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    Update: Colombian Eco-Authorities Now Have Sharp Teeth?

    Friday, August 8th, 2008

    Last year I did a post about Colombia’s Environment Minister, Juan Lozano Ramírez, calling upon that country’s Senate to finally give environmental authorities “teeth” — a true, tough environmental sanctions regime. Proposals for such a law had been before the national legislature for years (Lozano says it’s been decades). A few weeks ago the legislature […]

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    Mexico’s Eco-Partnership with California

    Monday, August 4th, 2008

    In February, when this blog was on hiatus while I worked on projects and expanding/updating the main Temas site, Mexico and the State of California signed a “Memorandum of Understanding” (MOU) on cooperation in environmental matters. To be honest, I didn’t pay it much attention at the time. Not just because I was busy with […]

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    Uruguay Gets Its GEO

    Friday, July 25th, 2008

    Earlier this month Uruguay’s GEO was finally unveiled with much fanfare by top Uruguayan environment officials and the local representative of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). What’s a GEO? It’s probably the best known type of comprehensive environmental diagnosis available. “GEO” was the acronym for “Global Environment Outlook” first prepared by the in the […]

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    A Solid Waste Plan for Costa Rica

    Friday, July 18th, 2008

    Recently Costa Rica was presented its long-awaited Solid Waste Plan (PRESOL) by the entities belonging to the Inter-Institutional Platform of the Competitiveness and Environment Program (CYMA): the Health Ministry (MinSalud), the Planning Ministry (Mideplan), the Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE), the Institute for Municipal Development and Advice (Instituto de Fomento y Asesoria Municipal – […]

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    Morelos Gets a Comprehensive Waste Law

    Wednesday, October 10th, 2007

    The central Mexican state of Morelos (home of Revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata) just adopted its own comprehensive state solid waste law. Since Mexico adopted its federal General Law for the Prevention and Integrated Management of Wastes in 2003, the Federal District (DF) and many states have adopted their own general waste laws, or else amended […]

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    The Basics II, Foundations: Is a Constitutional Provision on the Environment Necessary?

    Thursday, June 28th, 2007

    I had in the backlog queue a “Basics” piece on the importance of setting a solid environmental governance foundation through adoption of properly crafted and targeted laws, but held off publishing it for Temas administrative reasons I will not go into here. In the meantime, however, the Dominican Republic (DR) has come forward with ideas […]

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    Another Historic Court Judgment Against Officials Not Doing Their Job

    Saturday, June 2nd, 2007

    Yesterday (31 May), it seems, was a banner day for court judgments taking LAC executive branch officials to task for not doing their job in enforcing environment laws. First the Brazilian case finding that federal environment officials must share in the environmental damage reparation costs and compensation for coal mining pollution they did not address […]

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    An Environmental Agenda for the Andes

    Wednesday, January 24th, 2007

    Another piece I started long ago (at the end of Sept.) and left in the queue. I’ll clear the backlog yet! This is one is not over-ripe, though, because the Andean Community is only now implementing the Agenda. The Lima-based General Secretariat of the four-nation Andean Community* (Comunidad Andina – CAN) has released the Community’s […]

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    Eco-Certification for Tourism: The Role of Blue Flag, Part II

    Tuesday, December 5th, 2006

    In Part I of this four-part series on the growing presence of Blue Flag in Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) nations, I looked at Blue Flag’s criteria and process for certifying beaches. Here in Part II I’ll examine the marina criteria and process. Part III will look at what LAC beaches and marinas have already […]

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    Quantifying the Health Impact of Poor Environmental Management

    Wednesday, September 6th, 2006

    The Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO) recently released an interesting report on the linkages between environmental conditions and public health. It should be required reading for health, environment and aid officials and policymakers in all nations, but particularly in developing nations such as those in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). It certainly will be […]

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