Speaking in La Macarena, a town near one of Colombia’s most prized national parks, President Iván Duque announced last month that his government will deploy 10% of its troops—about 10,000—to curb the country’s rampant deforestation. Colombia loses around 200,000 hectares (494,000 acres) of forestland annually due to illegal logging as well as deforestation associated with such other activities as unauthorized mining and drug trafficking. Citing a “hemorrhaging of the forests,” Duque on April 28 launched Operation Artemis, under which security forces would safeguard key woodlands, primarily national parks including La Macarena, Serranía de Chiribiquete, Tinigua and Los Picachos. “As part of our national security strategy, we are going to have zero tolerance for deforestation,” Duque said. “The defense of biodiversity, the defense of our tropical forests and the defense of our national parks should be something that unites us as a country.” Though the government has released no...
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An attack in Colombia on community leaders, among them 2018 Goldman Environmental Prize winner Francia Márquez, has spurred calls for the national government to improve protection of the country’s environmental and human rights activists. On May 4, gunmen fired on Márquez and other community leaders from the department of Cauca, in southwestern Colombia, as they were meeting in the town of Santander de Quilichao to prepare for discussions with national government officials on May 8. Two bodyguards protecting the meeting’s attendees were hospitalized after suffering non-life-threatening injuries in the attack, which also involved a grenade explosion. “As a black community from northern Cauca, we were preparing a meeting with the government to dialogue about the framework of the agreements with the Minga and were attacked with weapons and grenades by armed men,” Márquez wrote in a Twitter post on the day of the attack, referring to a northern...
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Paraguay is preparing to launch an electronic national forest atlas that will track land clearing nationwide, revealing where it is being done illegally. The atlas is a project of Paraguay’s National Forest Institute (Infona) and the nongovernmental groups World Resources Institute and WWF. When fully up and running, it will provide weekly updated images obtained through the WRI platform Global Forest Watch and combine them with Infona information on where permits have been issued for legal land clearing. Integration of the permitting information into the system is still ongoing, Paraguayan officials say. “Many of the authorizations for [land clearing] are not digitized, and we hope to finish loading them in the course of this year,” says Víctor González, Infona legal director. “As of today, with the Global Forest Watch platform one can see where deforestation is occurring, but not yet which is legal and which is not.” A formal presentation...
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To mixed reviews, Brazil’s Environment Ministry last month unveiled a plan calling for the expenditure of up to R$2.75 billion (US$684 million) over three years to eliminate illegal waste dumps nationwide. Industry experts have welcomed the “Zero Waste Dumps” program, but assert it is underfunded. For their part, environmentalists say the effort lacks specifics on how, and with what funds, the initiative will reach its lofty goals. Environment Minister Ricardo Salles formally launched the program on April 30, calling the country’s illegal dumps “a national embarrassment and a public health problem.” Rainwater that collects in spent tires discarded in such sites provides a vast breeding ground for mosquitoes that transmit dengue fever, the Zika virus and other diseases. Meanwhile, leachate from the dumps—which are uncovered, are not underlain with impermeable liners and lack treatment systems—seeps underground, polluting water sources. Nor is methane from the dumps’ organic...
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