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Brazil's Industrial Park Committed to Ban Illegal Amazon Timber
Written by Érica Sato
Monday, 14 November 2005
The seven municipal administrations that comprise the Greater ABC region of metropolitan São Paulo signed a letter of commitment with the Cities Friends of the Amazon program, sponsored by the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) Greenpeace.
In the document the cities pledge to pass laws to limit timber consumption to sources that adopt sustainable management practices, especially if the timber comes from the Amazon rain forest, and to prohibit the purchase and use of illegal wood in bidding processes for public works.
The ABC region occupies third place among the country's largest consumer markets for timber.
"We are shutting the doors to the most important consumer market, which is the city of São Paulo. We are already negotiating with Rio de Janeiro and shutting the doors to the ABC," said the coordinator of the Cities Friends of the Amazon program, Adriana Imparato.
The letter of commitment was signed by the mayors of Santo André, São Bernardo do Campo, São Caetano, Diadema, Rio Grande da Serra, Mauá, and Ribeirão Pires. The ceremony was held on Saturday (12) in the auditorium of the Greater ABC Inter-municipal Consortium, in Santo André.
The event was also marked by the participation of activists and graffiti artists, who painted the symbol of the program with the name of the campaign, "The Greater ABC sets an example: 7 Cities Friends of the Amazon," on a local sidewalk alongside the headquarters of the Consortium.
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The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy.
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil.
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms.
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis.
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking.
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse.
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose.
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj).
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.