Alcohol Consumption in Brazil I: Overview of Adult Drinking
Thursday, October 11th, 2007In prior posts I mentioned Brazil’s decision to adopt a national policy to combat consumption of alcoholic beverages, and its initial spate of public service announcements on the topic. What I failed to mention at the time was that one reason to keep an eye on what Brazil does in this area is that it […]
Toward a National Waste Exchange for Brazil
Thursday, October 4th, 2007Recently Brazil's National Confederation of Industry (CNI) pulled together a meeting in Curitiba, Paraná (PR) of officials from Brazil's existing 12 state waste exchanges operated by state industry associations. Also attending were industry representatives from Argentina, Paraguay and Portugal. The focus of discussion: a CNI proposal to link the exchanges electronically and create a de […]
The Basics II, Foundations: Is a Constitutional Provision on the Environment Necessary?
Thursday, June 28th, 2007I 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 […]
Making Post-Consumer Recovery of Pesticide Packaging Work
Monday, May 28th, 2007The recent decision by Colombia to impose extended producer responsibility (EPR) for post-consumer pesticide packaging reminded me of a draft sitting in the infamous backlog queue since January. It looks at the Brazilian system for dealing with such packaging, which seems to be operating very well, in spite of predictions to the contrary by skeptics […]
Consumer Protection in LAC III – Consumer Agencies in LAC
Wednesday, April 18th, 2007To 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 […]
More LAC Wind and Solar Maps
Wednesday, February 28th, 2007A few months back I did a post on what wind and solar power potential maps for the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) countries could be found on the internet, and promised updates on others as I found them. Well, it might take me awhile to do so, but I usually do come through […]
New Environmental Caucus in Brazilian Congress
Thursday, February 22nd, 2007A Sign of the Times? On Valentine’s Day in Brasilia a large group of Federal Deputies, with top officials from the Environment Ministry (including Minister Marina Silva), the President of the Chamber of Deputies Arlindo Chinaglia [Workers’ Party (PT) – São Paulo (SP)], and representatives of several key environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) by their side, […]
Recycling Coconuts I: More Than Just a Vessel for Agua de Coco
Saturday, October 28th, 2006The Next Time You Have a Cool Agua de Coco… Photos Courtesy of Coco Verde Have you ever stopped at a street vendor’s stand, a kiosk along the Malecon or at a shopping mall to have a coconut hacked open by machete so you can sip a cool agua de coco? And perhaps after you […]
Next Entries »