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As the two-week long world summit on biodiversity drew to a close, Greenpeace described the outcome as major failure - a missed opportunity to stop the global loss of life in the world's forests and oceans.
"The Convention on Biological Diversity is like a ship drifting without a captain to steer it," said Martin Kaiser, Greenpeace Political Advisor on Forests. "The negotiations have failed to chart a course to stop biopiracy, provide additional financing for protected areas, establish marine reserves on the high seas and to ban illegal logging and trade." Although the president of the COP8, Brazil's environment minister Marina Silva, opened the conference calling for legislation against biopiracy, Australia, New Zealand and Canada have argued against strict deadlines for the negotiations. "This simply buys time for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to secure patents on life under the regime of the World Trade Organization," said Kaiser. At their last conference, the CBD member States agreed to establish a global network of protected areas, in order to safeguard life on earth and prevent the industrial exploitation of the world's biodiversity at the expense of future generations. Money was promised by the rich countries to help make this happen. "Both rich and developing countries have not delivered on their promises, and the proposed global network of protected areas has not become a reality." said Paulo Adario, Greenpeace Amazon Campaign Coordinator. "Instead, governments have put nature at risk and allowed it to become a private commodity." At the beginning of the conference, Greenpeace presented a roadmap to recovery, a global map of the last intact forests, and a network of marine reserves on the high seas, calling governments to take action. This challenge has been ignored. The conference has not been able to address a core business of every government, eradicating illegal and unsustainable logging and fisheries. "The need for a moratorium on high seas bottom trawling, the most destructive form of fishing, is now being blocked by a few key countries, who are prioritizing their industry interests over the protection of marine biodiversity," said Karen Sack, Greenpeace Political Advisor on Oceans. Despite the exploitation of the Amazon by illegal and destructive logging providing timber products to internal and external markets, the Brazilian government has blocked any meaningful collaboration at a regional and international level. "This conference has been overshadowed by the announcement of the United States, the largest contributor to the funding body for biodiversity, that it will halve its financial contribution," concluded Kaiser. "Four years ago, world leaders committed themselves to rescue life on earth by 2010. Many plans and programs are in place, but the financial support for developing countries is not provided yet." Greenpeace - www.greenpeace.org
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Brazil received a huge boost in its international image with its selection as the host of the 2016 Olympics, but it was really just the cherry on top of the overall recognition of the country's ascension to the ranks of one of the world's most important countries. Now, as it finally takes its place on the world scene, there has been a great deal of concern about what kind of image Brazil hopes to project, now that the world is really paying attention. 
The only good thing to say about the visit to Brazil of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on Monday November 23, is that it was mercifully short and lasted less than 24 hours. Ahmadinejad had his picture taken being hugged by president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who gave him a warm welcome and said Iran had every right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. 
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
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.
While the debate on the Sao Francisco river project continues Globo comes up with a success story about subsistance farmers in the semi-arid region battling drought conditions with cisterns for storing water!
Moral to the story? Don't wait for politicians to act:Necessity will determine that people negotiate conditions on a LOCAL and HUMAN scale .