Mexico Uses Environmental Service Payments to Protect Millions of Hectares
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008Synopsis in English: Since 2003 Mexico has put 3.22 billion pesos into environmental services payments (pago por servicios ambientales – PSA). What is a PSA, you might ask. PSA is an environmental policy concept that is quite the rage in recent years, pushed by such institutions as the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), United […]
El Salvador Launches Green Network on Corporate Environmental Responsibility
Thursday, August 28th, 2008El Salvador’s President Elías Antonio Saca and Environment Minister Carlos Guerrero launched this week the “Green Network.” The Network seeks to get the private sector involved in environmental projects aimed at helping the nation’s neediest schools — in the process helping the quality of life for kids, helping the environment and contributing to mitigate the […]
Update: Colombian Eco-Authorities Now Have Sharp Teeth?
Friday, August 8th, 2008Last year I did a post about Colombia’s Environment Minister, Juan Lozano Ramírez, calling upon that country’s Senate to finally give environmental authorities “teeth” — a true, tough environmental sanctions regime. Proposals for such a law had been before the national legislature for years (Lozano says it’s been decades). A few weeks ago the legislature […]
Uruguay Gets Its GEO
Friday, July 25th, 2008Earlier this month Uruguay’s GEO was finally unveiled with much fanfare by top Uruguayan environment officials and the local representative of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). What’s a GEO? It’s probably the best known type of comprehensive environmental diagnosis available. “GEO” was the acronym for “Global Environment Outlook” first prepared by the in the […]
LAC Environmental Trivia, Revisited
Thursday, June 19th, 2008The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) recently published the latest edition (covering up to 2007) of its annual statistical yearbook for the region. As in recent years, one section covers natural resources and the environment. If you are seeking a basic set of comparative environmental data for the region, […]
Maps, Maps and More Maps
Monday, June 2nd, 2008In a prior post on the Temas library of Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) legal texts for download, I promised to highlight other changes and additions to the updated site. The biggest addition to the site has been the Temas Tools Section, a collection of references and tools that help in understanding, shaping and managing […]
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 to Help Rescue Ilha Grande
Friday, July 6th, 2007Last month the State Forestry Institute (IEF) of Rio de Janeiro and the huge Brazilian mining and minerals conglomerate Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (CVRD), with the participation of the Municipality of Angra dos Reis, signed a cooperation agreement for the recovery of degraded areas in the State Park of Big Island (Parque Estadual de […]
Camisea Revisited
Thursday, July 5th, 2007On 04 June a public hearing at Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) headquarters in Washington, D.C. was held on the recently released audit reports of the controversial Camisea project in Peru. The official IDB summary of the meeting (in Spanish only) is a bit difficult to find on the Bank’s special website on Camisea (unless of […]
« Previous Entries Next Entries »