Ecobreves – VENEZUELA: Saving Lions from the Circus

Sasha and King, two African lions that the Venezuelan Environment Ministry rescued from a circus, will have a new home in the Caricuao Zoo, southwest of the nation's capital.

Ecobreves – CHILE: Scientists and Artists Against Dragnet Fishing

Scientists, artists and writers in Chile joined a campaign Aug. 3 to effectively limit dragnet fishing, a technique they say devastates marine resources.

Ecobreves – BRAZIL: Amazon's Secrets Revealed

Fires used to clear forest for farmland -- a practice known in Portuguese as 'quemadas' -- in the Amazon are responsible for three-quarters of Brazil's carbon dioxide emissions. But each hectare of forest absorbs, on average, a half-ton of carbon each year.

Ecobreves – CUBA: Heritage Status Sought for Wetland

Cuba's Ciénaga de Zapata, one of the largest wetlands in the Caribbean islands, could have access to more environmental and social projects if it is declared a Heritage of Humanity nature site by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization).

Ecobreves – GUATEMALA: Heavy Fines for Those Who Burn Tires

The Guatemalan Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources has banned the burning of tires, and has established that violators of the ban -- which took effect on July 30 -- will face fines of 128 to 640 dollars.

Bulldozers Could Turn Nature Reserve Into a Desert

Bulldozers threaten the General Pizarro protected area in northern Argentina, recently sold off to private parties. This habitat for valuable plant and animal species is in danger, say activists.

Less Debt, More Conservation

Colombia is to invest 10 million dollars to protect ecosystems. That sum will be discounted from the country's debt to the United States.

Andean Nations Bet on Bio-Trade

The extraordinary biological wealth of South America's Andean countries is beginning to pay off for those who take advantage of it, feeding the demands of the international market

Cleaning Up Lead Contamination Along Mexican-U.S. Border

The inter-governmental program Border 2012 has begun to clean up toxic industrial waste that for a decade have been a presence in the lives of 10,000 people near the Mexican border city of Tijuana.

Ecobreves – ARGENTINA: A Bill to Save the Caldén Tree

- Non-governmental groups in Argentina are leading the discussion on a legislative bill on forests that would help preserve the 'caldén' (Prosopis caldenia), an endangered tree.

Ecobreves – PERU: Andean Glaciers Melting

The shrinking of the glaciers in the Peruvian Andes is a cause of concern for the head of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), Klaus Topfer, who is supporting an initiative to measure the surface of the glaciers every five years.

Ecobreves – COLOMBIA: Reforesting 3,000 Hectares

The Colombian Fund for Agricultural Financing, FINAGRO, will cover the costs this year for planting lumber species of trees over 3,000 hectares in the northern departments of Cesar and Magdalena.

Ecobreves – MEXICO: Paying to Care for Forests and Monarchs

Mexican peasant farmers who live in the areas where the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) spends its winters will receive funds to take care of their forests.

Ecobreves – GUATEMALA: Seeds of Literacy

A program for literacy and to promote new productive activities like reforestation are under way in communities of the northern Guatemalan department of Alta Verapaz, with financial backing from the European Union.

DEBT, DEVELOPMENT, AND SECURITY

If current trends persist, extreme poverty in the world\'s least developed countries, far from being eradicated, will expand from 334 million people in 2000 to 471 million in 2015, writes Rubens Ricupero, Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). In this article, Ricupero writes that nonetheless there is no justification for development pessimism regarding LDCs. Between 2000-2002 the poorest of the poor countries enjoyed a real average annual GDP growth rate of almost 5 percent, almost 1 percent more than the rest of the developing economies, which shows that development for the LDCs can be achieved and accelerated through the right strategies and a friendly environment. He calls for a new international covenant in which solidarity is granted the same stature in our aspirations as peace. Ricupero notes that the new kinds of threats to peace and security are often found in conjunction with a failed State with an economy in regression. It would be futile to fight these phenomena without addressing the sources of grievances that they exploit. This is a particularly clear example of the lack of coherence in the global system. It is indispensable to widen the door that leads to development and to remove the biases, imbalances, and distortions which make the path to development too steep for the weak to climb.

WHAT DOES THE UNITED NATIONS WANT WITH THE INTERNET ?

According to some less well-informed commentators, at the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis in November 2005, the UN plans to \'\'take over the Internet\'\', writes Shashi Tharoor, UN Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information. These critics suggest that developing countries without a tradition of tolerating free expression will be given a greater role in running the Internet, which will inevitably lead to censorship. Tharoor writes in this column that the UN is not interested in taking over Internet governance. Rather, the UN is providing a platform where all parties can meet to discuss how the Internet should operate. And those speaking will not be only governments but also businesses, non-governmental organisations, research institutions, and other members of the Internet community. What the United Nations wants from the Internet is that it fulfil its promise by delivering opportunities to all people, especially those most in need, to improve their lives.

