Priest Proposes 'March for Life' Across Mesoamerica

Roman Catholic priest Andrés Tamayo, winner of the Goldman Prize, popularly known as the environmental Nobel, said in a Tierramérica interview that he and his supporters are planning a region-wide demonstration to protect Central America's forests.

Mapuche Land Dispute a Pending Problem

Indigenous leaders, who continue their demands for their communities' rights over ancestral lands, continue to be stigmatized as ''terrorists'' in Chile, say rights activists.

Ecobreves – GUATEMALA: Airport Remodel in Maya Zone

A major effort is under way in Guatemala to boost visits to the country's Maya ruins. This includes renovation of the international airport in Santa Elena, in the northern department of Petén.

Ecobreves – ARGENTINA: Clean Energy in Patagonia

A small town in Argentina's southern Patagonia region has set up a laboratory for the production of clean fuel produced with clean energy.

Ecobreves – BOLIVIA: Cochabamba Water Project Recognized

The project Water for All, being developed in the outskirts of the central Bolivian city of Cochabamba to provide potable water to the poorest population, could soon receive fresh financing after winning the SEED award on Apr. 22.

Ecobreves – MEXICO: International Pressure Wins Environmentalist's Release

Pressure from environmental groups was key in winning the quick release of activist Araceli Domínguez, imprisoned for denouncing the deaths of dolphins in the Mexican resort of Cancún.

Ecobreves – COLOMBIA: Catfish Ban

The Colombian rural development institute, INCODER, is banning from May 1 to 30 the fishing, storage, sale and transport of the tiger shovelnose catfish (Pseudoplatystoma fasciatum) in the Magdalena River basin, which crosses national territory from north to south.

Ecobreves – PERU: Thermoelectric Plant Threatens Resort

With the backing of non-governmental organizations and of most of the municipal leaders, neighborhood groups in Chilca, a small Peruvian city 64 km south of Lima, announced mobilizations against the planned construction of a thermoelectric plant just 500 meters from the town's limits.

Ecobreves – HONDURAS: Massive Logging Deprives Capital of Water

The Honduran Environmental Prosecutor is investigating the state-run electrical energy company and a forestry company for the massive logging of the Guacerique River basin.

WTO AT A CROSSROADS: MORE DEVELOPMENT, OR MORE OF THE SAME?

The selection of a new Director-General of the World Trade Organisation presents a fundamental choice between a vision of a WTO that is genuinely oriented towards development and one that would keep the organisation more or less aligned with the interests of the major players in the international arena, writes Carlos Perez del Castillo, Uruguayan Ambassador to the WTO, president of the WTO General Committee in 2003, and ex-secretary of the Latin American Economic System (SELA). Many now believe that the time has come to end the developed countries\' historic control over the position of Director-General of the WTO and the GATT process before that, the author writes in this article. It is time to introduce greater balance into the multilateral system and it is imperative that this process begin with the WTO. There are three reasons for this: the first is that it is politically beneficial that the demanded greater integration of developing countries into the multilateral trade process also implies sharing responsibility for its direction. The second is that it is necessary to conclude the present negotiations with a result that does honour to their name: the Development Round. The third is that to make this happen, nothing could be better than choosing a WTO Director-General who comes from a developing country and has dedicated his or her professional life to working directly and continually in this area.

ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM: COMPOUNDING POVERTY WITH POISON

Environmental racism is a global phenomenon that follows closely in the wake of economic globalisation, writes Mark Sommer, director of the U.S.-based Mainstream Media Project and host of the award-winning international radio program, \'\'A World of Possibilities\'\' In this article, Sommer writes that for the affluent global minority, \'\'out of sight, out of mind\'\' leaves the conscience largely untroubled.The media often cooperate by giving only fleeting coverage to distant industrial accidents. The catastrophic leak of lethal chemicals at a Union Carbide facility in Bhopal, India, two decades ago left 3,000 people dead and 500,000 injured in the worst industrial accident in history. But while the victims of the World Trade Centre attack, which killed as many but injured few, attracted enough attention to transform the global agenda, Bhopal was soon forgotten. Outsourcing manufacturing jobs to low-wage sites in China, India, and elsewhere not only lowers labour costs but enables manufacturers to avoid environmental regulations that would otherwise make their products non-competitive. In its headlong lunge for industrial supremacy, China is placing the poorest of its own citizens at greatest risk by siting and operating manufacturing plants with scant regard for their lethal effects on the surrounding air, water, and soil.

WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: ARISE AND WALK

The World Social Forum (WSF) movement has already won a moral victory. \'\'The world is not for sale\'\' and \'\'Another world is possible\'\' are not empty slogans but calls to action that have won over public opinion around the world. In this column, based on a document addressed to the WSF International Council, Amin calls for the orchestration of major world effort comprised of: a campaign against the so-called preventive wars of the United States, and, subsequently, for the evacuation of all of its military bases; a campaign in favour of the right to access to land, the recognition of which is vital for three billion peasant farmers on three continents; a campaign to regulate industrial relocation; and a campaign to cancel all Third World foreign debt. The WSF today faces a crucial choice. It has the possibility of becoming a place for the patient construction of fronts capable of bringing about the convergence of the myriad progressive forces worldwide. To achieve this I would suggest the definition of common platforms articulated around the rejection of both neoliberalism and of the militarisation of globalisation under the control of the United States. The broad and open alliance of movements that share this perspective would make it possible to construct positive alternatives.

