http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/27/AR2008042701524_pf.html

Chile – Whale sightings off Chile raise hope

Honduras - Local Governments Protect Environment

Jamaica - Government outlines measures to aid energy conservation in Jamaica

Nicaragua - Biofuels Affect Food Availability



LATIN AMERICA: Activists Call for Urgent Land Reform

1- Brazil - Brazil "soy king" sees Amazon as food solution
RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - More of the Amazon rain forest should be cut down to make way for farmland to help ease the global food crisis, the governor of a big Brazilian farming state was quoted on Friday as saying.
Blairo Maggi, the governor of Mato Grosso state and Brazil's largest soy producer, was quoted in the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper as defending deforestation.
"With the worsening of the global food crisis, the time is coming when it will be inevitable to discuss whether we preserve the environment or produce more food. There is no way to produce more food without occupying more land and taking down more trees," said Maggi, a farming pioneer in the vast western state who is widely known as the "King of Soy."

"In this moment of crisis, the world needs to understand that the country has space to raise its production."

Brazil's booming economy, soy farming and cattle ranching have put pressure on land prices and fueled deforestation.

A waning La Nina condition in the Pacific Ocean and a warm water cycle in the Atlantic Ocean are the two main factors cited by the private weather forecasting service.

"The warming is not uniform across the entire Atlantic. In some areas where hurricanes normally form ... ocean water temperatures are near or below normal," Joe Bastardi, AccuWeather's chief long-range forecaster, said in a news release.

Bastardi told Reuters in an interview in early April that the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season would see 12 to 13 named storms.

Up to four of the predicted storms would become hurricanes, with one of those becoming a major hurricane, Bastardi said.

Average hurricane seasons have 10 named storms.

More than 150 delegates have already registered for the conference, up by 50 percent over the same period last year, according to the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO). The CTO is expecting additional delegates to register right up to the conference's kick off on Monday.

According to CTO Secretary General Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace, the strong response to the conference is a clear indication of the importance the region places on the sustainable development and its relationship to the Caribbean's tourism industry, the economic pillar of the region.

"The Caribbean has recognized that a growing number of travelers go to destinations that practice sustainable development," said Vanderpool-Wallace, who will moderate one of several educational panels taking place during the conference. "Therefore, policy makers and others in the tourism sector are continuing to explore ways to enhance and sustain the tourism product."

One highlight of the conference will be the keynote address by Dr. David Suzuki, the renowned Canadian geneticist and environmental scientist. Dr. Suzuki is the co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation, whose mission is to promote energy efficiency and ecological fiscal reform. The Canadian government, The United Nations, and numerous universities are among those who have recognized his efforts to educate the public on issues such as climate change.

The 10th Annual Caribbean Conference on Sustainable Tourism Development is organized by the CTO in collaboration with the Turks & Caicos Islands Tourist Board and the Caribbean Hotel Association (CHA). Its audience includes members of the media, travel agents and key members of the Caribbean tourism sector.

They also accused the centre-left government of persecution against the environmental movement.

Environmentalists "have the right to take the decisions that they please," government spokesman Francisco Vidal told foreign journalists Friday. "But this administration, like all of the governments of the (ruling Coalition for Democracy, in office since 1990), has achieved or is attempting to achieve an intelligent balance between the need for development and productive growth and conservation and environmental sustainability."

The 23 organisations that signed the "Chagual Agreement" in late 2005 with Bachelet announced Wednesday that they would no longer back her administration, which they say flagrantly, violated the promise not to consider nuclear energy as an option.

But the head of the National Environment Commission (CONAMA), Ana Lya Uriarte, said Thursday that the president would fully comply with the Chagual Agreement and that there has merely been "a difference of interpretation" between the government and the environmentalists. She also said "the government’s door has always been open to" the country’s environmental groups.

Vidal said that "If the ecologists believe that by abandoning the Coalition for Democracy and moving closer to the right-wing opposition they will obtain environmental sustainability, may God help them."

The end of the Chagual Agreement "does not mean we have broken off relations with the government. We will evaluate everything on a case by case basis, but I foresee a scenario of greater conflict over the environment," the president of the Institute of Political Ecology, Manuel Baquedano, told IPS.

The activist believes that until Bachelet’s term ends in two years, "the government’s desire to swiftly approve productive projects, even if they have environmental problems," will clash with the action of environmentalists and citizens who want the impact of investments to be fully assessed and who are opposed to environmentally unsustainable initiatives.

