INSECT BIODIVERSITY IN AMAZON MAY BE RESULT OF ICE AGE CLIMATE CHANGE AND ANCIENT FLOODING, NOT RIVER BARRIERS
(ARTICLE 1 OF 2)

Ice age climate change and ancient flooding--but not barriers created by rivers--may have promoted the evolution of new insect species in the Amazon region of South America, a new study suggests. The Amazon basin is home to the richest diversity of life on earth, yet the reasons why this came to be are not well understood. A team of American and Brazilian researchers, led by former graduate student Dr. Scott Solomon of The University of Texas at Austin, studied three species of leafcutter ants from Central and South America to determine how geography and climate affect the formation of new species. In order to evaluate the three most popular hypotheses as to why there's such a diversity of species in the Amazon, Solomon collected genetic samples from 194 leafcutter ant colonies scattered throughout the Amazon basin. "Scott is the first to thoroughly test the importance of geographic barriers for the origin of insect biodiversity in South America, using the leafcutter ants as a model system," says study co-author Ulrich Mueller, the W.M. Wheeler Lost Pines Professor of Integrative Biology and Solomon's graduate adviser. "He's following in the footsteps of Alfred Wallace, the pioneering naturalist who, along with Darwin, first noted that many species are found in geographic proximity to closely related species."
By combining analysis of the genetic information with knowledge of the species' current ranges and "paleodistribution" models of what the species' ranges were during the last ice age, Solomon, Mueller and their colleagues found support for both the "Pleistocene refugia hypothesis" and the "marine incursion hypothesis." The genetic and the climatic results, however, both suggested that the "riverine barrier hypothesis" cannot explain insect biodiversity.
(SECOND PART AT THIS SAME PLACE TOMORROW)




BRAZILS INTERNATIONAL AMAZON FUND GROWING AND BECOMING MORE OF A REALITY EVERY DAY

Norway will give Brazil US$1 billion by 2015 to preserve the Amazon rain forest, as long as Latin America's largest nation keeps trying to stop deforestation, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said last Tuesday. The promised donation is the first to a new Amazon preservation fund Brazilian officials hope will raise US$21 billion to protect nature reserves, to persuade loggers and farmers to stop destroying trees and to finance scientific and technological projects. "Efforts against deforestation may give us the largest, quickest and cheapest reductions in greenhouse gas emissions," Stoltenberg told reporters. "Brazilian efforts against deforestation are therefore of vital importance if we shall succeed in our campaign against global warming." Amazon trees are felled by loggers or burned in bulk, releasing an estimated 400 million tons of carbon dioxide - 80 percent of Brazil's greenhouse gases - into the atmosphere every year and making the country one of the world's top sources of emissions. Brazil slowed Amazon jungle clearing between 2005 and 2007, but environmentalists worry the trend may now reverse itself, as more trees are cut to make way for cattle ranches and soy plantations that soaring world food prices have made more profitable. Norway will give Brazil US$21 million this year and $210 million next year, but plans to donate the full US$1 billion only "we are able to see a clear documentation that deforestation is being reduced," Stoltenberg said. He added that Norway will use Brazil's annual statistics on deforestation to determine how much money to release, although Norway plans to develop better systems to track deforestation - a task now complicated by clouds that hang over the jungle for much of the year. "The day that every developed country has the same attitude as Norway, we'll certainly begin to trust that global warming can be diminished," said Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Environment Minister Carlos Minc said Japan, Sweden, Germany, South Korea and Switzerland are considering donating to the fund, which Silva created by decree in August. The donations will be key to a new development model for the impoverished Amazon region, which covers nearly 60 percent of Brazil, Minc added. The Amazon loses the equivalent of one-and-a-half football fields of forest every minute to logging, ranching and farming, the Brazilian environmental group Imazon has estimated. About 20 percent of the forest, which covers an area larger than Western Europe, has been destroyed.




CAN BUSINESS AND CONSERVATION GO HAND IN HAND IN THE AMAZON? (PART 3 OF 3)