THE ENVIRONMENT: MORE AWARENESS BUT NO PROGRESS

The greatest environmental challenge the 21st century is water, writes Boutros Boutros-Ghali, secretary-general of the United Nations between 1992-1996. In this analysis, the author writes that the problem is not so much a lack of water on a global scale but inequities in its distribution. Brazil, Russia, Canada, the US, China, Indonesia, India, Colombia and the European Union monopolise almost two-thirds of global water resources. In the developing world, 90 percent of the water used has not been treated for impurities. In the poorest countries all of these problems accumulate and compound each other. The illnesses caused by contaminated water constitute a serious obstacle to economic development not only by causing millions of deaths but also by rendering hundreds of millions of people incapacitated In addition to the problems of pollution and waste is the fact that many countries depend for their water on sources outside of their countries. Therefore, the challenge, here as in many other areas, is to replace relations of force with relations of solidarity, cooperation, and collective administration. Education, particularly about the environment, must be made universal, for this is the only way to bring about the development of awareness and engender a sense of responsibility and commitment to safeguard the common patrimony of the earth.

JUSTICE LONG OVERDUE FOR KOREAN “COMFORT WOMEN”

Surviving Korean \"comfort women\", forced to serve as sex slaves to Japanese military officers during WWII, have waited over half a century for an apology from the Japanese government, and with mounting international pressure, they just may get one, writes Elisa Gahng, a senior at the University of California at Berkeley and intern with the Women of Colour Resource Centre in Oakland, CA. In this article, Gahng writes that these women, now aged 65 to 80, were among 200,000 young women kidnapped from Korea\'s poorest regions. In three years, the average comfort woman was raped 7,500 times and some by as many as 30 military officers a day. Their quest for justice began in 1991 when a group of Korean grandmothers publicly told their tragic stories and filed a class action law suit against the Japanese government demanding reparations. Japan\'s government still refuses to assume responsibility and even denies the existence of comfort stations. But growing global pressure may turn the tide. Multiple inter- governmental agencies, such as the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO), have urged the Japanese government to make an official apology and assume responsibility.

EU CONSTITUTION: GOOD FOR EUROPE AND THE WORLD

A \"No\" vote on the EU Constitution would not be a mere pause in the path forward but a giant step backwards, desired only by those who always wanted a Europe that was no more than a free-trade area, writes Mario Soares, President of Portugal from 1986-1996. In this article, Soares argues that rejection would introduce a tremendous risk of disintegration and spell the end of a political, social, and environmentally-committed Europe. Worse, it would mean the rejection of the EU as a \'\'global power\'\', a counterweight in European-US relations able to resist efforts at imperial hegemony by forces that consider the UN just a stumbling block. The hawks who advise George W. Bush would certainly be pleased by a \"No\" win. The \"No\" forces, in France and elsewhere, are a contradictory mix. Many are inspired by nationalistic notions. There are leftists and communists guided by immediate and ideological criteria. Then there are the neo-conservatives, ultraconservatives, economic neo-liberals, and religious fanatics. And among the French socialists, who are divided on the constitution, the group headed by ex-prime minister Laurent Fabius is for a \"No\" vote with the idea of using the referendum as a means of protesting the centre-right government of Jacques Chirac. All are partisans of the notion that \"the worse things are, the better they are\", which historically has tended to backfire on those who live by it.

THE ENVIRONMENT IS CENTRAL TO FIGHTING POVERTY IN AFRICA

While the new focus on Africa\'s development is welcome, the essential role of the environment is still marginal in discussions about poverty, writes Wangari Maathai, the 2004 Nobel Peace Laureate and Kenya\'s Assistant Minister for Environment and Member of Parliament. In this article, Maathai writes that while we continue to discuss these initiatives, environmental degradation, including the loss of biodiversity and topsoil, accelerates, causing development efforts to falter. Without better management of resources the achievement of the MDGs, especially the elimination of poverty, could easily remain a dream. Africa lags behind other regions in progress toward the MDGs. If we do not acknowledge that the environment is central to sustainable development and ending poverty, we run the risk degrading the resource base on which future development depends. To make poverty history, we have to put the environment at the centre of policy and decision-making.

Ecobreves – CHILE: Tracking Glacier Melt

For the first time in Chile's history there will be a systematic process for monitoring an important glacier in the country's southern region, as a means to measure melting that could be associated with global warming.

Ecobreves – VENEZUELA: Emergency at Valencia Lake

Lake Valencia, covering 375 square km and the second largest in Venezuela, is in a state of emergency because of the contamination resulting from the sewage water reaching the lake via rivers, and the imminent increase in incoming water as rainy season expands those rivers.

Ecobreves – HONDURAS: Aerodrome Construction Threatens Maya Ruins

The Association of Non-Governmental Organizations of Honduras (ASONOG) denounced to the Cultural Heritage and Environment prosecutors offices that the government's intention to build an aerodrome in Amarillo River valley, in the department of Copán, could harm the environment and Maya ruins and threaten the Maya-Chortí peoples who live there.

Gene Study Puts Indians on Guard

Indigenous peoples in Latin America cast a suspicious eye towards the Genographic Project, which aims to study their genes to determine how their ancestors populated the planet. A U.S.-based NGO is calling for a boycott.

Water Returns to Iraq's Eden

The rehabilitation of wetlands in the region known since ancient times as Mesopotamia stands to benefit four million people.