São Paulo, January 28, 2015 (Associated Press) – The worst drought to hit Brazil’s biggest city in decades may leave residents with water service only two days a week. São Paulo water utility company Sabesp says a five days-off, two days-on system would be a last-ditch effort to prevent the collapse of the Cantareira water […]
BRASILIA, Brazil, 24 January 2015 (Australian News.Net) – Brazil’s Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira has told the media following a crisis meeting at the presidential palace in Brasilia that the country is experiencing its worst drought since 1930. The states of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Minas Gerais are the worst affected, she said after […]
São Paulo, 16 January 2015 (Associated Press) – Halfway through the rainy season, the key reservoir for the southern hemisphere’s largest city holds just 6% of its capacity, and experts warned Friday that São Paulo’s authorities must take urgent steps to prevent the worst drought in more than 80 years from drying it out. The […]
10 December 2014 (mongabay.com) – Forest-dependent peoples face grave threats from deforestation and other depredations, warns a new report that urges greater recognition of traditional land use and support of community-led initiatives to fight forest loss. The report, published Monday during climate talks in Lima, is based on research by dozens of indigenous and forest […]
By BRAD BROOKS and ADRIANA GOMEZ LICON 4 December 2014 SÃO PAULO (Associated Press) – Vera Lucia de Oliveira looks to the sky, hoping for any sign of rain. For weeks, the taps in her home have run dry as São Paulo has suffered its worst drought in eight decades, with rainfall at one-third the […]
By Jonathan Watts and Dan Collyns6 December 2014 LIMA, Peru (The Guardian) – The body of an indigenous leader who was opposed to a major mining project in Ecuador has been found bound and buried, days before he planned to take his campaign to climate talks in Lima. The killing highlights the violence and harassment […]
By Adriana Brasileiro29 November 2014 RIO DE JANEIRO (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – São Paulo, Brazil’s drought-hit megacity of 20 million, has about two months of guaranteed water supply remaining as it taps into the second of three emergency reserves, officials say. The city began using its second so-called “technical reserve” 10 days ago to prevent […]
By Rhett Butler 26 November 2014 (mongabay.com) – Preliminary data released by the Brazilian government suggests that deforestation in Earth’s largest rainforest slowed 18 percent over the past year. Figures published Wednesday by Brazil’s National Space Research Institute (INPE) show that 4,848 square kilometers (1,871 square miles) of forest — an area about the size […]
By Natalia Ramos26 November 2014 (AFP News) – He cast his rod happily here for 30 years — but where a river once teemed with fish, Brazilian fisherman Ernane da Silva these days stares out over a valley of weeds and bone dry, sun-parched land. The southeastern state of São Paulo is suffering its worst […]
By Dom Phillips 18 November 2014 ATIBAIA, Brazil (Washington Post) – Seen from a micro-light aircraft, flying low near this small town in Brazil’s interior, the scale of the water crisis blighting São Paulo, a megalopolis 40 miles away, was frighteningly clear. Four of the five reservoirs in an interlinked system that supplies 6.5 million […]