Ecobreves – PANAMA: National Park Law Postponed

Conservationists and scientists alike bemoan the Panama Legislative Assembly's decision to omit from its agenda a bill to create the Coiba National Park, which would protect the country's biological wealth along the Pacific coast.

Peasant Farmers Step Up Efforts to Obtain Land

Tension between peasant farmers and large landholders is on the rise in Brazil, where a landless workers’ organization is demanding land for some one million families by 2006. Leftist President Lula is making no concrete promises.

In Search of Columbus’ Bones

"Our verdict will be irrefutable," the leader of the scientific team searching for the final resting place of the man credited with discovering the Americas told Tierramerica.

“La Nina” Ignites Energy Debate

A debate about diversifying Chile’s sources of energy has been ignited by fears that a La Nina-spawned drought could lead to rationing of electricity.

Peyote

Peyote, a bitter plant containing some 60 different alkaloids, has been revered as sacred by many indigenous Mexican cultures throughout the centuries. Today, however, the plant is far better known for the hallucinogenic effects it produces once ingested.

Ecobreves – CHILE: The Goodness of Copper

Copper has more than 25 biological functions vital to the development of the human being, a new book published here says.

Ecobreves – CUBA:: Out in the Sun

The government of Cuba plans to use solar energy to provide electricity to 20,000 homes over the next five years, many of them in rural areas that are not connected to the national grid.

Ecobreves – VENEZUELA:: Protecting the Caura River Basin

A nine million dollar plan to protect the southeast Caura River basin in Venezuela, with backing from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), has been approved by the Global Environment Facility of the World Bank.

Ecobreves – HONDURAS: The Poor Are Relegated to the Hillsides

Some 2 million Hondurans, one-third of the total population, live in extreme poverty on the country’s hillsides.

Ecobreves – PANAMA: Critics Lambaste Environmental Law

Panama’s new environmental law "grants polluters the right to contaminate and disparages the principle of environmental crime prevention," said the Association to Promote New Development Alternatives (APRONAD).

Ecobreves – GUATEMALA: Guatemalans to Learn about Genetic Forestry

Experts from the United States and Guatemala will offer a course in genetic forestry seeking to train some 80 Guatemalans in the use of improved seeds utilized in reforestation programs.

SUU KYI MUST BE RELEASED FOR DEMOCRACY TO BE RESTORED IN BURMA

Current events in Burma are deeply disturbing, writes Jose Ramos-Horta, 1996 Nobel Peace Prize recipient and East Timor\'s minister for foreign affairs. Revered monk Sayadaw U Satetara, a high-ranking member of the holy Sangha and strong supporter of imprisoned Burmese opposition leader Suu Kyi, passed away last week from what many suspect were not natural causes. Suu Kyi remains incarcerated and held incommunicado. In this article for IPS, the author writes that leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-- of which Burma is a member -- must keep up the pressure on the Burmese generals. Embarrassed that the international reputation of ASEAN was suffering because of the gross and systematic human rights violations in Burma, the ministers demanded at their recent annual meeting that Suu Kyi be freed immediately. As regional powers, China, Japan, and India, working closely with Indonesia, current chair of ASEAN, must resolve this impasse. Failure to do so will weaken ASEAN and undermine its international influence. In the 1970s, we witnessed regional silence and complicity surrounding the Cambodian tragedy. It will be tragic if the same attitude is adopted with regard to Burma.

SOUTH AFRICA: THE LAND SHALL BELONG TO THOSE WHO WORK IT

It has been 90 years since the government of the newly-formed Union of South Africa passed the infamous Native Land Act, which gave legislative effect to a process of land seizure by white settlers that had been going on since 1652, writes Thabo Mbeki, president of South Africa. Adoption of this law has brought untold suffering to generations of black people, the author writes in this article for IPS. Through this and other racist legislation, millions of our people were uprooted from their land, their homes bulldozed, and their dignity destroyed. Recognising the importance of the land question to many of our people, the democratically-elected post-Apartheid government passed the Restitution of Land Rights Act 22 of 1994, which provided a legal framework to address and resolve land claims through negotiations. Land acquisition and its productive use are critical to the success we must achieve in pushing back the frontiers of poverty. We are on the way towards meeting the demand contained in the Freedom Charter, drafted by the ANC in 1955: that the land shall belong to those who work it.

AGRICULTURE AND THE HIV/AIDS EPIDEMIC

The silent tragedy of the HIV/AIDS epidemic is ravaging many rural areas of developing countries and jeopardising the human right to food of millions of people, writes Jacques Diouf, Director-General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Hunger and poverty, aggravated by HIV/AIDS, create a vicious cycle. Where farmers and their families fall sick, they cultivate less land and shift to less labour-intensive and less nutritious crops; agricultural productivity decreases, and food insecurity and malnutrition rise. In this article for IPS, the author writes that while agriculture offers no cure for the HIV/AIDS infected, it can contribute to prevent and mitigate the crisis. Labour-saving technologies such as lighter ploughs and tools that can be used by older children, women, and the elderly and improved seed varieties that require less labour for weeding need to be developed.

