 |
 |
 |
| Caribbean Property Magazine Home / August 2010 / 'Sustainable Living August 2010' | SEND THIS PAGE TO A FRIEND  |
 |
.jpg) |
| Classifieds in The Bahamas Classifieds in The Dominican Republic Classifieds in Costa Rica Classifieds in The Cayman Islands Classifieds in Antigua |
 |
|
REACH OVER 380,000 SUBSCRIBERS EVERY MONTH! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 FULL - LENGTH ARTICLES FEATURING YOUR PROPERTY! Tell YOUR story and get exposure! Sell your property or business (or business opportunity) through editorials and feature articles! |
|
|
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
VISIT OUR ARCHIVES! Click here to explore our archived articles. |
|
|
|
TELL YOUR STORY! We want your articles, your stories, your experiences, your knowledge and your advice! Tell our readers what you have learned, what you love and what you think other people need to know about living, working, buying, selling, relocating and retiring in the Caribbean. |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
A comprehensive list of downloadable ebooks available from Caribpro. Titles include: |
 Retirement Planning For Offshore Living: Maintain and Enhance your lifestyles spending less than 25% of your monthly budget. |
|
|
|
|
|
Belize: Living There How to Live, Retire, Work of Invest in Belize. |
| Nicaragua: Real Estate Property and land bargain amidst colonial splendour. |
|
Plastic Surgery in The Caribbean: Inexpensive, High Quality Cosmetic Surgery. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Anguilla - Real Estate
Antigua - Real Estate Aruba - Real Estate Bahamas - Real Estate Barbados - Real Estate Bay Islands - Real Estate Belize - Real Estate Bermuda - Real Estate Bocas Del Toro - Real Estate Bonaire - Real Estate British Virgin Island - Real Estate Cayman Islands - Real Estate Colombia - Real Estate Costa Rica - Real Estate Cuba - Real Estate Dominica - Real Estate Dominican Republic - Real Estate El Salvador - Real Estate Florida - Real Estate Grenada - Real Estate Grenadines - Real Estate Guadeloupe - Real Estate Guatemala - Real Estate Guyana - Real Estate Haiti - Real Estate Honduras - Real Estate Jamaica - Real Estate Louisiana - Real Estate Margarita Island - Real Estate Mexico - Real Estate Montserrat - Real Estate Netherland Antilles - Real Nevis - Real Estate Nicaragua - Real Estate Panama - Real Estate Puerto Rico - Real Estate Roatan / Utila - Real Estate Saba - Real Estate San Andres - Real Estate St. Barthelemy - Real Estate St. Eustatius - Real Estate St. Kitts - Real Estate St. Lucia - Real Estate St. Maarten - Real Estate St. Vincent - Real Estate Tobago - Real Estate Trinidad - Real Estate Turks & Caicos - Real Estate Utila / Roatan - Real Estate Venezuela - Real Estate U.S. Virgin Islands - Real Estate Virgin Islands (British) - Real Estate List Your Real Estate In The Marketplace - List Your Real Estate In The Marketplace |
|
A U G U S T
 2 0 1 0 Issue 43
|
||
|
IN A PIONEERING AGREEMENT, ECUADOR PLEDGES NO OIL DRILLING IN AMAZON PRESERVE
Ecuador pledged in a pioneering agreement with the United Nations on Tuesday to refrain from oil drilling in a pristine Amazon preserve in return for some $3.6 billion in payments from rich nations. The accord, signed by Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino and Rebeca Grynspan, associate administrator of the U.N. Development Program, sets up a trust fund to be administered by the world body. The three oilfields under the Yasuni preserve would remain untapped for a decade under the pact. They are estimated to hold 846 million barrels of crude, or 20 percent of Ecuador's reserves. The $3.6 billion represents about half the expected earnings from the sale of the oil that would have been removed from Yasuni, a 982,000-hectare (3,800-square-mile) expanse declared a World Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in 1989. Officials say keeping the oil in the ground will prevent 410 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere and contributing to global warming. In addition to being home to unique species of birds, amphibians and monkeys, the Yasuni hosts tribes of the Huarani people, a hunter-gatherer indigenous group threatened by the encroachment of loggers and other settlers. Grynspan, a former Costa Rican vice president, called the program "so innovative we would like to bring it to other latitudes." She mentioned Guatemala, Vietnam and Nigeria as potential candidates. Countries that have expressed interest in contributing to the Yasuni fund include Germany, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Italy and the United States. Ecuador's heritage minister, Maria Fernanda Espinosa, said Germany had made an initial pledge of $50 million to the trust fund. However, the German Embassy would not immediately confirm that information. Ecuadoran officials said they would soon send delegations to potential donor nations, including countries in the Middle East, to secure fund commitments.  