News stories by Emilio Godoy* - Tierramérica, page 2

With a wooden spoon in hand, Hortencia Rómulo briskly stirs the amber-coloured liquid cooking in an enormous steel pot.

The mountainous areas of South America's Andean nations supply water to the coastal cities, provide habitat to important biodiversity, and serve as natural barriers, but global warming threatens those regions, which are home to millions of people.

While a global agreement to fight the climate crisis may be off the table for now, many activists and experts are focusing on options for mitigating climate-changing gas emissions and the impacts of increasingly extreme weather. One such alternative is bamboo.

Without financing, many Mexican farmers cannot improve their ageing irrigation systems, which are essential if Mexico is to withstand the effects of climate change and reduce its emissions of greenhouse-effect gases.

It's a mixture of volunteer work and tourism. The visitor pays to spend a few weeks in contact with nature and carry out the chores of an organic farm. The idea behind it all is to cultivate environmental awareness.

Faced with the voracious international demand for lobsters from the Mexican Pacific and Atlantic, fishers and environmental organisations have come together to institute sustainable lobstering practices -- although the financial benefits are slow in coming.

The Mexican government is promoting the notion of private lands dedicated to sustainable use, a tool created in 1997 in this country with great biodiversity, but experts say there are still many shortcomings in the plan.

Mexico is beginning to take on the environmental debts left by the oil industry, applying biological techniques to break down alcohols, solvents, glycerines, gasoline, benzene and acetone, turning them into carbon dioxide and water.

Tequila, part of the national identity of Mexico, is invariably present at family celebrations and national holidays. But many are unaware of the bitter taste the tequila industry leaves in the water and soil.

Mexico’s Pacific coast, one of the world's richest seaboards in terms of biodiversity, has been the focus of very few scientific studies. A new observatory aims to fill that void.