Why Argentina Has Not Yet Ratified the Tobacco Treaty
Monday, May 11th, 2009There’s an interesting article today in IPS exploring why Argentina has yet to ratify the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) even though it signed the agreement and the federal executive has repeatedly asked the Senate for the ratification. In a nutshell, Senators from seven tobacco-growing provinces (Catamarca, Chaco, Corrientes, Jujuy, Misiones, Salta, […]
Paraguay Extends Its Zero Deforestation Law
Thursday, November 20th, 2008From WWF: Paraguay moves closer towards zero net deforestation Paraguay’s Congress has today unanimously voted to extend the country’s “Zero Deforestation Law” by another five years. The law, which came into force in December 2004 and was effective in slashing deforestation rates massively, was due to expire at end 2008. Three commissions — Energy and […]
Getting Mercury Out of Healthcare
Tuesday, August 5th, 2008In July the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires (CABA) proudly announced that all public hospitals within city limits had eliminated their inventory of old fashioned mercury thermometers and replaced them with digital ones. Why is that significant? A 2006 study done by CABA’s Environmental Health office found that the City’s public hospitals emitted about 40 […]
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 […]
Consumer Protection in LAC II-B – Consumer Legislation in LAC Nations
Tuesday, April 17th, 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 provided an overview of […]
IDB “Infrastructure” Funds with an Environmental Twist / Financiamento del BID para “Infrastructura” con Dimensiones Ambientales
Tuesday, February 6th, 2007The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) recently has approved several projects that it labels as involving infrastructure, but to my mind, have a pronounced environmental slant. IDB officials will of course claim that most of its loans in the last 10-15 years have had an environmental dimension, especially those involving infrastructure. Most Bank critics will retort […]
Buenos Aires to Conduct Vehicle Emissions Testing
Wednesday, January 31st, 2007Another one from the queue! This one I held off publishing until I could get ahold of the actual text of the law to double-check a few points, but since the City’s official gazette is slow about publishing new laws, I decided to forge ahead… In December, during its last session of the year, the […]