Fish cages on the Nile River. Experts are calling for a more holistic approach to aquaculture. Credit: Cam Mcgrath/IPS

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Jul 26 2014 (IPS)

Less than four percent of Egypt’s land mass is suitable for agriculture, and most of it confined to the densely populated Nile River Valley and Delta. With the nation’s population of 85 million expected to double by 2050, government officials are grappling with ways of ensuring food security and raising nutritional standards.

“With the drive toward increasing food production and efficiency, Egypt is going to have to become smarter in how it uses water and land for food production,” says aquaculture expert Malcolm Beveridge. “It would make sense to bring aquaculture together with agriculture in order to increase food production per unit of land and water.”“Why are we using water first for agriculture then taking the drainage for aquaculture? Surely it should be the opposite – use water first for aquaculture and after that to irrigate fields” – Sherif Sadek, general manager of the Cairo-based Aquaculture Consultant Office

One possibility under study is to adopt integrated aquaculture, a holistic approach to food production in which the wastes of one commercially cultured species are recycled as food or fertiliser for another. Projects typically co-culture several aquatic species, but the synergistic approach also encourages the broader integration of fish production, livestock rearing and agriculture.

“An integrated approach would seem the logical next step for Egypt’s aquaculture industry in that it can significantly reduce water requirements while increasing fish farmers’ revenues,” Beveridge told IPS.

Egypt’s aquaculture sector has witnessed explosive growth in recent decades. Annual production of farmed fish climbed from 50,000 tonnes in the late 1990s to over one million tonnes last year – exceeding the combined output of all other Middle East and African nations.

But fish farming as it is predominantly practised in Egypt – by simply digging a pit and filling it with water and fish – has a major drawback. A decades-old government decree requires that drinking water and crop irrigation be given first call on Nile water, leaving aquaculture projects to operate in downstream filth, contaminating fish and limiting productivity.

“Over 90 percent of the aquaculture in Egypt is based on agricultural drainage water, with plenty of pesticides, sewage and industrial effluents,” says Sherif Sadek, general manager of the Cairo-based Aquaculture Consultant Office.

“Why are we using water first for agriculture then taking the drainage for aquaculture? Surely it should be the opposite – use water first for aquaculture and after that to irrigate fields.”

Integrated aquaculture reverses the water-use paradigm, with tangible benefits to both fish farms and farmers’ crops. While the practice is still in its infancy in Egypt, several projects have demonstrated its commercial viability.

At the El Keram farm in the desert northwest of Cairo, farmers use pumped water for tilapia culture, recycling the water into ponds where catfish are raised. The drainage from the catfish ponds, rich in organic nutrients, is then used to irrigate and fertilise clover fields. Sheep and goats that graze on these fields generate manure that is used to produce biogas to heat the tanks where fish fry are raised, or to warm the fish ponds in the winter.

“The project has demonstrated how farmers who switched to aquaculture after salinity rendered their fields infertile can increase their productivity and profits using the same volume of water,” says Sadek.

Other integrated projects on reclaimed desert land culture marine aquatic species such as sea bass and sea bream, directing the downstream wastewater to pools of red tilapia, a table fish able to tolerate high salinity. According to Sadek, the brine from these ponds can be used to grow salicornia, a halophyte in demand as a biofuel input, livestock fodder and as a gourmet salad ingredient.

“Salicornia can be irrigated with extremely salty water and produces seeds and oil, as well as fodder for camels and sheep,” says Sadek.

According to development experts, integrated aquaculture delivers greater efficiencies, requiring up to 70 percent less water than comparable non-integrated production systems. It is also a cost-effective method of disposing of wastes and saves resource-poor farmers from having to purchase fertilisers.

Beveridge says small-scale Egyptian aquaculture ventures unable to afford the complex closed-loop system employed at El Keram could still benefit from integrated practices that would allow them to harvest commercial food products year-round.

“Egypt’s aquaculture industry has a problem in that the growing season is relatively short,” he notes. “During the months of December to February temperatures are too low to sustain much (fish) growth. And during that period, farmers who try to overwinter their fish often lose substantial numbers to stress and disease.”

Pilot studies have shown that fish farmers are able to capitalise on the nutrients locked up in the mud at the bottom of their earthen fish ponds.

