By Gary DuffyBBC News, Sao Paulo Brazil’s government has granted an environmental licence for the construction of a controversial hydro-electric dam in the Amazon rainforest. Environmental groups say the Belo Monte dam will cause devastation in a large area of the rainforest and threaten the survival of indigenous groups. However, the government says whoever is […]
Published on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 by Environment News Service QUITO, Ecuador – Yasuní National Park, located in the core of the Ecuadorian Amazon, is the most biodiverse area in all of South America, a team of Ecuadorean, American, and European scientists concludes in the first major peer-reviewed study of life forms in the park, […]
A film released this week in Britain recounts the 16-year battle by Ecuadorians for damages against Chevron for oil pollution By Esme McAvoy It’s barely eight in the morning and already the dusty oil town of Lago Agrio, on the fringes of the Ecuadorian Amazon, is sweltering. Its name means “sour lake” in Spanish, after […]
By Christine Dell’Amore in CopenhagenNational Geographic NewsDecember 18, 2009 The Amazon’s “flying rivers”—humid air currents that deliver water to the vast rain forest—may be ebbing, which could have dire consequences for the region’s ability to help curb global warming, an expert said this week at the Copenhagen climate conference. Rising temperatures in the Amazon region, […]
By Gabriel Elizondo in Manaquiri, Brazil The once free-flowing Manaquiri River, which runs through the state of Amazonas in northwest Brazil, is in the fight of its life against a spell of dry weather – and it appears to be losing the battle. Thousands of dead fish are rotting on the river banks and hundreds […]
By Jeremy Hance, mongabay.com, October 25, 2009 Indigenous natives in the Amazon are headed to the town of Salvacion in Peru with a plan to forcibly remove the Texas-based Hunt Oil company from their land as early as today. Peruvian police forces, numbering in the hundreds, are said to be waiting in the town. The […]
Pure doom goodness from Club Orlov: By Keith Farnish and Dmitry Orlov In September 2009 the latest global temperature rise projections released by the Hadley Centre, part of the British Meteorological Office indicated an average rise of 4 degrees Celsius (that’s a balmy 7.2°F) by 2055 given a business as usual scenario. Some places will […]
By Paula Alvarado, Buenos Aires on 10.16.09 We’re talking about deforestation in the Amazon all the time, but can we really understand the magnitude of what we’re saying? This is where an image is worth a thousand words: this is how a 15 tons, 40 meters tall, ¡250! years of age, fallen tree from the […]
ScienceDaily (Sep. 28, 2009) — Unusually high temperatures in the Arctic and heavy rains in the tropics likely drove a global increase in atmospheric methane in 2007 and 2008 after a decade of near-zero growth, according to a new study. Methane is the second most abundant greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide, albeit a distant second. […]
By Jeremy Hance A new report shows that the Corrientes region of the Peruvian Amazon, which suffered decades of toxic contamination by Occidental Petroleum (OXY), is far from being cleaned-up. The survey, conducted by US non-profit E-Tech International, found that heavy metals, volatile organic compounds, and hydrocarbons still exist at levels above the safety limits […]
