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Loading ...Support for an Agreement on REDD
Thursday, September 24th, 2009It’s interesting to see the high-level support expressed at the Summit on Climate Change by the Latin American nations of Colombia, Ecuador and Guyana for an internationally-agreed mechanism for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) in the post-2012 climate change accord to be negotiated later this year in Copenhagen. However, conspicuous by their […]
Green IT Rating System Expanded to Brazil and Mexico
Monday, August 10th, 2009From EPEAT: The Green Electronics Council Announces Major Expansion of EPEAT International Green IT purchasing system enables electronics manufacturers to register computers and monitors in 40 countries The Green Electronics Council today announced the availability of an international EPEAT purchasing registry, a major development that enables the world’s leading electronics manufacturers to list ‘green’ computers […]
Linking the Pharmacopeias of Argentina and Brazil
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009Brazil’s National Sanitary Vigilance Agency (Anvisa) today issued a regulation (Resolution RDC 37) permitting reference chemical substances certified by either the Argentine Pharmacopeia or the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Pharmacopeia to be used for evaluating the quality of pharmaceutical raw materials (active ingredients and excipients) and medicines produced in Brazil. Anvisa already allowed that, […]
Latin America’s First Hydrogen Bus
Wednesday, July 1st, 2009Brazil is known for many “green” experiments and firsts in transportation. Think of Curitiba’s groundbreaking work on bus rapid transit, Brazil’s pioneering work on sugarcane ethanol and use of flex-fuel vehicles, the country’s aggressive biodiesel program, Vale’s trains run on biodiesel, Itaipu’s development of electric cars that can be charged from biodigestors, and the use […]
FONTAGRO to Fund IDB Studies on Climate Change Impact on Agriculture
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009From the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB): FONTAGRO extends agreement with IDB The Bank will manage the Fund until 2011 and finance climate change impact studies The Inter-American Development Bank and the Regional Fund for Agricultural Technology (FONTAGRO, for its initials in Spanish) have extended until 2011 their agreement whereby the IDB will continue to manage […]
Brazil a Leader in Green IT?
Sunday, April 12th, 2009I ran across this interesting “green IT” study released last month by IBM and the Info-Tech Research Group during the course of my work on a chapter on power management issues for a forthcoming book on green IT (information technology). Info-tech surveyed more than 1,000 IT executives at companies with 100-1,000 employees in 12 nations […]
Brazil Plans to Ban or Restrict 12 Pesticides
Thursday, April 2nd, 2009Brazilian 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 […]
Japan Gives $5 mil. to IDB’s SECCI / Japón contribuye US$5 millones al SECCI del BID
Monday, March 30th, 2009From the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB): Japan to Contribute $5 Million to IDB’s Sustainable Energy and Climate Change Fund IDB and two Japanese development agencies planning separate agreements The Japanese government will contribute $5 million to a fund managed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) that promotes investments in economically and environmentally sound energy options. […]
Brazil Raises Steel Can Recycling to 49%
Thursday, March 19th, 2009From the World Steel Association: Global steel can recycling rate reaches highest recorded level The World Steel Association (worldsteel) announced today that 7.2 million metric tons (mmt) of steel cans were recycled across the 37 countries reporting in 2007. This avoided approximately 13 mmt of CO2 emissions. The global recycling rate for steel cans was […]
Colombia Invites Japanese to Build More Biodiesel Plants
Wednesday, February 4th, 2009When Colombian President Uribe visited a plant built in Santa Maria, Magdalena, to process palm oil for biodiesel production yesterday, he not only thanked the Japanese company Odin Energy for their investment in the plant (completed a year ago), but urged them to build another. Uribe appears convinced that Colombia has a bright future as […]