Ecobreves – ARGENTINA: Protests Against Cereal Pollution

Based in a tent in the eastern Argentine city of Rosario, civil society groups are demanding action on a court order to shut down a cereal storage and production site that they say is polluting the environment with pesticides.

Ecobreves – MEXICO: A Highway Challenge

Mexican authorities approved the construction of 62 kilometers of highway in a forested area outside the capital, but environmentalists are preparing legal action and mobilizations, charging that the road would destroy a biodiverse area that is also essential for water production.

Ecobreves – CENTRAL AMERICA: Regional Lacks Environmental Policies

In Central America "there are no uniform public policies to ensure that polluting our quality of life is also a matter of corruption and lack of transparency," said Roxana Salazar, environmentalist and interim judge in Costa Rica's Constitutional Court.

Garífunas Confront Their Own Decline

The Garífuna culture, a "masterpiece" of human heritage according to UNESCO, could disappear as the result of the privatization of Central America's beaches.

Pedaling Against Pollution

Citizens from around the world are rediscovering the bicycle, an efficient, cheap and clean form of urban transportation.

Ecobreves – BRAZIL: Sawdust to Remove Metals from Water

Lumber waste is helping to clean up rivers and industrial effluents, removing heavy metals like chromium and lead, according to a study by the University of Brasilia.

EFFECTS OF DEATH PENALTY MORATORIUM FELT

October 10, the International Day Against the Death Penalty, will be an occasion to reaffirm the universal moratorium on executions, approved last December 18 by the General Assembly, and to insure it is complied with, . In this article, Bonino writes that for death penalty states, the resolution has an undeniable moral value and political force. The UN has for the first time established that capital punishment is not confined to the ambit of domestic justice but involves the universal sphere of human rights. In truth, the definitive solution to the problem involves not only the death penalty but also democracy, the rule of law, and respect for political rights and civil liberties. At present, we are requesting that this year\'s resolution include a request that death-penalty countries make available to the UN Secretary General all information relative to their death penalty and executions. We are also demanding a new resolution that creates the position of a UN Secretary General Special Envoy charged with monitoring the situation and working to encourage and reinforce internal processes in death penalty countries such that they adhere to the moratorium on executions.

Women Create Food and Jobs in Argentine Wetlands

Tierramérica explored the effort behind preparing artisanal dishes made from a declining catch of fish, an effort towards sustainability taken up by the women of river communities in northeast Argentina.

“Future Prosperity Is in Green Technologies”

In times of economic crisis, the shift to a low-carbon economy is the smartest investment any country can make, says United Nations Environment Program chief Achim Steiner in this Tierramérica interview.

Ecobreves – LATIN AMERICA: Official Inauguration of Tierramérica Center

The Tierramérica International Center for Sustainable Development and Environmental Defense was inaugurated at the United Nations headquarters in New York, with Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in attendance.

Ecobreves – CUBA: Eco-Materials for Areas Hit by Hurricanes

A construction method with alternative materials resistant to extreme climate will help alleviate the housing deficits in two Cuban provinces hard hit by hurricanes Ike and Gustav.

Ecobreves – CHILE: Promoting Inclusive Recycling

Very few municipalities in Chile apply “clear policies for waste management, with environmental, economic and social components, where all benefit,” Exequiel Estay, secretary-general of the National Movement of Recyclers, told Tierramérica.

Ecobreves – CENTRAL AMERICA: Honduras and El Salvador Agree on Water Management

The governments of Honduras and El Salvador will launch a binational project in 2009 to manage the water resources they share in the Lempa River zone, Karen Zelaya, the Honduran minister of cooperation, told Tierramérica.

Ecobreves – VENEZUELA: GPS to Monitor Harpy Eagle

Dozens of harpy eagles (Harpia harpyja) are being tracked by GPS, the satellite location system, after being captured and released for research in the Imataca mountains, in southeastern Venezuela.

