By Claire Asher 28 February 2018 (Mongabay) – The scale of hydroelectric development in the Andean Amazon is far more extensive than previously thought, with numerous headwater dams fragmenting river habitats, disrupting natural systems, and affecting the lives and livelihoods of 30 million downstream Amazon basin inhabitants, according to a new study published in Science […]
By Barbara Fraser 23 February 2018 (Nature) – The jaguar was found floating in a drainage canal in Belize City, Belize, on the day after Christmas last year. Its body was mostly intact, but the head was missing its fangs. On 10 January 2018, a second cat — this time, an ocelot that may have […]
28 September 2017 (WHRC) – A revolutionary new approach to measuring changes in forest carbon density has helped WHRC scientists determine that the tropics now emit more carbon than they capture, countering their role as a net carbon “sink.” The shift from carbon sink to carbon “source” was caused by widespread deforestation, degradation and disturbance, […]
By Ben Walker 25 August 2017 SANTIAGO K, Bolivia (InsideClimate News) – Someone’s nearly always lived in Santiago K. Cupped in the Bolivian highlands that border Chile, the small village is littered by centuries of conquest and expansion: from the pre-Incas, who ringed the surrounding hills with protective fortresses, to the gold-hungry Spanish conquistadors drawn […]
22 June 2017 (United Nations) – Of the quarter of a billion people who used drugs in 2015, about 29.5 million – or 0.6 per cent of the global adult population – were engaged in “problematic use” and suffered from drug use disorders, including dependence, according to report out today from the United Nations drugs […]
By Jonathan Watts 28 May 2017 Vila Bela da Santíssima Trindade (The Guardian) – To understand why the Brazilian government is deliberately losing the battle against deforestation, you need only retrace the bootmarks of the Edwardian explorer Percy Fawcett along the Amazonian border with Bolivia. During a failed attempt to cross a spectacular tabletop […]
19 January 2017 (United Nations) – Obesity and overweight are on the rise throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, and are prevalent particularly among women and children, according to a new United Nations-backed report. Nearly 360 million people, or 58 per cent of the inhabitants of the region, are overweight with the highest rates observed […]
Washington, DC, 12 January 2017 (Human Rights Watch) – The rise of populist leaders in the United States and Europe poses a dangerous threat to basic rights protections while encouraging abuse by autocrats around the world, Human Rights Watch said today in launching its World Report 2017 [pdf]. Donald Trump’s election as US president after […]
4 January 2017 (The Associated Press) – Last year, the flowering quinoa plants painted Florencio Tola’s farmlands in vibrant sepia and ochre tones. But this season, all that could be seen was the straw colour of dried-out stalks that never germinated amid Bolivia’s worst drought in 30 years. Nearby a collection of scrawny cows, with […]
By Jan Rocha26 November 2016 SÃO PAOLO (Climate News Network) – The government of Bolivia, a landlocked country in the heart of South America, has been forced to declare a state of emergency as it faces its worst drought for at least 25 years. Much of the water supply to La Paz, the highest capital […]
