JANUARY 2010

Around the Region

Restrictions on power-plant emissions weighed in Chile

Chile is preparing tough new norms to curb emissions from the nation’s thermoelectric plants.

The new rules, announced last month and now subject to a public-hearings process, have won praise from green groups and drawn heavy criticism from industry and from Chilean Energy Minister Marcelo Tokman.

Latin America to loom large in global biodiversity talks

With the United Nations dubbing 2010 the “International Year of Biodiversity,” environmental groups worldwide are spotlighting species loss—now occurring at 1,000 times the natural rate.

Latin America, not surprisingly, occupies center stage.

New protected areas in Peru target cloud forest and coast

Peru’s designation in December of three new protected areas-- two in northern Amazonas cloud forest and a third covering a string of coastal islands and peninsulas—has boosted the country’s conservation lands to 19,380,000 hectares (74,830 square miles).

Argentine town’s smelting waste is targeted in study

The Human Rights Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law has presented the United Nations a report detailing a history of environmental and health impacts from a lead-smelting facility in an Argentine indigenous community near the Bolivian border.