Ecobreves – BRAZIL: Madeira River Home to World’s Greatest Fish Diversity

The Madeira River, the largest tributary of the Amazon, is the river with the greatest diversity of fish species in the world, according to a recent study by the Federal University of Rondônia.

Ecobreves – MEXICO: Ban on Toxic Insecticide Demanded

A network of environmental organisations is calling on the Mexican government to prohibit the sale of the insecticide endosulfan.

Ecobreves – ARGENTINA: Campaign to Oppose Nuclear-Generated Electricity

A network of environmental organisations in Argentina has launched a campaign to get electricity users to tell their service providers that they do not want electricity generated by nuclear power.

Ecobreves – HONDURAS: More Military Troops to Fight Forest Fires

The Honduran Congress has authorised the creation of a contingent of 2,000 military troops specialised in controlling and combating forest fires.

THE LIBYA WAR WAS LONG PLANNED

The attack on Libya was long in the works. Since 1969, when Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, then 28, seized power in a military coup, overthrowing King Idris and forcing the American military out of Libya, the US has been planning to overthrow him.

Sugar Cane Fertilises Its Own Soil

Sugar cane growers and technical experts in southern Brazil highlight the environmental benefits of a crop that continues to draw harsh criticism from other quarters.

Endangered Monkey Survives in Tiny Private Paradise

A young forest planted by a woman from the Peruvian Amazon has provided a home for 40 specimens of a highly endangered monkey species with very few places left to live.

Ecobreves – OIL: Cuba Promises Environmental Safeguards in the Gulf of Mexico

Cuba has pledged to adopt all necessary environmental safeguards as it prepares to begin drilling five oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico, which it shares with Mexico and the United States.

Ecobreves – VENEZUELA: Sigatoka Disease Spreads Through Banana Plantations

Heavy, sustained rainfall outside the normal rainy season has triggered an upsurge in the spread of Mycosphaerella fijiensis, the fungus that causes Black Sigatoka disease, in banana plantations south of Lake Maracaibo in northwestern Venezuela.

Ecobreves – HONDURAS: More Than 500 Forest Fires

In the first quarter of 2011, over 500 forest fires were recorded in 16,973 hectares of forest, Trinidad Suazo, director of the Forest Conservation Institute of Honduras, told Tierramérica.

Ecobreves – BRAZIL: Super Plastic Developed from Fruit Fibres

Researchers at the State University of São Paulo have created a new plastic ideal for use in automobiles from fruit fibres, using nanotechnology.

NUCLEAR FISSION: THE MOST WASTEFUL, STUPID, AND COSTLY SYSTEM FOR BOILING WATER

I have opposed nuclear power since my service on the US Congress Office of Technology Assessment Advisory Council, from 1975 until 1980. Even back then it was clear that nuclear power was a fearsome military technology looking for a civilian second life. President Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" was a strategy devised to subsidise this technology, despite the fact that it was never economically viable. The public was told that it would produce electricity too cheap to meter but it was never given all the facts: that there were health risks and no plans to provide storage for the spent fuel rods, which would be radioactive for centuries.

THE BOOM IN CAPITAL FLOWS TO DEVELOPING COUNTRIES CAN TURN INTO A CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

An unusual feature of the global financial crisis is that for developing countries (DCs) the financial band seems to have picked up the pace of the music. While many advanced economies (AEs) continue to encounter debt deflation, financial stringency and risks of insolvency, the financial problem for most DCs is asset inflation, credit expansion and currency appreciations. Except for a brief interruption in 2008, DCs have continued to receive large capital inflows as major AEs have responded to the crisis caused by excessive liquidity and debt by creating still larger amounts of liquidity to bail out troubled banks and governments, lift asset prices and lower interest rates. Quantitative easing and close-to-zero interest rates are now generating a surge in speculative capital flows to DCs with higher interest rates and better growth prospects, creating bubbles in foreign exchange, asset, credit and commodity markets.

Ecobreves – ARGENTINA: Buenos Aires to Contract Cooperatives for Waste Collection

The city of Buenos Aires will contract 13 cooperatives to handle the collection and recycling of all of the capital’s dry wastes as of 2012.

Ecobreves – BRAZIL: Guaraní Aquifer Threatened by Pollution

The illegal dumping of garbage and toxic agrochemicals used in sugarcane farming poses a serious threat to Latin America’s largest groundwater reservoir, the Guaraní Aquifer, according to the Institute for Technological Research (IPT) in the southern Brazilian state of São Paulo.

Ecobreves – HONDURAS: Illegal Dam Construction Under Investigation

The Office of the Special Prosecutor for Ethnic Groups in Honduras is investigating the construction of small hydroelectric dams without the required environmental licences in the western department of Intibucá, which is home to most of the country’s Lenca indigenous people.

Porto Alegre Cyclists Step Up Demands for Bike Lanes

A motorist’s attack on a group of cyclists in Porto Alegre has drawn local and international attention to the cause of bicycles as a mainstream means of transportation.

The Harmless Invasion of the Pacific Oyster

Exotic species pose a threat to biological diversity in many parts of the world. But the invasion of the Baltic Sea by an oyster native to the Pacific coast of Asia is rather atypical in several ways.

SOUTHERN AFRICA: Assessing the True Value of Water

As water resources in Southern Africa come under pressure from growing population, climate change and increasing industrial and agricultural use, economic accounting for water is among the tools that could aid better management.

LIBYA: RIGHT AND WRONG

The Libyan rebels deserve the help of all democrats. Colonel Gaddafi is indefensible. The international coalition that is attacking him lacks credibility. A democracy is not built with foreign bombs. The contradictions implicit in these four statements give rise to a certain uneasiness about Operation Odyssey Dawn, especially to people on the left, writes Ignacio Ramonet, director of Le Monde diplomatique en espanol

UGANDA: Sun Smiling on Renewable Energy Initiative

Clementine Auma was still living in a displaced person's camp in Gulu district when she acquired the treasure she's gone into the house to fetch. She re-emerges from her home with a white box in her arms: a solar oven.