The Kyoto protocol rewards those who chop down trees but then replant, but makes no provision for those who do not chop down their trees in the first place. Hylton Murray-Philipson is the managing director of Canopy Capitol, whose idea is simple enough. "If you had bought the rights to car-parking in 1950, and agreed to pay Hammersmith council £1 per slot, for 100 years," he explained, "for the first 10 years of that investment, everybody would be laughing at you, they'd think you were completely crazy."Think of it now - something that was inconceivable then is now commonplace - we all pay £100 a slot or whatever it is. So if you had those rights, you would now be sitting pretty." Hylton sees the essential services that the rainforests provide in the same way. He has secured the rights to 370,000 hectares of Guyana's rainforest, and needed to attract 10 investors to get his project going. He got them with just 12 calls. "Nobody has called me mad for placing such a value on the services of the rainforest," he said. In fact the World Bank has invited him to speak at their annual meeting. And if I needed proof that the basic premise of Hylton's idea could be rolled out across an entire country, I soon got it. President Bharrat Jagdeo of Guyana has actually offered stewardship of his country's entire rainforest to the UK, in exchange not for investment, but development aid and assistance. Despite his rainforest being the size of England, and despite his offer being on the table for over two years, Mr Jagdeo has, incredibly, had no response to his offer. But it was at least possible to see that the forces that had been responsible for the destruction of the rainforest could be deployed to save it. It will take a great deal of work and international resolve to apply the idea to a country the size of Brazil, but many of the people I met on my journey told me one thing that convinced me that things could change. It is absurd that while beef, soya and timber reach record prices, the essential services that the rainforests provide are worth nothing. Enough people from all sides of the debate seem to be realising this, and that is what leaves me believing that the rainforest can, as it must, be saved.




CAN BUSINESS AND CONSERVATION GO HAND IN HAND IN THE AMAZON?
(PART 2 OF 3)

Farmer's alliance
As I stood next to one huge forest fire, I thought of all the times I have been urged to unplug my phone charger, turn my TV off standby or turn the thermostat down by a couple of degrees.
Yet I cannot remember ever being told that the fires burning down the rainforest are responsible for 20% of worldwide carbon emissions, the same amount as all the transport in the world combined. Thankfully I soon met a few men who were convinced that things could change. In the state of Mato Grosso, the most deforested state in Brazil, I met American John Carter, a Gulf War veteran, who is married to a Brazilian. He arrived in the Amazon over 10 years ago, thinking, like me, that after all the rhetoric, there had to be people on the ground making huge strides in conservation.
Bank backing
John decided to go it alone, and set up the Land Alliance, which now includes 166 farms and controls over 1.6m hectares of land.
Not only are they committed to sustainable development, John has attracted voluntary money from the Dutch agricultural Rabobank, who pay him to keep enough of his forest standing to offset their carbon emissions. I asked John how the money he gets from Rabobank compares to the money he gets from traditional crops. "It's easily three times more than I could make than I could make with beef and it's twice what I could make with soya beans. So it's a huge number," he said. That was encouraging enough, but across Brazil's northern border I saw two models that not only place monetary value on standing forests, but do it without relying on payments from carbon emitters.




CAN BUSINESS AND CONSERVATION GO HAND IN HAND IN THE AMAZON?
(PART 1 OF 3)

It would be easy to think that the rainforest was saved, or at least, that the destruction of the Amazon rainforest is no longer one of the great crises facing a planet finally reaching consensus on the issue of global warming. Sting still does annual concerts, but by and large as a cause has largely disappeared from the public sphere. Greenpeace, who have been monitoring deforestation in the Amazon for the last seven years, says that although it was clear that while it may have disappeared as a cause, the loggers, cattle ranchers, and now the soya-farmers are as busy as they have ever been. A sand road, which will one day be paved, was already flanked on both sides by endless fields of crops, burnt-out forest and farmers so sure that they would not get arrested they had built houses, silos, warehouses and roads. Much of this illegal land clearance was even taking place on what is supposed to be protected land. It is clear that environmental campaigning, and Brazilian law itself, have both largely failed to protect the Amazon. Deforestation had been going down for three years straight, but when commodity prices, particularly beef and soya, went up, all the mechanisms that had been lauded, were powerless. Deforestation soon increased - according to some, by as much as 69%. It is also clear that if we are serious about combating climate change, the debate about what to do is seriously skewed.




NORWAY FIRST COUNTRY TO CONTRIBUTE TO THE INTERNATIONAL AMAZON CONSERVATION FUND WITH ONE BILLION DOLLARS

Brazil's environment minister fought off charges that a new international Amazon conservation fund set to receive a large contribution from Norway could threaten the nation's sovereignty. Nationalist politicians and media have warned that foreigners donating to the Amazon Fund, which Brazil unveiled last month, might try to impose their own agenda on Latin America's largest country. "Not all donors think of themselves first," Environment Minister Carlos Minc told a seminar on public policies in the Amazon sponsored by the Roman Catholic Bishops' Conference. Norway is set to make a $100 million donation during a visit to Brazil by Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, an environment ministry spokesman said. "If they want to donate because they're being flooded, let them do so," Minc said in reference to the threat of flooding some countries face due to global warming. Deforestation accounts for 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from human sources, according to U.N. data. Warming can stoke droughts, heat waves, more powerful storms and rising seas. Asked whether the growing presence of foreign farmers and nongovernmental groups in the region was reason for concern, Minc responded: "Today, those who destroy the Amazon are Brazilians." The Amazon Fund will support forest conservation, scientific research and sustainable development projects such as rubber tapping, forestry management and the creation of drugs from plants. Brazil's national development bank BNDES will manage the fund, Minc said. The government hopes to raise $1 billion within a year and as much as $21 billion by 2021, the bank said last month. Some potential donor governments have said they would have too little say in the management of the fund, which is open to companies, countries and nongovernmental organizations. The government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has increased police raids on illegal loggers and expanded protected areas. But it is also building roads and hydroelectric plants that conservationists fear could increase deforestation in the long term.