PLANNED US LAW ON NORTH KOREA WOULD ONLY MAKE THINGS WORSE

On July 22, 2004, the US House of Representatives unanimously passed the North Korea Human Rights Act (NKHRA), writes Christine Ahn, who coordinates the Economic and Social Human Rights Programme at the Institute for Food and Development Policy and is a member of the Korea Solidarity Committee of the San Francisco Bay Area. In this article, the author writes that the bill was backed by a coalition of right-wing evangelical Christian groups and pro-war thinktanks that believe the collapse of the regime will usher in freedom for North Koreans. It demonstrates US policymakers\' complete ignorance of North Korea, the conditions that have caused famine there, and the ensuing human rights crisis. The NKHRA is based on the assumption that the famine in North Korea was a result of Kim Jong Il\'s mismanagement of the country. Most experts, on the other hand, agree that the main causes of famine were a series of catastrophic events beyond North Korea\'s control: the collapse of the Soviet Union, which brought an end the shipments of oil needed to run tractors and other agricultural machinery, and a series of the historic droughts and floods. A letter signed by over 100 NGOs states that the bill would not improve human rights but would further hinder international humanitarian aid and negotiations for peace on the Korean peninsula.

WIND POWER: CLEANER, UNLIMITED, AND CHEAPER THAN OIL

Renewable energy advocates say that wind offers the best near-term option to reduce the demand for oil, coal and natural gas, writes Mark Sommer, host of award-winning syndicated radio programme, A World of Possibilities. In this analysis for IPS, the author writes that recent technological breakthroughs have greatly increased the efficiency of wind turbines, driving the price per kilowatt/hour down to levels competitive with oil. And if the hidden costs and subsidies incurred by oil and coal were factored into the comparison, the true cost of wind energy would be far lower. The foreign wars waged, the occupations and military bases built to protect supply lines, the degradation of air, water, and human health make the true cost of a barrel of crude not 40 but 200 dollars, or more. Yet for all the promise of wind power, its rapid development is still thwarted by numerous obstacles, which are less technological than political. The multinational companies that dominate the energy industry and national energy policies today are well aware that oil, coal, and natural gas are finite resources but are determined to squeeze the largest profits they can before switching to other sources. Their favoured alternative is not wind power but nuclear power.

BETWEEN VENEZUELA AND NOWHERELAND

A strange dictator this Hugo Chavez -- both suicidal and masochistic. He created a constitution that allows the people to throw him out and then risked this very outcome in the first recall referendum in the history of Venezuela, writes Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan writer and novelist and author of \'\'The Open Veins of Latin America\'\' and \'\'Memories of Fire\'\' He was not punished, Galeano writes in this article. Indeed, it was the eighth election Chavez had won in five years. Obedient to his own constitution, Chavez accepted the referendum, which was called for by the opposition, and placed his fate in the hands of the people: \'\'You decide.\'\' Until now, presidents interrupted their terms of office only in the event of death, a putsch, an uprising, or a parliamentary decision. The referendum introduced a novel form of direct democracy. It was an extraordinary event: How many presidents, anywhere in the world, would dream of doing what Chavez did? And how many would continue to be president after doing so?

WTO AND AGRICULTURE: A DARK DECADE AHEAD

A year after the UNDP\'s 2003 Human Development Report showed that poverty in 54 countries was considerably worse than in the previous decade, the WTO has reached a \'historic\' framework agreement that will further marginalise the developing economies, writes Devinder Sharma, internationally-recognised commentator on trade, sustainable agriculture, and biodiversity, and author of \'\'Seeds of Despair\'\'and \'\'The Famine Trap\'\'. In this article, Sharma writes that during the intense WTO negotiations in Geneva in late July the developed countries finally succeeded in piercing what remained of developing country agriculture while raising even further their own already high level of agricultural subsidies. The reductions in trade-distorting subsidies set out in the new WTO agreement --20 percent in the first year of implementation-- are calculated according to a revised formula that, by increasing certain permitted types of support, actually allows the US and EU to increase agricultural subsidies. Importing food is like importing unemployment, yet the WTO has refused to draw a balance sheet showing the human and environmental cost of its trade paradigm. By further opening their borders to trade, developing countries ruined their agricultural sectors.

WHY VENEZUELANS WILL VOTE TO KEEP CHAVEZ

The division of power that followed the coronation of Pedro Carmona as president after the April 11 coup against the democratically-elected Hugo Chavez left no doubt that the policy of social inclusion of the Chavez government would be ended, writes Samuel Moncada, an historian and member of the 12-person team headed by President Chavez to conduct the ruling party campaign for the August 15 referendum. The Bolivarian Constitution that the people approved by referendum in 1999 along with the laws on land, fishing, and hydrocarbon policy, among others, were rescinded, making it clear that the dictatorship installed by the opposition would be unyielding with the poor. All rights and social programmes implemented by Chavez were cancelled. Everything that favoured the poor or recognised them as participants in Venezuelan society was attacked without reflection. The accusations levelled against the National Electoral Council by the spokesmen of the opposition are part of a preexisting script which requires them to echo the continuous threats issued by Bush administration spokesmen, with the object of discrediting and rejecting the results of the referendum once it becomes evident that, yet again, the majority of Venezuelans back the process of change begun in 1999. Since more has been achieved in these last five years than in the preceding four decades, we say: no to the privatisation of oil, social exclusion, and the usury of the banking industry, no to the elimination of literacy programmes and medical assistance, no to involvement in the Columbian conflict, and no to the FTAA.