News stories by Mario Osava, page 2

MANAUS, Brazil, Mar 05 (IPS) - Electricity is essential for the well-being and prosperity of traditional riverside communities in the Amazon, as demonstrated by the experience of the Santa Helena do Inglês community, located on the right bank of the Negro River in northern Brazil.

HORTOLANDIA, Brazil, Feb 26 (IPS) - Almost everything seems new or under construction in the southern Brazilian city of Hortolandia, from its wide avenues and cable-stayed bridge to its large buildings and riverside parks.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 27 (IPS) - It was necessary to repel the "invasion" of mobile phones in Brazilian classrooms, even to spark a debate about the use of technology in education, according to Silvana Veloso, an educator with extensive experience on the subject.

MANAUS, Brazil, Dec 20 (IPS) - The flow of the igarapé always dropped for three months every year, but now it has been dry for two years in a row, complains Maria Aparecida dos Anjos, looking at the trickle of water that when flooded reaches the stilts of her wooden house, 50 metres away and on a slope of more than 10 metres high.

SETE LAGOAS, Brazil, Dec 11 (IPS) - They look like attempts to copy the moon’s surface, in some cases, as craters multiply in the grasslands. But they are actually micro-dams, barraginhas in Portuguese, which have spread in Brazil as a successful way to store water and prevent soil erosion in rural areas.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 05 (IPS) - Holding this year's presidency of the Group of 20 (G20) large industrial and emerging economies is allowing Brazil to push forward the dream of creating a global biofuels market without the current trade barriers.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 07 (IPS) - "I don't know of a more sustainable technology for the transformation of society than biogas," said Professor Alex Enrich-Prast, an activist for this energy alternative with a highly diversified and decentralised expansion in Brazil.

ACREUNA / ORIZONA, Brazil, Aug 26 (IPS) - A community bakery, family production of fruit pulp, and the recovery of water springs are some of the initiatives of the Energy of Women of the Earth, organised since 2017 in the state of Goiás, in central-western Brazil.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 20 (IPS) - A never-ending battle threatens the indigenous rights that seemed clear and secure in Brazil, until the extreme right emerged in 2018 with a force challenging the civilisational advances set out in the Constitution.

SETE LAGOAS, Brazil, Aug 18 (IPS) - Water shortage is over, springs have emerged or become perennial, small ponds with fish have formed and pastures have become greener and more permanent, all thanks to the ‘barraginhas', the Portuguese name given in Brazil to micro-dams that retain rainwater and infiltrate it into the soil.