WHY IT IS IMPORTANT TO CONSERVE THE AMAZON FOREST - CLIMATE AND BIODIVERSITY ISSUES

The rainforests are essential for removing carbon dioxide from the air. As concerns grow about global warming and the future of the planet, much more international attention is being paid to the Amazon region. There are fundamental reasons why the region is important to the rest of the world.
The Amazon and Global Warming
It is not surprising that the Amazon region is often called the "lungs of the world," as it plays a critical role in the global carbon cycle that helps to shape the world's climate. About 200 billion tonnes of carbon are locked up in tropical vegetation around the world, of which about 70 billion tonnes are estimated to be in Amazon trees. Rapid rates of deforestation cause more carbon to be converted into carbon dioxide, either when the trees are burnt down or more slowly by the decomposition of unburned wood. And once the forests are gone, they cannot soak up the carbon from cars, power plants and factories. At the moment the Amazon is thought to absorb about 10 per cent of global fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions. The build-up of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere is one of the key causes of global warming. About 20 per cent of annual global greenhouse emissions are estimated to come from the clearing of tropical forests around the world. According to the Stern Report on the economics of climate change, the loss of natural forests around the world contributes more to global emissions each year than the transport sector. Brazil, for example, is ranked in the top five of the world's largest emitters of greenhouse gases, not because of its high emissions from fossil fuels but because of deforestation. A study released in February 2008 by a team of international scientists from Oxford University, the Potsdam Institute and others concluded that the Amazon rainforest was the second most vulnerable area in the world after the Arctic. The essential idea is that the drying of the Amazon and/or increased deforestation could cause what is called "dieback" of the rain forest and a vicious cycle - a large reduction in the area of Amazon rainforest could cause a significant rise in CO2 emissions, which in turn would raise global temperatures - which in turn would cause more drying of the Amazon. Scientists and climate change modellers disagree how soon a tipping point might happen or how likely it is. But however low the probability, changes to the Amazon are likely to be a "high impact" event on the world's climate.
Biodiversity
The Amazon is the world's largest tract of tropical rainforest, containing the Earth's greatest biological reservoir - around 30 percent of all terrestrial species are found there. The region is the main reason why Brazil is the most bio-diverse country in the world, with more than 50,000 described species of plants, 1,700 species of birds and between 500 and 700 different types each of amphibians, mammals and reptiles. All this rich biodiversity is now being threatened by the destructive combination of stress from climate change and deforestation. Even though there are many unknowns about the Amazon's future and its effect on the world's climate, scientists agree that because of its biodiversity and the crucial role the region plays in shaping the climate, it is a matter of great urgency to find the right policy mix to conserve enough of the forest.




AMAZON RAINFOREST THREATENED BY NEW WAVE OF OIL AND GAS EXPLORATION

With over 35 multinational companies racing to tap into oil and gas reserves situated in peak biodiversity spots, conservationists urge an environmental impact assessment. Vast swathes of the western Amazon are to be opened up for oil and gas exploration, putting some of the planet's most pristine and bio diverse forests at risk, conservationists have warned. A survey of land earmarked for exploration by energy companies revealed a steep rise in recent years, to around 180 zones, which together cover an area of 688,000 sq km, almost equivalent to the size of Texas.
Detailed mapping of the region shows the majority of planned oil and gas projects, which are operated by at least 35 multinational companies, are in the most species-rich areas of the Amazon for mammals, birds and amphibians. Researchers used government information on land that has been leased to state or multinational energy companies over the past four years to create oil and gas exploration maps for western Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and Colombia. The maps showed that in Peru and Ecuador, regions designated for oil and gas projects already cover more than two thirds of the Amazon. Of 64 oil and gas regions that cover 72% of the Peruvian Amazon, all but eight were approved since 2003. Major increases in activity are expected in Bolivia and western Brazil. "We've been following oil and gas development in the Amazon since 2004 and the picture has changed before our eyes," said Matt Finer of Save America's Forests, a US-based environment group. "When you look at where the oil and gas blocks are, they overlap perfectly on top of the peak biodiversity spots, almost as if by design, and this is in one of the most, if not the most, bio diverse place on Earth." Some regions have established oil and gas reserves, but in others, companies will need to cut into the forest to conduct speculative tests, including explosive seismic investigations and test drilling. Typically, companies have seven years to explore a region before deciding whether to go into full production. "The real concern is when exploration is successful and a zone moves into the development phase, because that's when the roads, drilling and pipelines come in," said Finer. Writing in the journal PLoS One, Finer and others from Duke university in North Carolina and Land is Life, a Massachusetts-based environment group, call for governments to rethink how energy reserves in the Amazon are exploited. One issue, the authors argue, is that while companies must submit an environmental impact assessment for their project, these are often considered individually instead of collectively.
"They're not looking at the bigger picture of what happens if there are lots of projects going on at the same time. "You could have each individual company thinking they're being relatively responsible and keeping their own road networks under control and so on, but what happens when you have 15 other projects around you? All of a sudden, when you look at the bigger picture, you have a sprawling road network," said Finer. The creation of widespread road networks will put previously inaccessible forest at risk of deforestation, illegal hunting and logging, the authors argue. The researchers urge companies to adopt a moratorium on new road building, and instead use helicopters to ferry personnel and machinery to and from the sites, as has been done in some locations. They also call for governments to take a broader view of the environmental impacts of new projects, by assessing them as a group rather than individually. Further research by the team found that many of the planned exploration and extraction projects were on land that is home to indigenous people, who whilst being consulted, have no say in whether a project goes ahead or not. At least 58 of the 64 regions in Peru are on land where isolated communities live, with a further 17 infringing areas that have existing or proposed reserves for indigenous groups. "The way that oil development is being pursued in the western Amazon is a gross violation of the rights of the indigenous peoples of the region," said Brain Keane of Land is Life. "International agreements and inter-American human rights law recognise indigenous peoples have rights to their lands, and explicitly prohibit the granting of concessions to exploit natural resources in their territories without their free, prior and informed consent," he added. The report adds that the international community should pay countries in the Amazon to leave forest lands untouched. Ecuador has said it will not develop its largest untapped oil reserve if it receives compensation by the end of the year, an offer that countries have yet to take them up on.




