News stories by Mario Osava* - Tierramérica

Large-scale social mobilisation, including street protests and parallel activities, is the only thing can save the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) from ending in nothing but frustration, according to activists and analysts.

Brazil is considered a country rich in water resources, with its enormous underground aquifers and mighty rivers. But recognition of the vital importance of rainwater begins where it is most scarce: in the semiarid interior of the northeast.

Brazil is considered a country rich in water resources, with its enormous underground aquifers and mighty rivers. But recognition of the vital importance of rainwater begins where it is most scarce: in the semiarid interior of the northeast.

The environmental movement continues to gain credibility and support as scientific findings confirm its warnings and natural disasters become increasingly frequent. Yet this growing awareness has yet to reach political decision makers in countries like Brazil, much to the frustration of environmentalists.

The mechanisation of sugar cane harvesting, originally aimed at curbing the pollution caused by the burning of cane fields, has resulted in an added bonus: it has helped to improve soil quality, according to growers and technical experts in the southern state of São Paulo, where most of Brazil’s sugar and ethanol is produced.

The current rise in agricultural prices, which now overshadows the increase seen in 2008, highlights the contribution that Brazil could make towards curbing the growing hunger and inflation that are threatening the world once again.

The growing presence of Chinese and Brazilian capital in Latin America's energy sector is facilitating the construction of hydroelectric complexes, but is also the fuelling nationalist stances that are adding to the environmental criticisms of those major projects.

Farming around the globe, already reeling from drought, heat waves and major storms, will have to prepare for the new challenges that global warming will bring, especially in the form of pests and disease.

The Zolinger family, a typical example of those who migrated from southern Brazil to the Amazon in search of land and fortune, now has a second chance in the lumber industry, after contributing to the devastation of the forests in Rondônia state, where they settled in 1979.

Herculano Porto de Oliveira, of Brazil, said he felt forced 'to live in hiding on my own land, though I never fought with anyone or stole anything,' just for making a living from the biodiversity of the Amazon's Xingú River Basin, where he was born 66 years ago.