News stories by Marcela Valente* - Tierramérica, page 2

The echoes of failure still sounding from the Copenhagen summit on climate change in December are spurring efforts to reform the international legal framework. Civil society groups are demanding a new, more agile system that is both influential and effective.

In a measure that was delayed by supply problems, this year Argentina is beginning to require that gasoline be mixed with ethanol and diesel fuel with biodiesel, at a proportion of five percent, to possibly reach 20 percent by 2015.

The residents of the Puna, the dry Andean highlands in northern Argentina, are cut off from everything - except the sun. Living on arid land thousands of metres above sea level, they are on their way to becoming 'solar villages.'

The world's forests and jungles are much more than carbon storage sites and compensation for greenhouse emissions, experts and activists point out to governments that are negotiating a new global climate change treaty.

The ships that bring thousands of tourists to Antarctica to take in some of the most pristine landscapes in the world will have to adapt to new marine environmental standards, which could be stricter than those requested by the members of the Antarctic Treaty.

For months now, yellowed pastures, cracked soil and dead livestock have been the landscape of what otherwise are the most productive farming areas of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. Scientists say it is so far impossible to determine if the drought is a manifestation of climate change processes.