“The idea is that you drain down your ponds in November, harvest your fish, then plant a crop of wheat in your pond bottom that you would harvest in March before flooding the stubble area with water and reintroducing young fish,” Beveridge explains.

A Jepelacio resident carries a blue jerrycan with 20 litres of “Jepe water” along one of the dusty but clean streets of this town in the Peruvian Amazon, a healthful routine many families carry out daily. Credit: Milagros Salazar/IPS

By Milagros Salazar
JEPELACIO, Peru, Jul 2 2014 (IPS)

He may look like a rapper, but 33-year-old José Antonio Bardález is the mayor of Jepelacio, in the Peruvian Amazon. His ingenious innovations in the municipality include transforming waste management into a source of income and making spring water a source of drinking water.

“I’m a civil engineer, but people think I’m an environmental engineer,” the mayor told IPS, driving his pickup truck and stopping frequently to greet and joke with local people in the district, located in the department of San Martín, in the country’s northern Amazon region.The eye-catching blue jerrycans of “Jepe water” are delivered free to schools and to 100 “healthy families” who have kept their houses and surroundings clean and have processed their waste appropriately.

Bardález wears torn denim jeans and dark glasses, and styles his hair with gel. His black pickup, with polarised windows, is part of his image, and he has changed the letters of its brand name around to “Jepe”, the brand of the town’s sustainable products.

Jepelacio, one of the principal districts in Mayobomba province, has over 20,000 people distributed in 70 villages. Most local people make their living from agriculture, mainly coffee growing. The district has lush biodiversity, but also suffers from serious deforestation.

Between 2006 and 2011, deforested areas in San Martín fell to an average of 36 percent, but the level of deforestation in the Gera valley, one of the main basins in Jepelacio, is still 65 percent, according to the Asociación Amazónicos por la Amazonia (AMPA – Amazonians for the Amazon), an NGO.

Half the population lives in poverty, and 26 percent of children under five were chronically malnourished in 2009, according to official figures.

When Bardález became mayor in late 2010, he decided to turn the disadvantages into an opportunity for change. His monthly budget was 93,000 dollars, or about four dollars a head.

He began to mobilise local people to collect garbage to be turned into cheap agricultural fertiliser. Local families keep the streets clean and separate organic from inorganic materials, putting them in plastic buckets, sacks, bags or any other suitable containers.

Small containers of classified rubbish can be seen outside the houses that line the dusty unpaved streets of Jepelacio. These are emptied by municipal personnel and the garbage is processed with the aid of efficient microorganisms, found in yeast mixture, molasses, milk whey or cow rumen.

One litre of this fermentation culture can decompose 100 tonnes of organic material, said the mayor. In five days, the waste material can reach a temperature of 70 degrees Celsius, and the residue is passed through a sieve until the final product is “Jepe fertiliser.” The process lasts a little over two weeks.

Every month the municipal district decomposes 30 tonnes of organic waste, at a cost of 3,500 dollars, which is covered by sales of the fertiliser at 143 dollars a tonne.

In Bardález’s view it is a win-win formula, because building a sanitary infill to dump rubbish would cost nearly one million dollars, equivalent to the municipality’s budget for a whole year and preventing it from undertaking any other works.

“The best thing of all is that the microorganisms do not generate bad odours, there is zero pollution, and people are learning to process waste in order to make an income from fertiliser sales,” he said.

Mayor José Antonio Bardález at the treatment plant producing “Jepe fertiliser”, an initiative that is generating sustainable changes in his district in the Peruvian Amazon. Credit: Milagros Salazar/IPS

To replicate the project, the municipality is organising a fertiliser mini-plant contest among 10 of its outlying villages. “This means I have gained 10 clean townships,” the mayor said.

In the upper years of the district’s secondary schools, students are being taught how to make the fertiliser as well as the basics of how to run a family business, in order to help improve the management of their family farms.

“This fertiliser has a value. It’s no good giving it away for free, if it costs people nothing they don’t value it,” Bardález said, explaining that some government programmes give sacks of fertiliser to farmers, and instead of using them they sell them on at half price in order to get cash in hand.

“It’s good that they’re making that fertiliser to sell to people more cheaply,” said Martina Díaz Vásquez, a 39-year-old mother of seven. She told IPS that she had come to Jepelacio from Cajamarca at the age of 11.

