect for human rights and fundamental liberties.

THE WORST DISASTER IN AMAZON HISTORY – SO FAR

The massive spill of kaolin clay waste by the French multinational Imerys on June 11 in Barcarena, Brazil, is the largest environmental accident yet in the Amazon, writes Lucio Flavio Pinto, director of the Jornal Pessoal (Personal Diary), which denounces corruption, impunity, and the economic and ecological consequences of the exploitation of the Amazon. In this article, Pinto writes that unfortunately this is only the latest of a series of incidents in the industrial zone of Barcarena in Para, the largest state of Amazonian Brazil. And it is likely that this type of incident will happen again given the area\'s worrying concentration of industrial activities with serious potential for causing environmental damage. The international interest in the kaolin of Para is due in part to the exceptional quality of the product but also to the fact that other countries have imposed restrictions on mining it that do not exist in Brazil. Para is clearly not receiving what is should from its rich deposits of kaolin. For three decades it has produced kaolin and cellulose, but not paper, which is produced with these ingredients and has a far higher value.

Science Ignores AIDS in Women, Says Nobel Nominee

In Latin America, women are always one step farther behind, and HIV/AIDS demonstrates this disparity in a cruel way, says HIV-positive activist Patricia Pérez in this Tierramérica interview.

Steel and Eucalyptus Heat Up Eastern Amazon

The Brazilian government's plan to reforest with eucalyptus trees an area of the Amazon that was logged by the steel industry has only added fuel to the fire of decades-old conflicts.

Ecobreves – VENEZUELA: Maracaibo Lake's Eco-Tourism Museum

Artists, scientists, teachers and entrepreneurs in Venezuela's northwestern state of Zulia have set up a foundation to sponsor the Eco-Tourism Museum of Maracaibo Lake, the largest in South America, covering more than 12,000 square kilometers.

Ecobreves – BRAZIL: Ethanol Into Plastic

Brazil will use sugarcane ethanol to produce high-density polyethylene (HDPE), used in packaging and in automobile parts. The technology is being developed by the petro-chemical firm Braskem.

Ecobreves – CHILE: Worry Over Clandestine Dumps

In the Santiago metropolitan region there are more than 340 clandestine and illegal garbage dumps, occupying a combined area of nine square kilometers that could otherwise be used for 2,000 soccer fields, concluded a study by the private Andrés Bello National University (UNAB).

THE LAST HOUR OF CARIDAD MERCADER

I recently visited the little-known Pantin cemetery in Paris where in a remote corner lies the grave of one of the most peculiar, mysterious, and dark figures of the 20th century, Caridad del Rio Hernandez, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a ten languages. Caridad experienced her apotheosis on August 20, 1940 in the remote neighborhood of Coyoacan in Mexico City, when one of her sons Ramon Mercader del Rio, assassinated communist leader Leon Trotsky on the orders of the communist leader Joseph Stalin. The 30-year contract for the burial plot expired in 2005 and unless it is renewed soon her and her son-in-law\'s remains will be removed and placed in an urn. The author said \"he could not tell me who paid for the initial contract, but I saw in his eyes he knew the answer, which I already did: the embassy of a country that no longer exists. Like that country, which Caridad del Rio worked for and killed her son for, her tomb is destined to disappear, as there are histories and cadavers that no one wants to be around.\"

TIME FOR TRUE MARKET REFORM

Today, the one-size-fits-all conventional recipe for economic growth, measured by GDP, is being challenged not only on social and environmental grounds but also because it is widely seen as a failure, writes Hazel Henderson, futurist, syndicated columnist, and author of many books including Ethical Markets: Growing The Green Economy(2007). In this article, the author writes that market reform is coming to mean reforming markets and capitalism itself. Would Adam Smith be surprised? Probably not, since he lauded the dynamism of capitalism. Schumpeter later saw the evolution of markets as \'\'creative destruction\'\', as seen today in the new \'\'disruptive\'\' technologies of cleaner, greener energy and resource-use shifts now challenging coal, oil, and nuclear power. The new values and ethical concerns driving the further evolution of capitalism reflect the new imperatives of the 21st century on our small, endangered planet. Guided by our growing human awareness of what we have wrought on this planet and our potential for further development, all our long-term self-interests are now indivisible. Ethics and morality are becoming the new pragmatism.

Nicaraguans Plant Trees and Harvest Water

A small Nicaraguan village has recovered its once bountiful water supplies by changing their harmful land-use methods.

Ecobreves – ARGENTINA: Pulp Mill Waste Used for Roads

A waste product from the cellulose industry can improve gravel or dirt roads in an environmentally friendly way, says an industrial technology agency in Argentina.

Ecobreves – REGIONAL: Tierramérica's New Face on the Web

Tierramérica, the region's leading environmental news service published in some 20 Latin American newspapers, has completely renovated its website.

Ecobreves – BRAZIL: Industrialists Ask for Reform of Environmental Laws

The National Confederation of Industry (CNI), Brazil's leading business association, will press the government to change environmental legislation and to speed up issuance of environmental permits.

Ecobreves – MEXICO: Plastic Into Gasoline and Fat

Mexican researchers have developed a chemical process to convert plastics into gasoline and fats.

LATIN AMERICA: SOCIAL COHESION IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT ADDRESSING HUNGER

Inspired by the European experience of bringing together different societies and unequal economies, Latin America is forging its own development model, writes Jose Graziano da Silva, FAO Regional Representative for Latin America and the Caribbean. In this article, the author writes that hunger is the greatest obstacle to social cohesion in Latin America, and as long as it exists there cannot be general well-being. Today Latin America is in an excellent position to drastically reduce its deep economic and social gaps. This is the first occasion in a long time there have been five years of sustained growth in most of the countries of the region, with a three percent annual average growth in per capita income. Though it has the natural, financial, and human resources and the infrastructure and democratic institutions needed to eliminate hunger, it has not shown sufficient political will. Now it must.