Since Bachelet, a socialist, took office in March 2006, there have been relatively few conflicts over environmental issues, thanks to the agreement signed with the president, "even though problems were worse than in previous years," said Baquedano.

But that situation is now likely to change, said the environmentalists who spoke to IPS, although they all clarified that their organizations would continue working with the government on questions that they see as necessary.

Baquedano believes the environmental groups’ "opposition" will chiefly be felt with respect to air pollution in Santiago, since forecasts indicate that conditions will be particularly bad in the coming southern hemisphere winter, which is "smog season."

The Chagual Agreement was comprised of 10 points, ranging from the modernisation of the country’s environmental institutions to commitments not to consider the possibility of nuclear energy or allow the production of genetically modified crops. (Chile presently only allows transgenic crops for seed multiplication and export purposes, but not for domestic use).

According to the environmentalists, clear progress was only made on the first point, thanks to the efforts of Uriarte. In June, the government will submit to Congress draft laws that will create an Environment Ministry (to replace CONAMA) as well as an environmental inspectorate.

The activists also welcomed the drafting of a National Strategy for the Integrated Management of River Basins, which is pending final government approval.

But they say no progress was made on the other pledges made by Bachelet, like the establishment of an environmental information system, including environmental indicators, to support government accountability and public information, and a fiscal policy aimed at achieving environmental sustainability, as well as the expansion of the fund that supports educational institutions and civil society organizations.

Nor are there any signs of the promised environmental impact studies on the multiplication of GM seeds and the protection of glaciers, they complain.

The split between the government and environmental groups began to emerge when the Bachelet administration, feeling the pressure from the country’s energy crisis, announced in March 2007 that she was setting up a presidential commission, the "Working Group on Nuclear Power", for which the government would earmark 100 million pesos (218,000 dollars) to research state-of-the-art technology in the industry.

Baquedano said that although some of the environmental groups wanted to declare at the time that the Chagual Agreement had been broken, a decision was reached to accept the explanations offered by Bachelet, who said that nuclear energy would not be adopted during her administration and that the commission would merely carry out the studies needed to allow the next government to make an informed decision on the question.

But the final catalyst came when Energy Minister Marcelo Tokman himself announced on Mar. 27 that two million dollars would be allotted to studies assessing the possibility of adopting nuclear energy in Chile. The announcement was made during the "Nuclear Energy: An Option for Chile" seminar, financed by foreign companies and sponsored by the government.

The president of the Sustainable Chile Programme, Sara Larraín, said these actions show that "the government is moving in the direction opposite to the agreement" signed in 2005.

In Baquedano’s view, the president gave in to pressure from other leaders in the governing coalition, like former president and current Senator Eduardo Frei (1994-2000), who is in favour of nuclear energy, thus putting an end to any possibility of the "citizen government" that Bachelet had promised in her campaign.

"The underlying problem is that Bachelet’s plan for a ‘citizen government’, within the framework of which the Chagual Agreement was set, has gone up in smoke. It has become clear that the second half of her term will belong to a ‘political party government’, in which there is no space for social movements," he said.

Before declaring that the Chagual Agreement was broken, several prominent environmental activists had complained that they had been under surveillance by the government intelligence apparatus, which they said was aimed at intimidating them and curtailing their opposition to high-profile investment projects.

The environmentalists say they have been tailed by the police and that their phones have been tapped. They also mention suspicious robberies in which several organisations have had computers stolen in the last few years.

In response to a question from IPS, Bachelet’s spokesman dismissed such complaints, saying sarcastically that "I recommend they (the environmentalists) go to the forest without worrying. We are in democracy; maybe some of them got stuck in the (1973-1990 military dictatorship of General Augusto) Pinochet."

But Deputy Interior Minister Felipe Harboe recently said it was necessary to increase monitoring and oversight of environmental groups, and especially of their financing, which drew howls of outrage from activists, who say they act strictly within the law.

If Interior Ministry officials continue to make "intimidating comments," environmentalists will consider turning to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, said Larraín.

"In Fundación Terram we believe that the government’s failure to live up to its promises with regard to the environment goes beyond the points included in the Chagual Agreement," the environmental group’s executive secretary, Flavia Liberona, told IPS.