More than 80 percent of the district’s residents come from other departments, mainly in the Andean region, like Cajamarca and Piura. The challenge is to involve them in a project in an area other than their birthplace, AMPA director Karina Pinasco told IPS.

“It is highly innovative for an authority to transform a problem (like waste) into an opportunity. I have not seen anything like it elsewhere in San Martín,” Pinasco said.

Bardález’s ingenuity has been applied to other municipal projects related to the district’s natural resources.

The mayor saw the potential for making the clear water of a natural spring fit for human consumption, and so solve the problem of diarrhoeal diseases in the district. Now the water is filtered and processed with fine silver rods, which have a powerful bactericidal effect.

For the past two years, residents have been able to buy 20-litre containers of drinking water for less than 50 cents. “It’s good to drink, we don’t have to boil our water any more. We save time and money,” Margarita Delbado, who has three children, told IPS.

At present the eye-catching blue jerrycans of “Jepe water” are delivered free to schools and to 100 “healthy families” who have kept their houses and surroundings clean and have processed their waste appropriately.

In April 2013 the municipality of Jepelacio was recognised by the San Martín departmental government as a key ally in the implementation of a special programme for improving child nutrition.

In December, the Health ministry recognised it as one of the municipalities that has contributed to overcoming social problems that affect people’s health.

In addition to waste management and water treatment, a natural swimming pool has been created under a waterfall on the Rumi Yacu stream. A pool of water was simply dammed up and surrounded with rocks, creating a recreational space for children and their families.

“Innovation can happen in small stages. The next step is to provide more ‘Jepe water’ for the whole district, to improve waste treatment and to keep making progress,” said Bardález, who went into politics because in his technical job he was unable to realise the changes he wanted.

Early in his term of office he asked for a loan to buy heavy machinery. Criticism rained down on him: Why purchase an excavator, a tractor, a bulldozer or a dumpster? people asked.

But these voices faded away when people saw roads being built and stones being moved. Bardález is convinced that it is well worth taking risks. As indeed he has.

This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Coastal erosion exposes columns for lights leading to the runway of Vance Amory International Airport in Nevis. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
CHARLESTOWN, Nevis, May 19 2013 (IPS)

The Caribbean does not have the luxury of time for decisive action on climate change and global warming. In fact, it is on the brink of calamity, according to a prominent scientist.

Conrad Douglas, a Jamaican scientist who has published over 350 reports on environmental management and related matters, has warned that “urgent action at all levels [is] required now”, cautioning the region against complacency in dealing with climate change.

Noting that earlier models forecast that an atmosphere of 350 parts per million (PPM) of carbon dioxide would place the planet at a catastrophic tipping point for climate change, Douglas cited new information which put the new tipping point at 450 PPM.

“There are 445 million PPM of carbon dioxide, which is a mere five PPM of carbon dioxide away from the…limit that was projected for catastrophic global tipping points,” he told IPS.

With the projected loading rate at 2.5 PPM per year, Douglas said that within two years, the earth would reach a point where even more catastrophic events would wreak havoc on the planet, its societies and its economies.

“We’ve gotten to a juncture at which the entire planet is facing a precarious situation,” Douglas said. “We are heading towards a dangerous place on planet Earth.”

“Potentially irreversible consequences”

Last year was the warmest in recent history, including the highest temperatures since temperatures began to be recorded in 1895."We are heading towards a dangerous place on planet Earth."
-- Dr. Conrad Douglas

“We know about Hurricane Sandy…and the destruction which it caused in our region and the eastern seaboard of the United States,” Douglas said, noting that parts of the United States and the Caribbean are still recovering from that storm.

Douglas’ colleague, John Crowley, said that the planet’s nitrogen cycle had been severely thrown out of balance because of the massive overuse of inorganic fertilisers.

“That, according to the specialists, is having catastrophic and potentially irreversible consequences that require a major rethink of agricultural systems, including but not limited to fertiliser use,” he told IPS.

Both scientists are among dozens who gathered here from May 15 to 16 for a UNESCO-sponsored sub-regional meeting on environmental policy formulation and planning in the Caribbean region.

“It was clear already in 2011 when we [first took stock of] these issues that the knowledge about climate change in the Caribbean is insufficient and insufficiently connected to the real dynamics of Caribbean societies,” said Crowley, a UNESCO representative.

