Development threatens Latin America's great Pantanal wetlands

France24 –AFP, 17 March 2018

A Yacare Caiman, in the Pantanal wetlands of Mato Grosso state, Brazil (CÁCERES
(BRAZIL) (AFP)

You can only just hear the murmur of running water through Plinia Rodrigues' vegetable garden, but that tiny stream has a huge job: keeping alive Latin America's mammoth wetlands, known as the Pantanal.

Rodrigues, 63, shows off the thick stands of palms and other native plants crowding around the fish-filled, crystalline water. The garden in the tiny community of Piraputanga in the far west of Brazil, near the border of Bolivia, looks like a little slice of paradise.

It's also important, one of a myriad of similar streams rising from the lush landscape to feed the mighty Paraguay river, which in turn underpins the Pantanal.

But with industrialized agriculture encroaching deeper and deeper into former wilderness, that fragile water network nestled between Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia is now under serious threat, experts say.

The problem is that even if the Pantanal itself is protected -- and Brazil's Congress is currently considering additional measures -- destruction of the sources upstream would be just as bad.

Rodrigues, who raises chickens, makes cheese and grows vegetables, says the undergrowth flourishing along her stream shows its good health. The plants help keep the banks in place, shielding the water and the life in it.

"We don't touch the river banks, so they're full of trees. We want to preserve what we have," she said, adding that she has only told a handful of other people about the hard-to-access spot where the stream is born.

But she's aware of the growing threat from deforestation, pesticides and industrial-scale planting of monocrops like soya.

Once, big fish swam here but they vanished when a nearby hydroelectric station blocked their path, she says.

"Everyone around here works with soya. Since that started, our trees haven't produced such good fruit," she said. "We grew papaya for the market but not any longer and the oranges have turned ugly."

Natural treasure trove

Covering 65,600 square miles (170,500 square kilometers), the Pantanal contains some 4,000 species of flora and fauna. But even though the Pantanal is Brazil's best preserved biosphere, that doesn't mean it isn't under pressure.

The Pantanal itself enjoys many legal protections and some 82 percent is untouched, the World Wildlife Fund says, but in the area where water rises, 55 percent of the territory has suffered deforestation.

"This region is at risk and if nothing is done to change this, we'll start seeing the collapse of the Pantanal during the coming years," said Julio Cesar Sampaio, WWF's coordinator for the Cerrado-Pantanal.

On the Pantanal, life is governed by the coming and going of the dry and rainy seasons. Between October and May, rain-swelled rivers spill and gradually flood 80 percent of the whole area, leaving only rich green islands.

At peak flooding, the Pantanal is a spectacular place for fishing and adventurous tourists. Birds, alligators, jaguars, monkeys and the mammoth green anaconda snake call this magical place home.

The Pantanal also plays an important role in controlling the climate, says Sergio Freitas, who studies the region at the University of Brasilia.

"The surface functions as a big mirror made of water, reflecting part of the heat back and making the climate more agreeable," he said.

It's not that humans can't coexist with the natural treasure house. Local cowboys, called "pantaneiros," move their herds in rhythm with the movement of the floods.

Freitas said ranchers have had a presence for more than 200 years without causing undue impact. The problem was the arrival in recent decades of intensive agriculture, reducing the topsoil and muddying the streams.

A better balance could still be achieved if the government applies incentives for producers to diversify and to steer away from current unsustainable practices, he said.

Development threatens Latin America's great Pantanal wetlands https://t.co/LgCKvqlVZq pic.twitter.com/kzGw4rKWbD

— AFP news agency (@AFP) March 18, 2018

Solar panels shine in darkest Amazon, the 'last frontier'

Yahoo – AFP, Paula RAMON, October 11, 2017

Remote communities in the Amazon, such as here near Labrea, are being encouraged
to use solar energy to power their villages (AFP Photo/CARL DE SOUZA)

Ituxi Extractive Reserve (Brazil) (AFP) - In the darkest reaches of Brazil's Amazon, solar panels are bringing light -- and could help save the rainforest.

Aurelio Souza is working to install solar panels in villages along the remote Purus and Ituxi rivers in the western Amazonas state.

"The Amazon is the last big frontier for electricity in the country," says the consultant for a joint program of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Brazil's environmental agency ICMBio.

"You have at least two million people (in the Brazilian Amazon) without access to modern energy."

Bringing power to millions might not sound like an obvious way to preserve the world's greatest forest, already under constant pressure from loggers and farmers.

