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 Brazil's Amazonas state and Marriott have signed an agreement to support a plan to help protect 1.4 million acres of endangered Brazilian rainforest. The accord is believed to be the first of its kind. The government-private partnership is one of the first in the world to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation.
Marriott has committed US$ 2 million to fund an environmental management plan administered by the newly created Amazonas Sustainable Foundation. By year end, Marriott guests and group customers will also be able to offset the greenhouse gas emissions generated from their hotel stays by contributing to this rainforest fund.
In addition to offering this carbon offset, Marriott says that it is taking new steps to reduce the company's water, waste and energy consumption; green its supply chain; build greener hotels; and engage employees and guests to take action.
"This is the first project on reducing emissions from deforestation in Brazil and one of the first in the world," said Amazonas Governor Eduardo Braga. "This agreement between the government of Amazonas and Marriott will make history because it demonstrates how rainforest preservation can be used as a climate strategy."
"At Marriott, we believe the future of business is green," says Arne Sorenson, Chief Financial Officer and co-chair of the Marriott's Green Council. "Building on a 20-year track record of responsible energy consumption and waste reduction, we believe rainforest preservation is critical to reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change."
To reduce and offset its global environmental footprint, which it has calculated at 2.9 million metric tons of CO² emissions annually or .030 metric tons (65.5 pounds) per available room the hotel chain has developed a five-point strategy in collaboration with Conservation International, a global conservation organization. This includes:
* Carbon Offsets
Help protect the 1.4 million acre (589,000 hectares) Juma Sustainable Development reserve, an area rich in biodiversity. The burning and clearing of tropical rainforests causes more carbon emissions than all the world's cars, trains, SUVs and trucks combined.
Under the agreement, Marriott and its customers will contribute to a fund to be administered by the newly created Amazonas Sustainable Foundation, which, together with the State of Amazonas, will monitor and enforce the protection of the reserve. The project will support employment, education and healthcare for the reserve's approximately 500 residents. The Foundation is seeking certification of the conservation project by an independent accredited environmental auditing firm under the internationally recognized Climate, Community and Biodiversity (CCB) Standards.
* Water, Waste and Energy
Further reduce fuel and water consumption by 25% per available room over the next 10 years, and install solar power at up to 40 hotels by 2017. Expand existing "reduce, reuse, recycle" programs already in place at 90% of hotels to consistently include guest and meeting rooms, beginning with pilot hotels across all brands in Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Minneapolis and Washington, D.C.
* Supply Chain
Engage the company's top 40 vendors to supply price-neutral greener products across 12 categories of its $10 billion supply chain. Some of the first products to be rolled out are annual purchases of 47 million BIC Ecolutions pens designed for Marriott, made from pre-consumer recycled plastic; more than 1 million gallons of low VOC (Volatile Organic Compounds) paint; and 1 million "room-ready" towels by Standard Textile, which should save 6 million gallons of water annually by eliminating the initial wash cycle.
Other items under consideration include compostable key cards, recyclable carpet, and more responsibly packaged soaps and shampoos.
* Green Buildings
Allow hotel development partners to site, design and construct new hotels according to green standards by updating Marriott design guidelines in line with the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards by the end of 2009. The company expects to expand its portfolio of LEED-certified hotels, which already includes The Inn & Conference Center by Marriott at the University of Maryland, across all Marriott brands.
"With thousands of hotels around the world, Marriott has the scale to make a strong positive contribution to the environment," says Glenn Prickett, Senior Vice President and Executive Director, Center for Environmental Leadership in Business, Conservation International.
Marriott says that over the last decade, it has replaced 450,000 light bulbs with fluorescent lighting, introduced linen reuse programs, and installed 400,000 low-flow showerheads and toilets at its hotels worldwide.
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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. 
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.
Completely wrong.
First, most of the world's oxygen, around 70%, is created by sea algae. That leaves 305 spread across all plants around the globe. Considering that tress store carbon and realease oxygen, and that younger trees have a better ration of oxygen creation/carbon intake, and that the amazon is mostly old trees, there is almost a zero net oxygen creation by the amazon.
The issue about carbon realease when trees are cut is correct, but its a natural process, and trees when dead realease all their carbon back into the environment, but not anywhere near the carbon release by autos or vehicles in general combined.
The reason to save the amazon is biodiversity, and that animals and plants deserve to not be killed. However, the rate of preservation in Brazil is possibly the best in the world. Consider the fact that european forest have basically been completely destroyed, and that US has lost over 70% of its forest areas, and you wil see why the burden on the amazon was greatly increased by American and European irresponsability.