In 2009, a group of Jamaican artists launched a national public education campaign on climate change. It was part of a project implemented by Panos Caribbean, a regional organisation that helps journalists cover sustainable development issues, and Jamaica’s National Environment Education Committee (NEEC).

The artists produced a package of information designed to educate the Jamaican public. It consisted of a theme song titled “Global Warning”, a series of public service announcements, a mini album of songs on climate change, and a music video for the theme song.

A global issue

Even as deliberations continue here today, the general assembly of the United Nations in New York is meeting on sustainable development and climate change.

“I think we have finally awakened to the urgency of the situation, that we have tested and exceeded the globe’s capacity for absorbing and assimilating the pollutants that we make and discharge,” Douglas said.

“What we need now is nothing less than a Manhattan type project to rescue the planet.”

Marcus Natta, senior project analyst in the Ministry of Sustainable Development in St. Kitts, told IPS the meeting was very timely.

“What is important about this particular conference is that we are focused on action. I think unlike many other meetings, if we could truly achieve the action part after the planning and get the implementation, then we would have really achieved success,” he said.

The tiny island of Nevis is described as one of the few remaining unspoiled touches of paradise and one of the little-known wonders of the Caribbean. Douglas hoped that actions taken at the meeting would help preserve it as such.

“We hope that in the context of what faces us today – the phenomenon of climate change – that its beauty and charm will be preserved long into the future as we take wise and timely action to protect the habitat of mankind and all living creatures,” he urged his colleagues.

“This we must strive to do as we protect ourselves from ourselves. It’s our attitudes and values, our failure to change our behaviour that has led us to this critical point,” he warned, adding that the current path mankind is treading “threatens at the very least to plunge us into a perpetual cycle of poverty and misery”.

Farmers in Indonesia’s West Java province follow instructions on the government’s “integrated planting calendar”. Credit: Kanis Dursin/IPS

By Kanis Dursin
JAKARTA, Mar 29 2013 (IPS)

Last October, at the beginning of Indonesia’s rainy season, a 37-year-old farmer named Herinurdin took a leap of faith. Instead of planting corn in his entire 1.3-hectare rainfed farm in the Sukabumi town of West Java, as his family had done for generations, he sowed 1,600 square metres worth of rice instead.

In November he ploughed another 700 square metres and by December he had seeded the remainder of his land in this densely populated province, some 120 kilometres south of the capital Jakarta.

“The rice (planted in December) is now flowering,” Herinurdin told IPS. “I harvested 750 kilogrammes of unhusked rice from that 1,600 square metres.”

Until last year, he had always used the farm for corn or peanut “because I did not know that rice could grow in the rainfed field”.

With rice selling for 0.36 dollars per kilogramme, against the going rate for corn of 0.8 dollars per kilogramme, Herinurdin took in more money this year than he can ever remember.

Herinurdin is one of the earliest beneficiaries of a government programme launched last year aimed at easing the impacts of climate change on the roughly 41.2 million farmers spread across this archipelago.

Indonesia has been scrambling to find solutions to irregular rain patterns that have made farmers’ lives a living hell. Excessive rain, floods, and prolonged drought ferquently hit the world’s largest archipelago, home to 242 million people, undermining national food security programmes.

Agriculture plays an important role in Indonesia’s economy, with around 18 million farmer households and five million peasants dependent on the sector for livelihood, according to the state Central Statistics Agency (BPS).

“The planting calendar is designed to deal with adverse impacts of climate change, particularly changes in rain patterns that directly affect the planting season,” Eleonora Runtunuwu, a researcher with IAARD, told IPS.

It also contains information about suitable planting weeks for each of Indonesia’s 6,501 districts in 33 provinces; crops and seed varieties appropriate for certain planting seasons; fertilisers required for recommended crops; and potential scourges such as pest attacks.

In drawing up the calendar, the IAARD, which falls under the Ministry of Agriculture, takes into account weather forecasts issued by Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BKMG), the agriculture ministry’s Automatic Weather Station, and the Predictive Ocean Atmosphere Model of Australia.

The agency divides the year into three planting periods: the rainy season that runs from October to February; the first dry season from March to May; and finally, the second dry season from June to September. The calendars are issued in August, February, and May respectively.

