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Monday, October 19, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
Ecobreves – HONDURAS: Promoting Quake-Resistant Construction
Honduran lawmakers, entrepreneurs and the government's emergency commission, COPECO, are promoting new regulations to ensure construction of earthquake-resistant buildings.Ecobreves – VENEZUELA: Drought Hurts Tourism Marvels
The Catatumbo lightning, an electrical storm that produces 1.6 million bolts each year in northwest Venezuela, disappeared in January as a result of the intense drought that the country continues to suffer.Ecobreves – CHILE: New Clean Air Standards
Chile's National Environmental Commission approved on Mar. 9 a new standard for environmental quality for particulate matter of less than 2.5 microns, the size that is most harmful to human health when inhaled.
ENVIRONMENT: Violent Backlash Against Climate Scientists
Climate change science has come under full-scale attack in a last-ditch effort to delay or prevent action by the U.S. government against global warming, experts warn.
Violent Backlash Against Climate Scientists
From death threats to aggressive discrediting in the press, disaster has hit the IPCC, the global scientific panel dedicated to studying climate change - and it is now finding ways to regroup and respond.Ecobreves – BRAZIL: Accelerated Deforestation in Northeast
The Caatinga, the only biome that is exclusively Brazilian and vulnerable due to its arid climate, lost 26,576 square kilometers of forest from 2002 to 2008, with just 53.6 percent of its original forest intact.Ecobreves – HONDURAS: Forest Authority Powerless Against Fires
Officials from the government's Forest Conservation Institute (ICF) declared themselves incapable of controlling forest fires in Honduras, due to lack of human and logistical resources.Ecobreves – ARGENTINA: Movement of Toxic Waste Denounced
The Argentine Environmental Defense Foundation issued an alert about the removal of toxic materials from an abandoned vegetable oil production plant in the central province of Córdoba.Ecobreves – MEXICO: Festival to Promote Green Commerce
A hundred sustainable producers will gather Mar. 13 at Ecofest, the first eco-festival in the Mexican capital, with the goal of promoting consumption of ecological products.
MEXICO: Scientists Reinvent the Corn Tortilla
The process of making corn tortillas - the filling, age-old traditional food throughout much of Mexico and Central America - pollutes huge volumes of water and consumes a great deal of energy.
CLIMATE: The Thirsty Caribbean
Caribbean countries are considering options like desalination plants and cloud seeding to confront a drought that threatens the regional economy and which experts warned about years ago.
ENVIRONMENT: Wanted – An Effective Multilateral System
The echoes of failure still sounding from the Copenhagen summit on climate change in December are spurring efforts to reform the international legal framework. Civil society groups are demanding a new, more agile system that is both influential and effective.
WANTED: An Effective Multilateral System for the Environment
Governments and civil society groups are recognizing the urgent need to strengthen global institutions to confront the challenges of climate change.
Scientists Reinvent the Corn Tortilla
Mexican scientists are working to make "nixtamalization," the ancestral technique for preparing maize to be made into tortillas, a more environmentally sustainable process.Ecobreves – BRAZIL: Machine for Separating Garbage
A machine invented by students at SENAI, an industrial training center in Concordia, in southern Brazil, can separate out garbage by type, replacing what can be dangerous manual work.Ecobreves – VENEZUELA: A Frog for Al Gore
A frog that measures less than two centimeters long, discovered in the western Venezuelan state of Táchira, was named Allobates algorei in honor of the former U.S. vice-president Al Gore (1993-2001), co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace prize.Ecobreves – CHILE: Environmentalists Wary of New Government
Chilean environmentalists are concerned about the possible measures to be taken by the incoming environment minister María Ignacia Benítez, given her work as a private projects solicitor before the Environmental Impact Assessment System, some of which came under fire from citizen groups.Ecobreves – HONDURAS: Demanding an End to Illegal Logging
Civil society organizations are demanding that Honduran President Porfirio Lobo declare a total ban on lumber activities, in order to halt illegal logging of the nation's forests.
The Thirsty Caribbean
The countries of the Caribbean, facing the worst drought in decades, are adopting strict rationing rules, with jail time for those who violate them.
URUGUAY: A Return to Mud and Straw
More and more Uruguayans are keen on building ecological homes. The problem is that there is hardly any market or specialised labour for what is known as "bio-building."
CLIMATE-PERU: El Niño Throws a Tantrum
Peru's lack of disaster prevention policies and measures, combined with climate imbalances in South America, have led to the loss of dozens of lives and thousands of homes in this Andean country in the last few months.« Previous Page — Next Page »
Tierramérica is the main communications platform on sustainable development and the environment in Latin America and the Caribbean. It is produced by IPS Noticias, the agency’s Spanish-language service, which created it jointly with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), with later support from the World Bank. The weekly editions of Tierramérica are published in Spanish, Portuguese and English and are picked up and printed by dozens of media outlets in the region. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
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