Around the Region

Assessing the environmental record of Nafta, 20 years on

The three-nation Commission for Environmental Cooperation’s public-advisory committee is planning to hold a public review next month of the effectiveness of the environmental side accord to the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). The discussion, scheduled for Oct. 17-18 in Washington, D.C. is intended to mark the 20th anniversary of the implementation of both Nafta and the side accord, officially known as the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC). The session is expected to attract participants ranging from academics and environmental advocates to government officials and executives from the three Nafta signatory nations—Canada, Mexico and the United States. The CEC Joint Public Advisory Committee (JPAC) launched a call in July for information and comments on how well North America is dealing...

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Class-action asbestos lawsuit is filed in Brazil

Brazilian workplace watchdogs this month filed an R$1 billion (US$416 million) class-action lawsuit against Eternit, a producer of building materials made with asbestos. A group of public labor prosecutors, who are watchdogs for abusive workplace practices, cited evidence that hundreds of former workers at a now-shuttered Eternit plant suffer from asbestos-related illnesses. The lawsuit points to a São Paulo state medical research center’s finding that 300 of the nearly 1,000 former Eternit plant workers it examined from 2000 to 2013 suffered from illnesses linked to prolonged exposure to asbestos. Among those illnesses is asbestosis, a chronic inflammatory and fibrotic medical condition affecting the lungs that can lead to cancer. Ninety of the 300 who were sick have died. The plant...

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Cloud forest has yielded new, but maybe not last, surprise

A small animal described as a cross between a house cat and a teddy bear is the first new carnivorous mammal to be discovered in more than three decades, but scientists believe it is not the last surprise lurking in the cloud forest. Called an olinguito, the animal had been misclassified in museum collections as an olingo, the name given to several species of raccoon-like tree dwellers whose range spans the tropical forests of southern Central America and northern South America. But while studying olingos in museum collections, Kristofer Helgen, mammal curator at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, noticed that some specimens collected in Ecuador were different. DNA tests confirmed that they were a separate species, and he wondered if it...

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Project targets pollution of São Paulo reservoirs

Brazil’s government plans to invest R$3.3 billion (US$1.36 billion) in a project to further reduce the amount of raw sewage being dumped into two sprawling reservoirs that supply the city of São Paulo, South America’s largest metropolis, with 40% of its drinking water. The project, which President Dilma Rousseff announced at a July 31 City Hall ceremony, targets settler communities on the banks of the Billings and Guarapiranga reservoirs, which lie just a few miles apart. The reservoirs were created by damming several large rivers and now occupy 154 square miles (400 square kilometers) on the southern periphery of the city. Some 450,000 slum-dwelling families (1.8 million people) have illegally settled in the area since the 1980s. The R$3.3 billion third...

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Course targets parks issues in U.S. and Latin America

Latin Americans whose work focuses on natural areas recently spent a month in the Rocky Mountain west of the United States learning about parks and recreation management in a challenging environmental context. Sponsored by Colorado State University’s Center for Protected Area Management and Training and the U.S. Forest Service, the Spanish-language course involved 23 employees of non-governmental groups and public agencies active in parks issues in a dozen Latin nations. The course exposed the students to a century’s worth of U.S. parks management and conservation experiences, both positive and negative, says James Barborak, the center’s co-director. As part of their studies, participants learned about a broad range of U.S. parks and conservation initiatives on public and private lands. “What we stress is...

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