Besides publishing the calendar online, the ministry has dispatched tens of thousands of field experts to advise farmers on what crops to plant, how to take care of them and when to fertilise.

But results have so far been patchy, and the iniative has illicted harsh reviews across the country.

Flaws abound

Nandang Sunandar, head of the West Java Agricultural Research and Development Agency (BPTP), praised the planting calendar but lamented the fact that the government cannot force farmers to follow the guidelines.

“The calendar only gives recommendations to farmers on crops, seeds, and fertiliser. Farmers have the final say; they may or may not follow (our) advice,” Nandang told IPS from Bandung, the provincial capital of West Java.

Others, like Tejo Wahyu Jatmiko, coordinator of the Alliance for Prosperous Villages, charge that the calendar has not been communicated adequately to farmers.

“The more detailed the weather information is, the better for farmers and the calendar is doing just that – however, farmers have little knowledge about the calendar, forcing them to stick to traditional schedules that result in crop failures due to prolonged drought or excessive rains,” he said.

“Most farmers here are following our traditional planting calendar, which we believe to be more reliable for our area,” said Astono. Known locally as ‘pranta mangsa’ this calendar takes its cues from animal behaviours, plants, the sun’s position, and ancient wisdom on astronomy.

“Our calendar takes into account not only the beginning or end of the rainy season and rain intensity, but also cycles of pest and rat attacks based on our experiences,” he told IPS, adding that some farmers who follow the government’s calendar have often experienced crop failures due to unanticipated pest attacks.

Experts who believe farmers themselves should have been consulted in the development of the calendar say that traditional wisdom is being lost.

“Farmers should be involved in designing food-related programmes because they have knowledge of the local environment,” Said Abdullah, manager of the People’s Coalition Network for Food Security, told IPS.

Another hurdle to full implementation of the planting calendar is a shortage of seed.

“Often farmers simply cannot find seeds recommended by the calendar, prompting them to use any seed available in the market and completely ignoring our advice,” Nandang said.

According to Abdullah, few farmers can afford to buy the subsidised fertiliser and seeds recommended by the calendar. “In the end, they borrow money from loan sharks,” he said, which pushes prices even higher.

Though the government has assigned state-owned enterprises to distribute seeds and fertiliser throughout the country, the combination of poor coordination and extreme weather results in late deliveries, causing farmers to miss crucial planting dates.

“All seeds and fertilisers are imported from Java. When the sea is too rough for cargo ships to sail, we have no access to recommended seeds, (leaving) us with no choice but to use any low-quality seeds available,” said Adrianus Asia Sidot, a farmer from the Landak regency, a major rice-producing area in West Kalimantan.

Nandang also said that a dearth of field officials to explain the planting calendar and assist farmers in the lead-up to the harvesting period also slows down effective implentation.

“West Java province has only 6,000 field officials, far below its real need of at least 10,000,” he said.

Senior field official Titiek Maryati of Majalengka, West Java, added that his regency relied on just 395 field officials overseeing 2,336 farmers’ groups spread across over 100,000 hectares of rice fields in 2012.

(END)

The Coatzacoalcos river basin in southern Mexico is so polluted that you can sense the mercury in the air, feel it and breathe it, and the population living in the area is only too aware of its undesirable neighbours: refineries and petrochemical complexes that emit this toxic element into the air and water.

“People are concerned about the situation and want solutions. We are talking to the communities in order to take strong action,” activist Isaúl Rodríguez, head of the Tatexco Ecological Producers Association (APETAT), told IPS from the affected area.

This NGO has some 2,500 members whose livelihoods are affected by their location close to the petrochemical plants and refineries established in the basin, in the southeastern state of Veracruz.

Their plight illustrates the problems associated with emission and management of mercury faced by Mexico, just as the fifth and final round of negotiations for an International Treaty on Mercury is being held Jan. 14-18 in Geneva. This will be the first legally binding global treaty to limit mercury emissions.

A study released on Jan. 9 about the petrochemical industry in the Coatzacoalcos river basin, which has implications in the context of ongoing international treaty negotiations, was eloquent in stating reasons for concern.

The average mercury level in the samples of human hair from the Coatzacoalcos basin was 1.7 times the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reference dose of one part per million.

