Mexico, Canada and the United States have serious problems with the emission of diverse pollutants.
The three member countries of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) of North America, a body created as part of NAFTA’s environmental side agreement, are facing high rates of emissions of mercury, arsenic, and chromium, according to Orlando Cabrera, the manager of the Air Quality Program and of the Pollutant Release and Transfer Registry (PRTR) of North America.
Today, social movements are uniting to defend common resources and criticize extractivism. However, they are far from the unanimity characteristic of the period when rightwing governments prevailed in most South American countries and are separated when it comes time to evaluate progressive and leftist governments.
Bolivian environmental organizations and indigenous groups that supported Evo Morales in his election to the presidency demand that his government stop exploiting oil resources in the Bolivian Amazon due to its serious impacts on the environment, including the destruction of biodiversity, and erosion of the livelihoods of the indigenous peoples that inhabit the region.
Debate over the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, signed into law by President Obama on July 21, has focused on the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that will bring notable improvements for U.S. consumers. But the more obscure derivatives section of the law contains reforms that will help stabilize global food and energy prices–changes that will especially benefit the poorest communities around the world.
On June 4th about ten thousand Haitian peasants marched to protest U.S.-based Monsanto Company’s ‘deadly gift’ of seed to the government of Haiti. The seven-kilometer march from Papaye to Hinche—a rural area on the central plateau–was organized by several Haitian farmers’ organizations. The rural social movements propose a development model based on food and seed sovereignty instead of industrial agriculture.
The sudden emergence of new actors in Peruvian society, namely indigenous peoples from the Amazon and women from the public sector, has demonstrated that the old centralist state, which serves the white and mestizo minorities, cannot play an integrating role in the service of a multicultural society.
Costa Rican environmentalists decry war against biodiversity; in Brazil, the World Rainforest Movement calls Norway to task for its alleged double-dealing; in Chile, civil society is on the move against genetically modified (GM) crops, while Bolivia’s president Evo Morales declares them unwelcome in his country; the monthly report concludes with the agroecology letter from Havana.
In this month’s biodiversity report: Goldman Prizes for Cuba and Costa Rica, Yasuní Reserve Declaration, Syngenta + CIMMYT = GM Wheat, “Responsible” Soy in trouble and The WWF and Tree Monoculture Plantations.
This in-depth report looks at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and how its policies have led to displacement and forced migration in Latin America. The report studies IDB megaprojects in Mexico, Colombia, Brazil and Honduras and their effect on Latin Americans.
When international human rights observers rounded a curve on a remote road in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, they found the way blocked by boulders. They decided going forward would be dangerous. But they didn’t know that going back would be deadly.