BP says the cement sealing the busted oil well in the Gulf of Mexico has hardened as crews prepare for the final phase of drilling a relief well. The oil giant said Sunday that pressure tests on the cement plug poured down the throat of the blown-out well show the seal is solidly in place. That means BP engineers can begin drilling the final 100 feet of a relief well meant to permanently seal the blowout. Crews will carefully drill about 30 feet at a time, and BP says it will likely be next weekend before the two wells meet. BP didn't make it clear Sunday if workers had begun drilling. Engineers will use the relief well for a "bottom kill," pumping more mud and cement into the busted well in what is expected to completely seal the well for good. UN climate talks tasked with curbing the threat of global warming are backsliding, delegates from both rich and developing nations said on Friday at the close of a week-long session in Bonn. Even as evidence mounts that deadly impacts are upon us, negotiators said, chances for a compromise deal under the 194-nation UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) are slipping away amid furious finger pointing. "These negotiations have if anything gone backwards," said the EU's climate action commissioner Connie Hedegaard. "This imbalance is not helpful and could seriously endanger the prospects of securing the successful outcome the world needs from the Cancun climate conference next December" in Mexico.  "At this pace the world will simply collectively miss the train," she warned. Record global temperatures, forest fires in Russia, lethal floods in Pakistan "are all consistent with the kind of changes we could expect from climate change, and they will get worse if we don't act quickly," said US negotiator Jonathan Pershing. "Unfortunately, what we have seen over and over this week is that some countries are walking back from the progress made in Copenhagen," he told journalists, referring to the 11th-hour accord hammered out at the climate summit in December. The Copenhagen Accord enshrined the goal of capping the increase of global temperatures at 2.0 degree Celsius (3.6 degree Fahrenheit), but did not muster the commitments needed to attain it. It also pledged long-term financing to the tune of 100 billion dollars a year to help poor countries green their economies and cope with climate change impacts, but without specifying where the money would come from. Dessima Williams of Grenada, speaking for the 43-nation Association of Small Island States, said she was "greatly concerned" by the slow pace of the talks. "The situation on the ground for all our countries is worsening," she said at a press conference. But even in areas where agreement had been reached, such as technology transfer and forest management, "there seems to be some backsliding. This is very lamentable and very unhealthy," she said. The likely failure of the US Congress to pass climate legislation this year has also cast a pall over the negotiations, many delegates said. "I've heard a lot of people say it is not encouraging for the process," Wittoeck said. Major emerging nations such as China and India have resisted legally binding requirements to cut emissions, saying that rich countries historically responsible for global warming must take the lead. Efforts to hammer out a draft negotiating text ahead of the next major climate summit at the end of the year in Cancun also suffered a blow, with many countries throwing in last-minute additions. Only one more negotiating session -- from October 4-9 in Tianjin -- remains before Cancun, which is expected, at best, to finalise some of the building blocks for a future, legally-binding deal. The first six months of 2010 registered the warmest combined global land and ocean surface temperatures since 1880, when reliable temperature readings began, according the US government scientists. Arctic ice cover -- another critical yardstick of global warming -- had also retreated more than ever before by July 1, putting it on track to shrink beyond its smallest area to date. Without steep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, the global thermometer could rise by 6.0 degrees Celsius (10.8 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial levels, making large swathes of the planet unlivable, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned. Voluntary national pledges made in Copenhagen would likely cap that increase at 3.5 C to 4.0 C (6.3 F to 7.2 F), still fall far short of the 2.0 C (3.6 C) limit that most scientists agree is the threshold for dangerous warming. |
||
|
||
|
||
|
