Environment

• Tuesday, August 10th 2010 - 00:54 UTC

  World Bank pouring 11 billion to build 211 dams with impact on tribal people

  

  To mark the UN Day of Indigenous People, Survival International has released a new report highlighting the devastating impact on tribal people of a massive boom in dam-building for hydropower.

• Saturday, August 7th 2010 - 05:44 UTC

  UN/Ecuador agree on trust fund to protect bio-diversity from oil industry

  

  The United Nations Development Programme, UNDP, and Ecuador have reached agreement to set up a trust fund to protect an ecological site in an oil-rich area of the South American country’s Amazon region.

• Friday, August 6th 2010 - 03:04 UTC

  Gualeguaychú pulp-mill activists to meet again with minister Timerman

  

  Argentine Foreign Affairs minister Hector Timerman said he held a “very important meeting” with Gualeguaychú Assembly members after the group of activists requested to be given an explanation of the upcoming joint monitoring of the River Uruguay recently agreed by Argentina and neighbouring Uruguay.

• Thursday, August 5th 2010 - 09:14 UTC

  Beware (River Uruguay) contaminators, warns Argentine top scientist

  

  Contaminators “beware, the time of reckoning is coming” warns Enrique Martinez Argentina’s president of the National Institute of Industrial Technology, INTI who in a brief opinion column praises the recent agreement reached between Uruguay and Argentina to monitor the River Uruguay and ensure the non contamination of the shared water course.

• Thursday, August 5th 2010 - 05:00 UTC

  Snow in Brazil, below zero Celsius in the River Plate and tropical fish frozen

  

  For a second day running it snowed Wednesday in Southern Brazil and in twelve of Argentina’s 24 provinces including parts of Buenos Aires as a consequence of the polar front covering most of the continent’s southern cone with zero and below zero temperatures.

• Thursday, August 5th 2010 - 01:32 UTC

  Mining and agriculture disputing scarce water resources in northern Chile

  

  With the mining industry increasing its presence in northern Chile, problems over resources are arising between the mining and agricultural industries, especially over water.

• Wednesday, August 4th 2010 - 21:02 UTC

  Vegetables and meat prices push Uruguay’s inflation in July above 1%

  

  Uruguay’s consumer inflation increased 1.09% in July accumulating 4.21% so far this year and 6.29% in the last twelve months, which is in the target range of the Central bank.

• Tuesday, August 3rd 2010 - 15:37 UTC

  Southern Chile Commerson dolphins’ population falls dramatically

  

  A recent study showed a reduction in the population of Commerson’s Dolphins living in the southern tip of Chile. Commerson’s are also known as Panda Dolphins (or Tonina Overa in Spanish).

• Tuesday, August 3rd 2010 - 15:28 UTC

  Brazil greens claim 300.000 sharks have been killed for their fins

  

  Demand for shark fin soup in Asia has been blamed for the illegal killing of nearly 300,000 sharks off Brazil, an environmental group has alleged. The Environmental Justice Institute in Brazil has accused a seafood exporter (Siglo do Brasil Comercio) of illegally killing nearly 300,000 sharks.

• Tuesday, August 3rd 2010 - 05:50 UTC

  Santiago suffering the coldest July since 1908: 2 degrees below monthly average

  

  Santiago just had the coldest July since 1908 with an average temperature of 6 degrees Celsius. That is 2 degrees under the usual monthly average, according to the Department of Geophysics of the University of Chile.