ILLEGAL LOGGERS CONTINUE TO POSE THREAT TO UNCONTACTED INDIGENOUS PEOPLES IN PERU AND BRAZIL

Isolated native Indians in the Amazon forest of Brazil and Peru remain threatened by advancing loggers despite growing international attention to their plight, a senior Brazilian official said on Thursday. "Pressure from Peruvian loggers continues, it's a concern," Marcio Meira, head of the government's Indian affairs agency, Funai, told the foreign press association in Brasilia. Brazil's Acre state along the border with Peru is one of the world's last refuges for such groups, but increasing activity by wildcat miners and loggers puts them at risk. Dramatic pictures of pigment-covered Indians from the region threatening the photographer's aircraft with bows and arrows were carried in May by media worldwide. The Peruvian ambassador to Brazil subsequently told Meira his government was concerned about the issue and preparing measures, without detailing what these were. Brazil has 26 confirmed native Indian tribes that live with little or no contact with the outside world. There are unconfirmed reports of an additional 35 such groups. Many of them live in the forest like their forefathers did centuries ago, hunting and gathering. More than three months after the photographs sparked an international media frenzy, Funai officials continue to witness logging activity in the region. "There is evidence. We see timber floating down the river which originates in Peru," said Meira. Survival International, a group that campaigns for tribal peoples' rights, said last week that the Peruvian government had not lived up to its promise of publishing an investigation into accusations of illegal logging. "The Peruvian government must not be allowed to bury this issue, or to turn their backs on the un contacted tribes," said Survival's director, Stephen Corry. The issue will be discussed at an international conference on native Indians in Georgetown, Guyana, later this month, Meira said.
Advancing loggers also threaten isolated tribes in Brazil's northern Mato Gross state and along the upper Xingu river in Para state, Meira said.




SCIENTISTS DISCOVER A “MARTIAN” ANT IN THE AMAZON FOREST

The “Martian” ant differs from others of the same type in which it has small tweezers next to it maxillaries with which it captures his prey. German Scientists have found a new species of ant in the Amazon forest, so strange and different from its other brothers, that it can be considered like "a Martian” or coming from another planet, a spokesman of the Museum of Natural Sciences of Karlsruhe announced today. The peculiarity of the new ant, considered the most primitive of the existing ones, is shown by the scientific name that it has been given: "Martialis heureka", that freely translated could mean "Hurrah, I have found something, which comes from Mars". Of white colour, predatory, blind and about three millimetres in size, the specimen found belongs to a female sterile worker ant and was accidentally found by the German entomologist Christian Rabeling. Five years before, his colleague Manfred Verhaagh, also an entomologist of Karlsruhe, had found two other specimens, but these were accidentally destroyed before their analysis, to the desperation of the scientists. "To have found a third specimen is like winning the lottery", indicated Verhaagh when presenting the discovery. The “Martian” ant differs from its more modern kinds, because, among other things, it has small tweezers next to the maxillaries with which it captures its prey. Rabeling and Verhaagh emphasized that the new insect is so strange that, for the first time in 85 years, they have had to open a new subfamily of the ants, baptized "Martialinae", or those that come from Mars. Both presume that the Martian ants have existed for about 120 million years and they do not discard that new species of the same family unknown until now can still be hidden beneath the leaf litter and the rotting wood on the humid grounds of the Amazon forest.