The results “make us worry about the problem we face. People wonder whether they are going to die, or what will happen if they seek medical treatment. It’s a difficult social and economic problem,” Lorenzo Bozada, head of Ecología y Desarrollo Sostenible en Coatzacoalcos (Ecology and Sustainable Development in Coatzacoalcos), an NGO, told IPS.

Bozada took part in taking samples and writing the research report, together with two other independent organisations: the Mexican Centre for Analysis and Action on Toxins and their Alternatives (CAATA) and the Arnika Association of the Czech Republic.

The report is part of the Global Fish and Community Mercury Monitoring Project, coordinated by the International Persistent Organic Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN) and the U.S. Biodiversity Research Institute (BRI).

The study covered 25 municipalities, with a population of close to two million people and economic activities that include fishing, livestock raising and cultivating maize, squash and fruit.

The state General Lázaro Cárdenas refinery, which processes 285,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil, is located at Minatitlán, on the banks of the Coatzacoalcos river, while in the nearby city of Coatzacoalcos, on the same river, is the state Pajaritos petrochemical complex, in whose grounds a private chlor-alkali plant operates, using mercury in its manufacturing process.

Exposure to mercury, which is naturally present in air, soil and water, can harm the nervous, immune and digestive systems, the skin, lungs, kidneys and eyes. It is also harmful to foetal neurological development.

Bacteria and other microorganisms convert mercury to methylmercury, which can accumulate in the food chain, especially in fish.

The toxic element enters soil and water through the use of fertilisers, small scale artisanal gold mining, the use of mercury thermometers, and energy saving light bulbs.

The case of the Coatzacoalcos river basin does not appear to be unique in the country, although there are not enough data to be sure.

A 2012 study, “Patterns of Global Seafood Mercury Concentrations and their Relationship with Human Health,” conducted by David Evers, Madeline Turnquist and David Bucks, all researchers at the BRI, indicates that the highest mercury concentrations are found in the Gulfs of California and Mexico, on the border with the United States.

“Mexico’s policies are inadequate. There is a need for a more systematic programme on the presence of mercury at the national level, and for more work on critical areas, like this river basin,” the head of CAATA, Fernando Bejarano, told IPS before travelling to Geneva for the final negotiations of the treaty, which has been promoted since 2009 by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

Mercury Watch, an international alliance, says that small scale artisanal gold mining emitted 7.5 tonnes of mercury in Mexico in 2010, when the country exported 134.24 tonnes of mercury and imported 13.89 tonnes, almost all from the United States.

The Mexican Mercury Market Report for 2011, prepared by José Castro for the Commission for Environmental Cooperation of North America, estimates there are nearly 27 million tonnes of mercury waste, accumulated in mines and the chlor-alkali industry.

Trade in mercury is a challenge for Mexico because the European Union has banned exports since 2011, while the United States has prohibited exports of elemental mercury effective Jan. 1, 2013, making it difficult for Mexico to acquire the metal.

Mexican policy has focused on studying domestic issues related to mercury and withdrawing its use from hospitals, as shown in the letter sent to the UNEP in August 2010, when Mexico joined the Mercury Products Partnership. But it does not address recycling.

In another letter sent on Aug. 31 by the Directorate General for Global Issues of the Office of the Undersecretary for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights, to the UNEP Division of Technology, Industry and Economics, the Mexican government stated that the minimum limits for reporting emissions and transfers of mercury and its compounds are one and five kilogrammes a year, respectively.

“PEMEX (the Mexican state oil company) must take responsibility for reducing and monitoring mercury emissions, and it has a historic environmental debt towards the people who live in this region. The Health Secretariat (ministry) should carry out a clinical and epidemiological assessment of the impacts and take steps to reduce exposure,” Bozada said.

The IPEN network is critical of the draft treaty on the table because it does not demand clean-up of contaminated sites, payment for bio-remediation or compensation for accident victims. It also absolves the oil and gas sector of responsibilities.

“Mexico should achieve a higher commitment in these sectors,” said CAATA’s Bejarano about the treaty, which, if all goes as planned, will be signed in October by the 128 states participating in the negotiations.

But for producers like Rodríguez, the head of APETAT, the treaty is a pipe dream and there are few other options. “To begin with (there) could be a ban fishing, so that fishers are not exposed to mercury, and then it is essential that the polluting companies help the people,” he said.

(END)