CUBA AND THE WINDS OF CHANGE

The staggering tally of losses caused in Cuba by hurricanes Gustav and Ike do cannot convey the awful desolation of those who saw their homes blasted into a heap of boards, bricks, and tiles, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist. In this article, the author writes that 444,000 homes were said to have been seriously damaged and more than 63,000 completely destroyed. After passing through the profound economic hardships of the 1990s, Cuba today seems to be entering a new dark era of indescribable shortages in which it is impossible to find food, clothes, matches, shoes, and in which exhaustion and desperation reign. At the moment, the big unknown is whether the Cuban government, in addition to distributing idle land, will finally enact its promised social and economic \"structural and conceptual changes\", which might help shorten the amount of time the people must wait, and despair. Before this hurricane season, the expectations of change that could energise the economy and mobilise society were a matter of hope. Two hurricanes later and with half the country devastated, they are an absolute necessity.

THE FUTURE OF CHINA

China has been making progress in building a vibrant, modern society, but inevitably it still has to cope with massive problems left by its turbulent past. Still, that progress is clearly remarkable by any standard. China has raised more people out of poverty than any nation has ever done, writes Maurice Strong, former Secretary General of the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment and the first Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) The constraints that the Chinese and foreigners living here continue to experience are minimal and for the most part understandable, given that no nation has suffered from societal breakdown, internal conflict and foreign intervention more than China has in the past century. It is a small wonder that the Chinese place such emphasis on the need for internal stability and security. Indeed, we must realize that even in our own societies the standards we exhort China to adopt are those we have only recently, and not yet fully, lived up to ourselves. The Chinese will be much more influenced by our example than by the uninformed and hypocritical content of so much of our criticism. Similarly, the attempt to shift the onus for increases in food, oil and commodity prices to China, as well as India and others now competing for these imports, will be counterproductive. The needs of the poor and the newly developing countries cannot be subordinated to the wasteful and indulgent appetites of the rich and their pre-emption of a disproportion of the world\'s resources.

NEPAL: A PRAGMATIC MAOISM

Ever since he launched a guerrilla war to topple Nepal's monarchy 12 years ago, Nepal's Prime Minister Prachanda used to regularly denounce “American imperialism and Indian expansionism”. In an interview in 1998, he even said his Maoist guerrillas were prepared to fight off an invasion by the Indian Army and that Nepal's revolution would spread “to India, and then to the world”, writes Kunda Dixit, editor and publisher of the Nepali Times newspaper in Kathmandu. On September 18, Prachanda returned from an official visit to India, stayed overnight in Kathmandu and immediately left for the United States. Dressed in a smart business suit and tie, Prachanda met top Indian leaders and industrialists to tell them they could trust the Maoists and that Nepal was open for big Indian investments in hydropower, manufacturing and infrastructure. Chief Maoist ideologue Baburam Bhattarai is finance minister and a former Maoist guerrilla commander is defence minister. On September 19, Bhattarai unveiled the government's eagerly-awaited budget. Everyone was looking for signs that the Maoists would be trying to implement their slogans of revolutionary land reform, populist handouts to the poor and hefty taxes on property and luxury goods. But although the $4 billion budget was an ambitious 30 percent bigger than the previous year's estimate, it was a much more economically pragmatic document than most expected.

Lachuá, a Corner of the Guatemalan Jungle Resists

The Laguna Lachuá National Park aims to be a model of sustainable development in a unique ecosystem, but it is surrounded by threats.

Ecobreves – HONDURAS: From Garbage to Micro-Enterprise

Some 30 families from the community of El Volcán, in the central Honduran valley of Comayagua, launched a project this month to recycle garbage.

Ecobreves – BRAZIL: Industries that Save Forests

The industrial complex established in the Brazilian Amazon city of Manaos at a cost of heavy subsidies since 1967 has reduced deforestation in the northeastern state of Amazonas by 70 percent between 2000 and 2006.

Ecobreves – ARGENTINA: International Dialogue on Climate Change

"Adaptation, mitigation, technology transfer and financing" were the issues dealt with at the climate change meeting that drew environment ministers from 25 countries to the southern Argentine city of El Calafate.