WORLD’S THIRD LARGEST HYDROELECTRIC PLANT PLANNED TO BE BUILT ON THE MADEIRA RIVER.

The construction of a proposed dam on Brazil's Xingu River will flood the homes of 16,000 people, dry rivers and fuel logging, activists and tribal Indians warn as concern over Amazon destruction rises. The project has spurred concerns that Brazil's government will accelerate roads, pipelines and power plants in the region to fuel its fast-growing economy. The Belo Monte dam, under the auspices of state power company Eletrobras, would be one of the world's largest hydroelectric power plants, after China's Three Gorges and the Itaipu dam shared by Brazil and Paraguay. More than 1,000 environmentalists and tribal Indians gathered recently in the town of Altamira in the northern state of Para to protest against the dam and discuss alternatives. An Eletrobras official, Paulo Fernando Rezende, was injured and temporarily hospitalized in a skirmish with Kayapo Indians armed with clubs and machetes who had started a war dance in response to his upbeat presentation. In 1989, an Indian protest forced a similar dam project to be abandoned. Then, pictures of a Kayapo Indian woman holding the blade of her machete to the face of today's Eletrobras president figured prominently in local and foreign media. The Belo Monte reservoir would flood around 440 square km (170 square miles) and divert part of the Xingu, which flows North to the Amazon River. Residents fear their source of fish and water is endangered and say construction and new roads will draw more settlers and farmers, accelerating deforestation. “Roads, buildings, service companies – like most big projects in the Amazon, the dam will bring much destruction and little benefit for residents,” according to the group Foundation Live, Produce and Protect. The last major dams built in the Amazon in the 1970s – Tucuruvi and Balbina – caused food shortages and dead rivers and displaced thousands of people, the environmental group ISA said. Critics say the government is ignoring conservation concerns about the project.
“This government sees environmental licensing as a mere bureaucratic process. They don't really care what the impact study shows,” according to Marco Antonio Delfino, an Altamira public prosecutor. A court recently temporarily suspended preparations for the project's tender next year, citing irregularities in the environmental licensing process. With Brazil's economy growing at around 5 percent per year, hydroelectric plants along the many rivers of the vast Amazon region are essential to ensure power supply in the next decade, the government says. “Brazil needs clean energy with the lowest cost to society,” Eletrobras said in a statement. Belo Monte was the best option because large quantities of energy were easily integrated into the national grid, it said. Also recently, a consortium led by French utility Suez won a concession to build one of two hydroelectric plants, together worth more than $12.7 billion, along the Amazon's Madeira River. Construction of Belo Monte would take 5 years and the plant would generate more than 6 percent of Brazil's power needs. Because of seasonal rains, the plant will produce less than 10 percent of its capacity of 11,181 megawatts during nearly half of the year, preliminary Eletrobras studies show. “It's going to be the most inefficient dam in the world,” said Glenn Switkes, director of the International Rivers group.




VENEZUELAN PRESIDENT CHAVEZ ACCUSES USA OF INFAMY OVER ROW OF VENEZUELAN CIVIL SERVANTS ACCUSED OF FINANCING THE COLOMBIAN FARC GUERILLAS

For Chávez, the accusation of the USA against the Venezuelan civil servants is "an infamy". The president of Venezuela described the decision of the government of the United States to have frozen assets of three Venezuelan civil servants accused to have collaborated with the Colombian FARC, like "a big infamy". The American government accused the directors of military intelligence, Hugo Carvajal, and of police intelligence, Henry Rangel Silva, and the ex- minister of the Interior Ramon Rodriguez Chacín. This measure was known last Friday, the same day that Washington resolved to expel the Venezuelan ambassador, Bernardine Alvarez Herrera, in retaliation to a similar measure ordered two days before by Chávez. The Venezuelan ordered last Wednesday the expulsion of the American ambassador, Patrick Duddy, in solidarity with the government of Bolivia, whose president, Evo Morales, made the same that day with the ambassador Philip Goldberg.