LARGE INVESTMENTS IN AGRI SECTOR ARE A STEP CLOSER TO GUYANA BECOMING THE REGIONS MAIN FOOD SUPPLIER SOUTH KOREA INTERESTED IN AGRI INVESTMENT WITH GUYANA A delegation of visiting South Koreans met Minister of Agriculture, Robert Persaud of Guyana and discussed several areas of potential investment and cooperation between the two nations. The Koreans said they were examining the prospects of establishing several projects and were seeking the Ministry’s input on any likely areas of priority. Persaud listed some of Guyana’s ongoing ventures including aquaculture, tropical hardwood processing, livestock, fruits and vegetables. He said the internal consumption as it relates to rice and sugar is limited, prompting Guyana’s dependence on export markets. However, he mentioned that Guyana has been looking for partners in the area of deep-sea fishing which is largely an unexplored zone. With South Korea being an industrialized country, the Koreans said they are interested in diversifying their agricultural product since food security has become an issue.  More than 90 percent of the sector is attributed to soybean and South Korea can hardly be described as self-sufficient. They expressed interest in forestry products, soybean plantations and were also asked to ponder on the operation of a sugar refinery. Persaud said two possibilities that exist in Guyana are diversifying and creating value-added products from the sugar-cane and rice as there is widespread wastage of material that can be used as byproducts. “There is the possibility of developing ethanol production because we’re already using the sugarcane to produce biogas fuel to supply the grid. Opportunities exist for value-added within the rice industry too because we do not make cereals and so on.” He disclosed that a feasibility study has already been done on establishing a refinery but it is just the question of investment. Guyana has earmarked several thousand acres of land and is currently conducting tests on different soil types to ascertain the best conditions under which various strains of soybean and corn will flourish. Three experts from Brazil are working along with the ministry in finding the suitable areas for cultivation, Persaud said.
|
||
 |
||
|
||
 |
||
 |
||
L I V I N G
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Related Articles | ||
| July 0 | ||
| Sustainable Living July 2010 | ||
| Read about the world of the climate change refugees in the Caribbean Basin islands….And many island offer lessons on sun, sand and climate changes- is anyone listening? The Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil is developing a Certified Sustainable plan …. And ending deforestation in the Amazon will boost Brazil’s agriculture by up to US$ 306 Billion! ---> Read More | ||
| June 0 | ||
| Sustainable Living June 2010 | ||
| Read what we have learned from the Gulf oil spill…some good news is that the siphoning is speeding up by the US government…experts advise us to get ready for a very, very active Atlantic hurricane season….a Sustainable Tourism Conference addressing climate concerns is held in Barbados and in shocking news, the UN reports that the Ocean’s fish could disappear in 40 years. ---> Read More | ||
| May 0 | ||
| Sustainable Living May 2010 | ||
| Guyana`s President is among UNEP’s `Champions of the Environment` awardees…. Caribbean islands approve ban on ocean dumping… the Caribbean is at risk of more large earthquakes …a bacterial mat the size of Greece is found on Pacific floor off Chile…the world`s third-largest dam gets the go-ahead in Brazil ---> Read More | ||
| April 0 | ||
| Sustainable Living April 2010 | ||
| West Indies Power signs financing for geothermal power plants on Nevis... The Garifuna Coalition USA, Inc, has announced The First Garifuna Heritage Awards, which were presented during the First Annual Garifuna Heritage Awards and Cultural Night on March 13, 2010 in New York…the Caribbean Region is advancing in environmental goals, but deforestation and CO2 emissions keep rising per the UN…CAST and COTAL sign an historic memorandum on sustainability in Caribbean Tourism. ---> Read More | ||
| March 0 | ||
| Sustainable Living March 2010 | ||
| The travel industry apparently has a long way to go to convince green travelers that it is environmentally friendly. As police cracked down on climate protesters, church bells tolled 350 times to impress on the U.N. global warming conference a number that is gaining a following Methane levels may see `runaway` rise, scientists warn..Does It Really Matter Whether Your Food Was Produced Locally? Many feel that counting food miles can lead to wrong turns�and did you know that Reflective Roofs and Pavements Could Help Offset Climate Emissions? ---> Read More | ||
 SEARCH OUR MAGAZINE ARCHIVES |
 contact us submit an article list your property list your boat list a cultural event advertise with us list your property rental |
| |