Subscribe to My Feed
Loading ...Inside the “Casa do Bem”
Monday, October 8th, 2007If you enter the Wal-Mart Supercenter hypermarkets in Brazil, and walk the aisles, you may run across an unusual large exhibit — a mock-up of a miniature house that you can enter and explore. It has faux windows and flower boxes, and corners representing the interiors of a kitchen, bathroom and laundry room. Look closer. […]
The Changing Face of Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon
Tuesday, September 11th, 2007With much fanfare a collection of Brazil’s Ministers — Environment (MMA), Agrarian Development (MDA), Agriculture (MAPA) — and the chief of President Lula’s Civil Cabinet held a joint press conference a few weeks ago to announce the latest deforestation data and projections for the Brazilian Amazon (“Amazônia Legal” as Brazil calls it, comprises 9 states […]
Digitizing Monitoring and Enforcement of Protected Areas
Monday, September 10th, 2007In a prior post I discussed how the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais (MG) is digitizing its environmental enforcement efforts, and in one of my “Combating Deforestation” series posts I discussed a World Bank report that recommended, among other things, recruiting the help of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and indigenous and local communities in deforestation frontiers […]
CVRD Chooses to Lead by Example
Tuesday, September 4th, 2007One of Brazil’s biggest home-grown multinationals and employers, the Doce River Valley Company (Companhia Vale do Rio Doce – CVRD) has decided to take its efforts on sustainable development and social responsibility to the next level: it is refusing to supply iron ore to clients that are not complying with Brazilian environmental and labor standards. […]
Building a National Network to Prepare for Chemical Accidents
Wednesday, April 25th, 2007Synopsis in English: After the bad accident at Cataguases that polluted 16 municipalities in three states, the Brazilian government finally got serious about getting the country better prepared for emergencies involving accidental releases of hazardous substances. The President adopted a decree in 2004 that led to the creation of the National Plan for the Prevention […]
Serra’s 21 Strategic Environmental Projects for São Paulo
Monday, April 9th, 2007On 02 April the new Governor of São Paulo, José Serra [Brazilian Social Democratic Party (Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira – PSDB)], announced a series of 21 “strategic environmental projects” he said will guide his Administration and help one of Latin America’s biggest economies — and still the industrial and agricultural powerhouse of Brazil (accounting […]
RJ State Seeks to End Era of Municipal Dumps
Monday, April 2nd, 2007Synopsis in English: The State Secretary for the Environment (SEA) of Rio de Janeiro (RJ) state, Carlos Minc, has announced a new program aimed at ending once and for all the era of uncontrolled municipal trash dumps in that state. The program would form regional consortia of municipalities that would a shared sanitary landfill constructed […]
A Change in Environmental Licensing of Oil & Gas Projects?
Tuesday, March 6th, 2007Synopsis in English: Just days after the PAC was unveiled, the Environment Ministry’s (MMA) #2 man, Claudio Langone, met with the director of the oil and gas (O&G) industry’s trade association (IBP), João Carlos de Luca, to discuss possible changes in environmental licensing of oil and gas projects. The meeting made some in the environment […]
PAC’ing Brazil: Overview & Environmental Licensing
Friday, March 2nd, 2007If you are not resident in Brazil or a regular Brazil-watcher, you could be forgiven for never having heard of PAC. No! Not the video game character that chomped on “power pills” in order to consume brightly colored ghosts! Rather instead complex package of proposals from Lula’s Government intended to energize the Brazilian economy through […]
Mapping Brazil’s Basins to Prepare Against Oil Spills / Atlas de bacias sedimentares vão garantir segurança contra vazamento de petróleo
Wednesday, February 14th, 2007Synopsis in English: In the year 2000, a major oil spill in Rio’s Guanabara Bay finally stirred Brazil out of complacency about planning, preparing and protecting against such releases, whether from tankers or platforms. In addition to normative work (such as Law 9966 and recent National Environment Council work on discharges from maritime platforms), the […]