VENEZUELA SAYS IT PLANS TO HOLD JOINT NAVAL EXERCISES IN ITS TERRITORIAL WATERS WITH RUSSIAN FORCES IN NOVEMBER

A senior Venezuelan naval officer said four Russian ships would take part in the exercises, which would also involve Venezuelan aircraft and submarines. Correspondents say the move is likely to raise concern in the US, whose relations with Russia have been soured by Moscow's recent conflict in Georgia. Washington already has rocky relations with Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez. In July, he called for a strategic alliance with Russia to protect Venezuela from the US.
Caracas and Moscow agreed to extend bilateral co-operation on energy, with three Russian energy companies to be allowed to operate in Venezuela. On Saturday, Venezuela's Rear Admiral Salbatore Cammarata Bastidas said four Russian ships and 1,000 Russian troops would take part in exercises in Venezuelan territorial waters from 10 to 14 November. "This is of great importance because it is the first time it is being done (in the Americas)," he said in a statement quoted by the AFP news agency and local media.
President Chavez supported Russia's intervention in Georgia last month and has accused Washington of being scared of Moscow's "new world potential". Earlier, US Vice-President Dick Cheney launched a furious attack on Russia over the recent conflict in the Caucasus. Mr Cheney described Moscow's actions against Georgia as an affront to civilised standards and said it was reverting back to old Soviet tactics of intimidation and the use of brute force.
He added that Russia was also seeking to use its energy resources as a weapon.




VENEZUELA SAYS IT PLANS TO HOLD JOINT NAVAL EXERCISES IN ITS TERRITORIAL WATERS WITH RUSSIAN FORCES IN NOVEMBER

A senior Venezuelan naval officer said four Russian ships would take part in the exercises, which would also involve Venezuelan aircraft and submarines. Correspondents say the move is likely to raise concern in the US, whose relations with Russia have been soured by Moscow's recent conflict in Georgia. Washington already has rocky relations with Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez. In July, he called for a strategic alliance with Russia to protect Venezuela from the US.
Caracas and Moscow agreed to extend bilateral co-operation on energy, with three Russian energy companies to be allowed to operate in Venezuela. On Saturday, Venezuela's Rear Admiral Salbatore Cammarata Bastidas said four Russian ships and 1,000 Russian troops would take part in exercises in Venezuelan territorial waters from 10 to 14 November. "This is of great importance because it is the first time it is being done (in the Americas)," he said in a statement quoted by the AFP news agency and local media.
President Chavez supported Russia's intervention in Georgia last month and has accused Washington of being scared of Moscow's "new world potential". Earlier, US Vice-President Dick Cheney launched a furious attack on Russia over the recent conflict in the Caucasus. Mr Cheney described Moscow's actions against Georgia as an affront to civilised standards and said it was reverting back to old Soviet tactics of intimidation and the use of brute force.
He added that Russia was also seeking to use its energy resources as a weapon.




HOW TO RECONCILE OIL AND GAS EXTRACTION WITH RAINFOREST CONSERVATION AND RESPECT FOR ITS PEOPLE (PART 2 OF 2)

In the past oil companies often adopted a nonchalant approach to the environment. They informed local people before drilling and pumping on their land, rather than gaining their prior consent. A more careful approach is needed to reconcile national interests with those of the inhabitants of the rainforest. Such a reconciliation is not impossible. Oil and gas extraction has the potential, at least, to bring wealth with less impact on the rainforest and its natives than cattle ranching, soya farming or most forms of logging. Some NGOs are encouraging oilmen to look at the jungle as they would the ocean, sending workers and kit by helicopter—not newly carved road—and sucking out oil and gas from fewer rigs. This is possible, thanks to a technique known as extended-reach drilling. This involves drilling a well down and then horizontally underground for up to 12km. New rigs planted in untouched forest can be 20km apart, says Bill Powers, an engineer and consultant for green groups. Some oil companies are skeptical. In a 2005 report, Pluspetrol, an Argentine firm, concluded that extended-reach drilling could not work at its Camisea gas field in southern Peru without causing underground rock to crack and without installing stronger pumps. Steve Suellentrop, the boss in Peru of Hunt Oil, a Texan firm working with Pluspetrol, says that it is operating “at the physical limits of what can be done technologically”. It employs “directional drilling” over shorter distances. Mr Powers, for one, thinks more could be done to reduce environmental impact. Shell, which discovered the Camisea field in the 1980s, once moved a rig, pumps and workers’ camp behind a hill at the request of an Indian village, says Murray Jones, who worked there for Shell when the rig was moved. Shell’s workers then drilled back to their original starting point, 1.5km away. Mr Jones, who is now a consultant, thinks that this sort of arm’s-reach extraction may be cheaper than planting more metallic towers among the trees. Exploratory work can be done better, too. Instead of bulldozers, many companies nowadays employ machete-wielding labourers to hand-cut pathways for seismic surveys. More use of aerial imaging can reduce the dynamited area. Oil companies are more likely to inject waste water and toxic residues back into the ground than let them spill into jungle rivers, after two lawsuits, one against Texaco (now part of Chevron) for its operations in Ecuador in the 1980s and another against Occidental Petroleum. Campaigners are strangely reluctant to target state-owned oil firms. That is odd since their environmental record is often worse than that of private companies. But not always: greens praise the Urucu gas project in the Brazilian Amazon run by Petrobras, Brazil’s partly state-owned oil company. Petrobras is building a pipeline that will eventually reach Manaus. The parts come by chopper or river and the builders, two-thirds of whom are locals, sleep on boats. There are almost no roads, which averts much of the illegal logging, disease and destitution that often follows forest development. Similar standards would surely make Peru’s indigenous peoples more content.