But consider what the solar panels are replacing.

In tiny communities of the Ituxi nature reserve, west of the city of Labrea, small scale farmers almost universally depend on noisy, smoky generators for light and refrigeration -- and frequent trips to buy more fuel at higher than usual prices.

To keep fish they catch in the rivers fresh they also use large quantities of Styrofoam, another environmental menace.

"The reduction in the consumption of diesel cuts greenhouse gases and reduces the dependency of communities on fossil fuels," Souza said.

The project was launched in July in a neighboring nature reserve, called Medio Purus, home to about 6,000 people who subsist on fishing and family farms. And without the din of generators drowning out the deep silence of the forest night, life is already changing.

In Cassiana, in the Amazon's Medio Purus Reserve, night classes have benefited

from solar energy (AFP Photo/CARL DE SOUZA)

Silence

At the community school in the Cassiana community, part of Medio Purus, night classes taught by satellite link have already become a whole lot more rewarding now that the generator is no longer needed.

"We couldn't concentrate with the noise of the motor and a lot of our classes were cancelled because there wasn't enough fuel," said Francisca de Almeida, 30, who is in her second year of studies.

Further up the river in the settlement of Jurucua, neighbors are using solar power to run a cassava mill, while Maria Francisca de Souza, 54, is finally able to have river water pumped to her house. She hopes to build her first bathroom soon.

The community association for the Ituxi reserve, with a population of barely 600, has hooked up to solar power to run a water well pump. There's even a refrigerator for special occasions that used to cost $400 a month in fuel.

These might be small steps but innovation is the best bet for Brazilians in remote communities. Despite an official state policy of bringing power to the entire country, "the cost is very high in these places," Souza said.

Solar panels donated by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Brazilian government
are carried by boat to the village of Volta do Bucho in the Western Amazon (AFP Photo/
CARL DE SOUZA)

For Irismar Duarte, vice president of the Ituxi association, the solar panels open the door to more progress.

"Everyone is looking for ways to innovate and people are adapting to the changes. That's what we're trying to do here," she said.

The association hopes to get a freezer next and ability to power equipment to ramp up production of acai, a potentially valuable fruit which so far is only grown for domestic consumption.

When Duarte hears the solar panel-powered pumps fire up, almost noiselessly, she still can hardly believe the change.

"It's a dream, something I thought would never happen," he says.

Costa Rica boasts clean energy -- and bad car pollution

Yahoo – AFP, Marco SIBAJA, November 19, 2015

The Churchill Mamiche ice-cream parlour in Caldera, Puntarenas, 80 km 

southwest of San Jose is entirely powered --day and night-- by solar panels

(AFP Photo/Ezequiel Becerra)

Caldera (Costa Rica) (AFP) - At dusk one weekend on Costa Rica's tropical Pacific coast, Mamiche is catering to a line of customers in front of the beachside ice-cream stand he tends.

All looks balmy and typical -- except for one little detail: the stand's refrigerator, fan and lighting are not connected to the electricity network and there's no noisy generator.

Instead, solar panels on the roof are providing the power, another sign of an eco-friendly push in Costa Rica that has made the country a model of development and clean energy.

Costa Rica expects 97% of its energy 

generation to come from renewable

 sources this year (AFP Photo/

Ezequiel Becerra)

The ice-cream outlet's owner, Luis Diego Vasquez, recalls how he used to spend up to $40 a day on fueling a smelly generator to keep the shop running.

"Fed up with the noise and the pollution, we started thinking about putting up solar panels to use the sun -- something we have a lot of here," he told AFP.

Land of renewable energy

With an electricity grid supplied by hydroelectric dams across rivers, from the heat of its numerous volcanoes, and from wind and the sun, the small Central American nation expects 97 percent of its energy generation to come from renewable sources this year.

"Costa Rica has renewable resources -- a sun that shines. The wind. It has hydro resources. And all of that, along with geothermal and biomass energy, allows us to have such a renewable energy network," Javier Orozco, planning chief at the national energy company ICE, told AFP.

Next to him, ICE's CEO, Carlos Obregon, said the ultimate aim was to eventually have 100 percent renewable energy, "but that requires us to find a balance between different energy production, and that's not a question of a year, but of many years."

Still, the country caught the attention of the world ahead of December's COP21 UN Convention on Climate Change in Paris by being totally reliant on renewable energy for the first 75 days of this year, with no recourse to its thermal plants using fossil fuels.

