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  • Brazil Plans to Ban or Restrict 12 Pesticides

    Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

    Brazilian health officials are concerned.  In 2008 Brazil became the largest consumer of pesticides in the world, surpassing the US with a market of more than US$7 billion.  Yet many of the pesticides now manufactured in, or imported into, Brazil and widely used there have been banned or severely restricted for health and environmental reasons […]

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    IDEC Calls for National Do-Not-Call List

    Saturday, March 28th, 2009

    Brazil’s premier national consumer group, the Consumer Defense Institute (IDEC), is calling for a national do-not-call registry to allow Brazilian consumers to stop telemarketing calls to their phones. Last October São Paulo State adopted a skeletal law (“skeletal” because the governor line-item vetoed much of it) creating such a registry for consumers in that state.  […]

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    A Huge Donation for Brazil’s Chief Consumer NGO / Uma donação grande para a ONG brasileira principal de defesa do consumidor / Una donación grande para la ONG brasileña principal de defensa del consumidor

    Thursday, August 16th, 2007

    This grant from the MIF is a major coup for the Brazilian Consumer Defense Institute (IDEC), probably increasing their operating funds by 50% and cementing their lead as Latin America and the Caribbean’s (LAC) best funded consumer group. Parabéns, IDEC e Marliena Lazzarini (a Presidente do Instituto). To understand better the importance of IDEC and […]

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    Consumer Protection in LAC V – A Sample Panorama of LAC Consumer News

    Friday, May 11th, 2007

    When I started this series, I promised a five-part overview of consumer protection in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). So far I’ve looked at how consumer agencies and consumer NGOs in the region celebrated World Consumer Rights Day, how intergovernmental bodies have influenced the development of consumer law in the region, the panorama of […]

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    Consumer Protection in LAC IV – Consumer NGOs in LAC

    Monday, April 23rd, 2007

    To make up for missing World Consumer Rights Day (March 15), I promised to give you a five-part overview of consumer protection in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). In Part I, I looked at how consumer agencies and consumer NGOs in the region celebrated the Day. In Part II-A I examined how intergovernmental bodies […]

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    Consumer Protection in LAC I – How World Consumer Rights Day 2007 Was Celebrated

    Friday, April 13th, 2007

    As I mentioned in my introduction to my series on consumer protection in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), March 15 was World Consumer Rights Day (yeah, yeah, you mentioned before that I’m late!). To commemorate, here The Temas Blog starts a five-part series by looking at how consumer organizations in LAC celebrated the day.

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    Brazil to Evaluate the Private Sector Role in Sanitation / Brasil avalia participação da iniciativa privada no setor de saneamento

    Wednesday, January 31st, 2007

    Synopsis in English: Only weeks after adoption of the new Sanitation Law, Brazil’s Ministry of Cities has just announced that it is launching a formal evaluation of the role of private capital in that country’s sanitation sector. [Currently there are about 40 concessions involving the private sector.] The study will be undertaken in cooperation with […]

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    A Sustainable Energy Plan for Brazil?

    Tuesday, November 28th, 2006

    The Government’s Energy Vision Last Wednesday Brazil’s Energy Research Corporation (EPE) released the National Energy Plan 2030, the government’s blueprint for energy development for the next 24 years. The EPE is a subsidiary of the Ministry of Mines and Energy (MME), charged with energy planning. The principal theme of the plan can be found in […]

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    Judging the Electronic Firms Revisited

    Wednesday, September 20th, 2006

    Since I wrote my prior Temas blog entry on the Greenpeace “report card” on “greener electronics,” I have read a number of interesting reviews of the GP report written by other blogs. Two examples I suggest reading: Treehugger’s analysis and the debate in Dan Dilger’s “Roughly Drafted” blog on all things Apple. Reading these have […]

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