HOW TO RECONCILE OIL AND GAS EXTRACTION WITH RAINFOREST CONSERVATION AND RESPECT FOR ITS PEOPLE (PART 1 OF 2)

On the face of it, a mostly peaceful protest by several thousand tribes people in Peru’s Amazon jungle this month was a resounding victory for those who shook placards and spears. On August 22nd Peru’s Congress repealed two presidential decrees, approved in May and June that made it easier for companies and individuals to buy land belonging to indigenous peoples by reducing the necessary consent from a two-thirds vote by an entire community to that of half the attendees at a mass meeting. The protesters, who occupied oil installations, claimed that many of them would lose their land unwittingly. Alan García, Peru’s unpopular president, argues that do-gooding NGOs are blocking his country’s drive for economic development. The protest, and the repeal of the decrees, was an embarrassing setback for the government. Other decrees regulating oil exploration will now be reviewed by an all-party committee. The issues raised by the dispute are complex—and they apply across much of the Amazon basin. In Peru, as elsewhere in Latin America, the state owns the subsoil, and any oil, gas or minerals it contains. Since 2005 the proportion of Peru’s rainforest earmarked for oil and gas exploration has expanded from 15% to 72%. But Indians have title to much of the land above: 58 of the 64 oil blocks on the map of Peru overlap Indian land, of which 17 overlay existing or proposed reserves for people living in voluntary isolation. Peru plans to award 22 more oil blocks, many in the jungle, next month. Colombia will soon do the same in its southern jungle. Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s president, has championed an impractical plan to pump his country’s natural gas across the Amazon rainforest to Buenos Aires. Venezuela’s state oil company is helping a newly revived Bolivian state firm explore rainforest. Ecuador has found oil in the Yasuní national park. The government of Rafael Correa has promised Indian tribes not to exploit this—if rich countries pay it $350m a year over the next decade (half the field’s estimated revenue). Germany and Italy expressed interest, but the latter seems to have been put off by the deal’s fuzziness. (TO BE CONTINUED HERE TOMORROW)




GREENPEACE GIVES BRAZILIAN PRESIDENT LULA FIREMAN OUTFIT TO FIGHT AMAZON FIRES

A group of Greenpeace activists gave Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva a fireman's outfit Wednesday in a symbolic request asking him to do more to combat forest fires in the Amazon. The members of the environmental organization had to leave the suit with security after being prevented from walking into Lula's presidential palace to hand it to him personally. They also left three other fireman's suits for Lula's cabinet chief-of-staff and the agriculture and transport ministers. "Fires cause are the most aggressive and devastating destruction of the forest," one Greenpeace activist, Marcio Astrini, told reporters. He explained that farmers and cattle ranchers in the Amazon used fire to clear the land for their activities, contributing to deforestation of the protected region. Brazil's environment ministry estimates that in the 12 months to July, 12,000 square kilometres (4,600 square miles) of the Amazon were cleared, mainly by ranchers and soya farmers. That was an increase over the 11,200 square kilometres recorded in the previous 12 months. Brazil is considered the fourth biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, and 75 percent of them come from deforestation.




THE MAPUCHE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE RISE UP IN CHILE IN DEMAND OF THEIR LAND. (PART 4 OF 4)

For the agricultural industrialist Osvaldo Carvajal who has received more than 52 attacks from Mapuche organizations in his estates these warnings are not more than "communicational pyrotechnics". He demanded, like his colleagues, that the antiterrorist laws be applied to these people. The minister of the Interior, Eduardo Perez Yoma, arrived at the zone to have a discussion with the attacked industrialist, who asked him to intercede before the president so that she applies the antiterrorist law. Although the minister recognizes the complexity of the subject and the possible presence of infiltrated subjects he discarded that possibility. Still the attacks are considered as isolated facts although the Mapuche guerrilla term that they attribute themselves is a reason for preoccupation.
What the Mapuches want
The Mapuche population originally inhabited the South of the American continent, throughout territories pertaining at the moment to Argentina and Chile. Now it is placed mainly in the regions of the Bío Bío, the Araucanía, the Rios and the Lagos, places of abundant vegetation and forests wantede by the forest industry. The Mapuches demands the restitution of the right of property of the territories that, they adduce, were taken away from them when the Republic of Chile was created, in the XIX Century. They consider that in these lands the Mapuche territory must be reconstructed, which according to them, "was usurped by force" by the State. Also they demand the revision of the policies of the forest companies that operate in the territory that they claim as their own. One of their main leaders, Aucán Huilcamán, says that it is not that they want to become an independent State but to count on a statute of administrative and legal autonomy. They raise the possibility of becoming a federal State. The way to demand all these things has become more and more violent. The affected agriculturists hope that the use of firearms on the part of the demonstrators is part of the events that will make the State authorities take notice.