The government is incapable of responding to the country’s environmental challenges due to the lack of well-defined environmental policies, she argued.
Source: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42137
5- Chile – Whale sightings off Chile raise hope
Whales appear to be making a comeback in the waters where they were once hunted to near extinction.
STRAIT OF MAGELLAN, CHILE -- From the earliest days of exploration, mariners in Chile's cool southern waters marveled at the abundance of whales. A Jesuit naturalist wrote of the sea "boiling" with the spouts of the leviathans.

Among 19th century Nantucket boatmen, the island of Mocha was notorious as the stamping grounds of "Mocha Dick," an ill-tempered sperm whale riddled with harpoons. Why Herman Melville opted to substitute "Moby" for "Mocha" remains unclear, but literary detectives believe the vengeful whale helped inspire his dark classic

Now, almost two centuries after the commercial carnage of Melville's era and 22 years after an international whale-hunting moratorium went into effect, some whales appear to be making a comeback off Chile's coast, where a proliferation of islands, fiords, peninsulas and straits creates tens of thousands of miles of shoreline.

In recent years, researchers combing remote crannies of this elongated coast have confirmed the presence of two seasonally resident populations of whales, including 100 to 150 humpbacks here in the glacier-rimmed Strait of Magellan.

Farther to the north, closer to the seas once frequented by Mocha Dick, they've tracked several hundred blue whales, believed to be Earth's largest animal, at 100 feet long and more than 100 tons -- bigger than any dinosaur. A separate population of blue whales feeds off the central California coast between June and October.

"The likelihood is that they were not completely hunted out, and these are remnant populations," says Bruce Mate, who heads the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University and who worked to tag Chilean blue whales and track them via satellite. "It just wasn't commercially viable to hunt till the very last whale."

The bleached bones of butchered whales, sea lions, elephant seals and other ocean mammals still litter some Patagonian beaches like driftwood. Forest and surf have reclaimed whaling stations such as the long-abandoned plant at Eagles' Bay (Bahia de los Aguilas), not far from Cape Froward, the southernmost point on the South American mainland.

Though encouraged, conservationists say it's too early to celebrate the comeback of a creature pursued to the verge of extinction. Oil from sperm and right whales hunted off Chile's coast was once a prized staple, a globalized commodity with parallels to today's petroleum.

"It could be we're just seeing more whales now because of increased interest and tourism," says Barbara Galletti, who heads Chile's Cetacean Conservation Center.

Push for protection

With the International Whaling Commission scheduled to hold its annual meeting in Santiago in June, activists are pushing for a law that would declare a permanent whale sanctuary throughout Chile's territorial waters, where Yankee whalers once confronted Mocha Dick.

"This renowned monster, which had come off victorious in a hundred fights with his pursuers, was an old bull whale, of prodigious size and strength," J.N. Reynolds Esq. wrote in 1839 in the Knickerbocker, a New York magazine. "From the effect of age, or more probably from a freak of nature, as exhibited in the case of the Ethiopian Albino, a singular consequence had resulted -- he was white as wool!"

Today, scientists here are trying to unlock the secrets of the whales' migratory odysseys and assess the latest potential threats -- not harpoon-wielding Homo sapiens, but global warming and pollution. Of special concern are the salmon farms that have proliferated along Chile's dismembered coast, befouling sheltered stretches favored by whales and other sea life.

Little is known about the ecological fallout from the ongoing boom in the production of salmon, an introduced species mostly exported to the United States, Europe and Asia. Researchers worry about contamination, disease and parasites spreading from the tightly packed fish pens, as well as competition for food stocks. Whales could also become entangled in salmon nets or be injured in collisions with boats.

Researchers have been using darts to collect whale fat samples to study them for potential contaminants and other information.

"Our hope is that this can tell us more about the animals' health, their gender makeup, their genetic diversity," says Juan Pablo Torres, a marine biologist at Chile's Blue Whale Center who is collaborating on genetic testing with the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Conservationists are pressing the Chilean government to grant some measure of protection to the blue whale habitat off Chiloe Island, a vast swath of ocean that serves many interests: salmon farmers, fishermen, shipping firms. No consensus has emerged.

"I believe in protecting the whales, but the fact is we can't live on whales," says Luis Miranda, mayor of tiny Melinka, a salmon-farming center facing the Gulf of Corcovado, a vital blue whale haunt.