Peru Glances Up From Dismantling Environmental Laws, Demands Climate Talks Success

[hatrack]

WASHINGTON – The international community “cannot allow” the 20th session of the U.N. Conference of the Parties on Climate Change – scheduled for December in Lima – to end in failure, the advisor to the Peruvian government for that summit told Efe. “No, (the world) can’t allow it. If there’s failure at the COP20 in Peru, we won’t reach an agreement at the COP21 in Paris,” Jorge Gastelumendi told Efe.

He made those remarks Friday before attending a high-level discussion on financing and climate change held in Washington as part of the annual meeting of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

One of the goals of the Dec. 1-12 Lima summit will be reaching consensus on a new international pact to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. The U.N. plans call for that agreement to be approved at next year’s COP21 in Paris, to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

“Lima must be an essential step in reaching an agreement in Paris. Without Lima, there is no Paris. That’s what developed and developing countries have said,” Gastelumendi said.

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http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=2356079&CategoryId=14095

Peru: Environmental "Extremists" Threaten Revenue

NEW YORK (AP) — Peru’s president warned Friday that environmental “extremists” could hurt the golden goose of mining revenue. During an interview with The Associated Press, President Ollanta Humala said his top priority during the annual meeting of world leaders at the United Nations this week had been to sound the alarm on climate change. The Andean nation will host U.N.-sponsored climate talks in December.

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Environmental activists want things to stay the same, but Peru’s mining-dependent economy must ensure it does not bankrupt businesses with fines, he said. “It’s not about killing the goose that lays the golden eggs,” he said.

The new law slashes maximum fines for environmental violations, speeds environmental reviews for new projects and eliminates the environment ministry’s power to establish nature reserves.

Humala said Peru is recalibrating its environmental protections, not weakening them. He says his administration’s role is to mediate between the companies that have pockmarked the country with more than 300 major mines and the activists who oppose them.

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http://www.salon.com/2014/09/26/peru_environmental_extremists_threaten_revenue/

Peru: Illegal Logging Behind Deaths Of Indigenous Activists

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Sara, 54 years old and originally from Lima, received 187 Ha (462 acres) in the 1980s in the community of Puerto Bermúdez, in the central department of Pasco, to develop agroforestry and protect several tree species. In July she learned that, without warning and without being present, officials from the Ministry of Agriculture had changed the boundaries of her land using falsified maps that do not match the area’s physical reality. She has the property titles registered and can reclaim them, but that isn’t the case for the more than 500 indigenous Amazonian communities that for decades have been demanding ownership of their lands — the only way they can protect their forests from illegal logging.

But the Peruvian government is not interested in speeding up the delivery of those deeds. According to Julia Urrunaga, director of the Peru Program at the US-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), to the Peruvian authorities in Lima, “the jungle is a huge, tree-filled space where there are no people.” In 2012, the EIA published “The Laundering Machine: How fraud and corruption in Peru’s concession system are destroying the future of its forests.” The report reveals the bureaucratic jumble that legalizes, through documents that the authorities never verify, the marketing of timber from unauthorized areas in the Peruvian Amazon.

Despite the seriousness of the allegations, the government has done little if anything to curb illegal logging. “The only thing that has progressed in two years is that now all the documents are computerized. So, they passed from laundering in the trough, to laundering in the washing machine,” Urrunaga told Latinamerica Press.

The killings of four indigenous Ashaninka men in the community of Alto Tamaya Saweto, in the department of Ucayali on the border with Brazil, brought to the forefront not only the danger in which the Amazonian native peoples are living, but also the existence of a very profitable business that involves companies, officials and illegal loggers.

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http://www.eurasiareview.com/30092014-peru-illegal-logging-behind-deaths-indigenous-leaders/

[Jim Lane]

1. Uh-oh, they're catching up to us in hypocrisy. (n/t)