THE MAPUCHE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE RISE UP IN CHILE IN DEMAND OF THEIR LAND. (PART 3 OF 4)

Until now, already several agriculturists are threatened by the Mapuche activists of the Coordinating Body Malleco Araucan. As much so that the Governmental National Commission of Indigenous Development (Conadi) negotiates with several of them so that they sell their lands. The idea is to buy bordering lands to hand them over to t6he communities of the zone, among them, those of Temucuicui. A complication to the Government is the division that exists within the Mapuche community, which prevents to advance in solutions. The newspaper "Austral of Temuco" assures that the authorities have detected amongst the activists people with other accents, reason why it is afraid that there are foreign instructors starting up a guerrilla. The president of the Agricultural Society of Promotion of the South, Gastón Camiondo, asked the Government to leave by the side the speeches of that it is going to act on the matter. "Here we are before the presence of a paramilitary group " , he maintained. These reclamations and the new way to operate –using firearms- of the pro Mapuche groups has forced the police to fortify the intelligence work in the zone. The Government has presented a complaint against those who are responsible for these attacks, protecting itself in the Law of Inner Security of the State. "I would like to my energetic rejection to the arsonist attack in the Region of the Araucanía. We are going to apply to all the force and the rigor that the law confers to us”; said the president Michelle Bachelet. (TO BE CONTINUED ON THIS SAME PAGE TOMORROW.)




THE MAPUCHE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE RISE UP IN CHILE IN DEMAND OF THEIR LAND. (PART 2 OF 4)

ATTACKS OF MORE FORCE
Prepared for everything, a group of Special Police Forces officers tried to enter this week the Mapuche community of Temucuicui, to search the house of the co proprietor Jaime Huenchullán, required by justice for his threats to other agriculturists of the zone. When they left, about 25 individuals with covered faces attacked them. Some of them had shot guns and hurt two of the police. A day before that one incident, three hooded persons ambushed and shot against a bus of the small industrialist of Mapuche origin Mario Naín Curamil. He assured that those attacks came from radical groups that condemn him for not supporting them and not working with the forest companies that invest in the zone. The representative of the Community of Temucuicui, Juan Catrillanca, rejected that the inhabitants of his zone are involved in the violent acts. He said rather that those are extremist groups that are not prepared to have a discussion with the authorities.
TERRORISM?
Recently, the Commune of Ercilla, also in the Araucanía, a group of hooded men entered the farm Santa Teresa, where they were installing high power pylons. Armed with guns, they set fire to a vehicle and reduced the guard. They identified themselves as Mapuche guerrillas. These same people entered the farm the Golondrinas, where they robbed cattle. The owner of the estate, Jorge Borjeaud persecuted them. They was a shootout between them. The agriculturist was wounded in the leg. The police decided to place a defence post in the land during this last week.
Nevertheless, for the agriculturists, this attack could have anticipated and even avoided. The attacked agriculturist is a cousin of Jorge Luchsinger, another cattle dealer of the zone, whose farm, Santa Margarita, has undergone 23 armed and arsonist attacks. This place, distant to two kilometres from the place of the attack, did count on the protection of police officers. (MORE TO FOLLOW IN THIS SAME PLACE TOMORROW)




THE MAPUCHE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE RISE UP IN CHILE IN DEMAND OF THEIR LAND. (PART 1 OF 4)

Volcanos Chaitén and Llaima are not the only problems that have had to confront the South of Chile. There is another one that stays alive from Colonial times, that to date have not been able to be controlled by any government nor authority. And we are not talking about a peak that spills lava but rather of an original race of the Araucano territory that demands the return of the lands that they consider theirs by right. After six months of apparent calm, the organizations who endorse the demands of the Mapuche peoples have radicalized their measures of protest, which have been described like terrorists, on the part of the affected ones. In the middle of August one of these an attack was vindicated to the farm Santa Rosa, in the Zone of Vilcún, Region of the Araucanía. Eduardo Luchsinger, agricultural industrialist of 70 years and proprietor of the lands, was struck, dragged and threatened at gun point with revolvers, guns and submachine guns, while twelve individuals set fire to the lands and frightened the members of his family, among them, his wife Martha Leon. They destroyed almost everything: the family house, two sheds with 10 thousand bundles (food of the cattle), a dairy farm, agricultural machinery, a tractor and two automobiles. The losses add up to about 100 thousand dollars. The facts happened at daybreak. The police authorities knew of the attack much after it happened. It did not help them to get there in time. Nobody had expected something like this either. The Mapuche community of Yeupeco, member of Coordinating the Malleco Araucan, one of the main organizations activists for the recovery of lands, claimed responsibility for the attack. (TO BE CONTINUED ON THIS SAME PAGE TOMORROW.)