A report by the environmental protection group WWF last year highlighted the country as a Latin American leader in clean energy and predicted that in 2021 it would have an entirely renewable energy supply.

Owner Luis Diego Vasquez installs more solar panels for the Churchill 

Mamiche ice-cream parlour (AFP Photo/Ezequiel Becerra)

Polluting cars

But there is another side to Costa Rica, one that tarnishes its image as an environmentally conscientious nation: that of its congested roads, saturated with old cars and buses, many spewing smoke.

According to the Environment and Energy Ministry, the transport sector is responsible for 66 percent of hydrocarbon consumption and 54 percent of carbon-dioxide emissions, one of the principal gases responsible for climate change.

Despite its clean-energy network, Costa Rica produced 1.7 metric tons of CO2 per head of population between 2011 and 2015, on a level with other countries at a similar stage of development, such as Colombia or Uruguay, World Bank figures show.

Costa Rica has nearly 1.4 million cars for a population of five million. RITEVE, its roadworthiness inspection agency, says the average age of the vehicles is 16 years, which aggravates the emission problem.

In an effort to address the issue, one lawmaker, Marcela Guerrero, of the governing Citizen Action Party, last month presented a bill to lift import duties on electric vehicles for five years and to encourage ownership of CO2 emission-free cars.

She told AFP that she hoped to see 100,000 electric cars replace ones with conventional engines.

"We want users, with clear signals, to get behind a new pattern of consumption that will lower emissions," she said.

Wind turbines of the National Power and Light Company in Santa Ana, 

Costa Rica (AFP Photo/Ezequiel Becerra)

Electric train?

Another initiative is to start up an urban electric train system in the most populated center of the country, where the congested capital San Jose lies.

Although considered crucial from transport and environmental perspectives, lawmakers have made little headway in having the train project approved because of funding discrepancies.

Guerrero said she was confident a consensus allowing a vote would be reached by April 2016, and that the trains would be operational in the following five years.

The question is whether Costa Rica can maintain its clean energy goal while providing the sparks needed for electric transport.

Obregon is convinced that ICE will be able to handle the increased demand by deepening investment in non-conventional sources such as wind and solar power, which currently play a marginal role in its mix.

"We are preparing for a future where consumers are also (energy) generators," making contributions to the grid through private solar panels and the like, he said.

If it goes that way, Mamiche's little stand may end up selling not only ice, but fire.

Related Article:

Benin tackles climate change with sunshine and coconuts

Antarctic Treaty signatories make marine protection progress

Yahoo – AFP,  8 May 2014

Brazilian Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira (foreground on screens) delivers

 a speech during the opening session of the XXXVII Antarctic Treaty Consultative

Meeting (ATCM), in Brasilia, on April 28, 2014 (AFP Photo/Evaristo Sa)

Brasília (AFP) - Antarctic Treaty signatories made progress towards future protection of the icy continent's marine life, NGO officials said.

Authorities at the treaty's annual meeting, in Brasilia this year, "sent a strong message of support" to the commission overseeing Antarctic wildlife protection, said Mark Epstein, director of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition.

Member countries strongly urged "designating marine protected areas in the Southern Ocean," he added.

The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources was launched in 1982 to try to conserve marine life there amid rising commercial interest in Antarctic krill resources, a main component of the ecosystem.

Progress on the issue had been at a standstill since 2012. The commission, based in Hobart, Australia, has held three meetings since then and has been unable to get Russia and Ukraine on board.

"The Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting has breathed new life into the marine protected areas process after the last two years of challenges and disappointments," said the Antarctic Ocean Alliance's Steve Campbell, whose group includes large players such as the WWF and Greenpeace.

Waters off Antarctica had long been largely protected, but as fishing advances into the area, many species and ecosystems face previously unknown threats.

The Antarctic Treaty establishes that the continent will not be militarized, can be used for scientific research and should be free of territorial claims.

Related Articles:

"Around the Horn" - (a message from Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll)

“… Now, in the process of all of this, there's going to be renewed interest in Antarctica, and you're going to find some interesting things about the land under the ice. The topography of the land under the ice does not match the topography of the ice above. Some astonishing shapes will be revealed when you map the actual land under the ice. Points of mountains are going to be revealed, giving an entire different idea of what Antarctica might have been and what its purpose really is. The continent that is uninhabitable by Human Beings may very well be the engine of life for Human Beings. And I will leave it at that. …”