HOW EU AND US FARM SUBSIDIES HURT THEIR OWN FARMERS

The most forceful moral and political justification for agricultural subsidies in the EU and US is that they save small farmers, yet the facts clearly demonstrate they are not doing so, writes Rubens Ricupero, Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Ricupero writes that over the past 15 years, as subsidies have expanded relentlessly small farmers in these areas have become poorer and poorer in relation to the rest of the population. Kevin Watkins, Head of Research of Oxfam, writes: \'\'Far from benefiting small farmers, agricultural support goes overwhelmingly to large-scale, capital-intensive agriculture, and for a good reason: support is closely correlated with production levels, or -- in the case of direct payments -- to land ownership. \'\' We should all praise the EU Commissioner for Agriculture and his colleagues in moving away from production and price-linked subsidies. But it is unclear from preliminary reports whether the reforms announced recently will substantially change the current concentration of 80 percent of payments in the hands of 20 percent of the bigger farmers, or to what extent the new system will prove less trade-distorting.

A MARKET-BASED STRATEGY TO DEMOCRATISE THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

Billions of us watch in apparent helplessness as global corporate and political elites manipulate the world economy to suit their exclusive interests, writes Mark Sommer, an internationally- syndicated columnist and radio host who directs the Mainstream Media Project, a US-based effort to bring new voices and innovative ideas to the broadcast media. But the rest of us are not helpless, the author writes in this article for IPS. We actually hold in our hands levers of power far more potent and effective than those unrepresentative governments offer their disillusioned electorates. Each decision we make to buy a given product or service ripples through the global economy to support certain policies and institutions and not others. In recent years we have seen boycotts produce the desired shift in the policies of numerous brand-name multinationals. To match the scale and power of the global economy, we must apply this strategy worldwide, wielding our collective purchase power through a deft combination of both boycotts and buycotts to penalise irresponsible corporate and governmental policies and reward those that support a healthy economy and society.

BRAZIL: ONE FOOT IN UTOPIA, ONE IN MATHEMATICS

In Brazil, 115 years after the proclamation of the republic, it is as if the monarchy still existed, writes Cristovam Buarque, minister of education for Brazil, ex-rector of the University of Brasilia, and ex-governor of the Federal District. Brazil has still completed neither its republic nor the abolition of slavery. To this day, members of parliament consider themselves nobles, unemployment has replaced forced labour, slaves have been transformed into the poor, and education is for the few. The election of Lula as president completes the republic and the abolition of slavery, Buarque writes in this article for IPS. What is necessary to the completion of abolition is intense, total, and radical land reform. It is also necessary to create jobs to end slavery and the secular Brazilian tragedy of transforming fed and chained slaves into hungry and unemployed free men. To complete the republic, equal access to education must be guaranteed, which is only possible through a free, quality public school system for everyone.

THE TWO SOULS OF CIVIL SOCIETY

In just a few years civil society has transformed itself from a disparate galaxy of NGOs into a global network that plays an important role in the World Social Forum, writes Roberto Savio, president emeritus of IPS and a member of the International Council of the World Social Forum (WSF). In this article for IPS, Savio writes that the political system has reacted by calling into question the legitimacy of civil society, dismissing it as anti-global, or anti-historical and romanticist. Civil society is made up of two distinct generations. The first, born in the 1970s, identified with the paradigm of development. It was surpassed in force and participation by the second, forged in opposition to globalisation in the late 1990s. It considers the march of neo-liberal globalisation so powerful and dominating that nothing is more important than denouncing and blocking it. Thus we now have Global Civil Society. Its growth will probably continue to intensify, primarily because of the use of new technologies and mutual understanding. The organisers of the WSF expected about 5000 people in Porto Alegre in 2001; 30,000 showed up. In 2003 the number reached about 100,000.

THE LAST DAYS OF THE DEATH PENALTY ?

In recent weeks a singular destiny has pushed the Democratic Republic of the Congo to assume the role of symbol of both the martyrdom of Africa and the continent\'s ability to resolve its conflicts and actively participate in international civil campaigns like the universal moratorium against the death penalty, writes Emma Bonino, member of the Transnational Radical Party and deputy in the European Parliament. In this article for IPS, Bonino writes, I approached the Congolese president Kabila after the radical movement to abolish the death penalty, Hands Off Cain, selected me to lead a mission to save the lives of his father\'s assassins. We asked him not to sign the warrant for their execution and to join the fight within the UN General Assembly to reintroduce a proposal for a universal moratorium against capital punishment. Kabila responded that a moratorium on the death penalty is an issue for the future parliament, adding that he would not call for the execution before it decided. UN followers estimate that this year the resolution could garner 95-100 \'yes\' votes, 21-26 abstentions, and 62-65 votes against. Thus the victory of the abolitionists is within reach. It will be paradoxical if the West, so generous with its ethics lessons to Africa, betrays the hopes of the 28 African nations that despite the horrors they witness daily have allied themselves against \'\'state homicide\'\'.

Ecobreves – ARGENTINA: PCB Spills Alert

An increase in spills of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB), a toxic liquid used to cool large transformers, has put the Argentine population on full alert.

Ecobreves – HONDURAS: Endangered Species Rescued

At least 12 endangered species of snakes have been bred at a center to rescue wildlife in peril operating here in the Honduran capital.