The contract looked like a winner to Naucalpan, a heavily industrial community near Mexico City. A Mexican corporation whose U.S. shareholders claimed 40 years of solid-waste handling experience in California promised a $20-million investment to provide 70 state-of-the-art garbage trucks, trash collection services and a 210-megawatt power plant to burn methane gas from the municipality’s landfills. So Naucalpan signed a 15-year concession with Desechos Sólidos de Naucalpan (Desona) on Nov. 15, 1993. The deal flopped. But it also appears to have created something of a precedent. That’s because it prompted a complaint under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). And last month, the panel charged with hearing such cases—the World Bank’s International Centre for the Settlement...
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The U.S. government must respond to complaints that it is violating a law aimed at protecting migratory birds, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) says. The CEC, a tri-national environmental body created as part of the NAFTA, has ordered the response so it can consider a citizens’ complaint filed by nine nonprofit groups from Mexico, the United States and Canada. According to the groups, the United States has illegally exempted logging operations from compliance with the U.S. Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which prohibits the killing of migratory birds without a permit. The act implements treaties the United States signed with NAFTA partners Canada and Mexico to protect migratory bird populations. In its Dec. 23 request, the CEC’s Secretariat gave the United States 30 days...
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The Eidai timber company of Osaka, Japan, is reforesting parts of Pará and Amazonia states in Brazil to boost support for tree farming. But the company, one of the largest exporters of Amazon wood, has not had the easiest time promoting an eco-friendly image of late. That’s because a sting operation staged last month by Brazilian officials and members of the Greenpeace environmental group traced an illegal shipment of timber to an Eidai plant in the Amazon. The case is getting more than the usual amount of attention not only because of the cooperation of Greenpeace and Ibama, the government agency that implements and enforces Brazilian environmental law. It also has stirred interest because of a secret weapon used to trace the shipment: invisible...
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A botanical insecticide is being tested in Latin America on the expectation that tropical farmers will find it faster acting and environmentally safer than synthetic compounds. The product, developed by EcoSMART Technologies of Roswell, Georgia, and in use in the United States for several years, is a mixture of natural oils. EcoSMART is in the early stages of negotiating Latin American distribution contracts with Chiquita Brands, Inc. and working to get the brand name, Hexa-Hydroxyl, registered in the region, company officials say. The company has done field trials on crops in Mexico and is negotiating distribution in Chile, Puerto Rico and other countries in the region, says General Manager Doug Mayer. According to Murray Isman, whose University of British Colombia laboratory helped develop the...
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