To investigate the potential local health benefits of adopting greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation policies, we develop scenarios of GHG mitigation for México City, México; Santiago, Chile; São Paulo, Brazil; and New York, New York, USA using air pollution health impact factors appropriate to each city. We estimate that the adoption of readily available technologies to lessen fossil fuel emissions over the next two decades in these four cities alone will reduce particulate matter and ozone and avoid approximately 64,000 (95% confidence interval [CI] 18,000–116,000) premature deaths (including infant deaths), 65,000 (95% CI 22,000–108,000) chronic bronchitis cases, and 37 million (95% CI 27–47 million) person-days of work loss or other restricted activity. These findings illustrate that GHG mitigation can provide considerable local air pollution–related public health benefits to countries that choose to abate GHG emissions by reducing fossil fuel combustion.

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http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov

This article questions the assumption of poverty as a major cause of environmental degradation. Examining five environmentally harmful natural resource management practices in the Nicaraguan hillsides, it shows that the immediate agents of environmental degradation are the nonpoor farmers, not the poorest. It argues that to analyze the causal links between poverty and environment, a distinction between poverty as a state of deprivation and poverty as a relational phenomenon is necessary. Finally, the article warns that the often strategic reference to poverty as the major cause of environmental degradation made by nonpoor and poor farmers may lead to negative environmental impacts.

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http://www.communityagroecology.net

Mexico City’s air has gone from among the world’s cleanest to among the dirtiest in the span of a generation. Novelist Carlos Fuentes first novel took place here in 1959 and was entitled "Where the air is clear" - a title he has said is ironic considering the city’s now  soupy environment.

The average visibility of some 100 km in 1940s is down to about 1.5 km. Snow-capped volcanoes(Popocatepetl, Ixtacihuatl, and Paricutin) that were once parts of the landscape are now visible only rarely (fig.1.2). And levels of almost any pollutant like nitrogen dioxide (NO2) now regularly break international standards by two to three times. Levels of ozone (O3), a pollutant that protects us from solar radiation in the upper atmosphere but is dangerous to breathe, are twice as high here as the maximum allowed limit for one hour a year and this occurs several hours per day every day.

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http://www.sbg.ac.at

Elements of the soy industry have agreed to take a milestone step toward improving their production practices, which have led to widespread deforestation, displacement of small-farmers and indigenous peoples, and loss of natural habitats.

On Thursday, participants in the Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS) unanimously agreed to implement a pilot program of voluntary production standards aimed at reducing the negative impacts of soy production on the environment and people, particularly in South America.

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http://www.panda.org

The Inter-American Development Bank approved on January 19, 2006, a new Environment and Safeguards Compliance Policy, strengthening the Bank's commitment to environmental sustainability. The new policy, approved by the Board of Executive Directors, consolidates environmental safeguards consistent with best practices being carried out among public and private international financial institutions.

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http://www.iadb.org

Are indigenous managerial systems sustainable? Conservationists, politicians, academics, preservationists and indigenous peoples keep debating on this issue. Environmental policies favoring or contradicting indigenous rights are justified upon arguments raised from this discussion.

Ethnoscientists have found that human involvement with the natural environment have developed in accordance with ecosystems functioning. They have found that the distinction between nature and society seems to be an odd concept for many indigenous societies (Descola & Palssons 1996). The ways of living of Amerindians and other indigenous peoples all around the globe involve aesthetic and spiritual dimensions that contribute to the functioning of the environment and society as a whole.

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http://research.yale.edu

The project's overall goal is to contribute to reducing the poverty and extreme poverty levels of the rural population - men, women and youth - in the semi-arid areas of Piauí. Its main objective is to improve farm and off-farm income, employment opportunities and productive assets of the poor rural households living in the project area.

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The objective of the project is to improve living standards for poor small-scale farmers and landless rural poor in priority regions of the poorest states by developing, testing, and introducing sustainable agricultural technologies and rational resource management practices, and institutionalizing improved strategies for the delivery of agricultural services and poverty-targeted investments by state governments, producer organizations and other nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

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http://www.worldbank.org

The World Agroforestry Centre, Nairobi, Kenya, together with Forest Trends, Washington DC, The World Conservation Union, Gland, Switzerland, Corporación Grupo Randi Randi, Quito, Ecuador, the African Centre for Technology Studies, Nairobi, Kenya, the Institute for Economic and Social Research, Bangalore, India, and the United Nations Environment Programme – Division for Environmental Conventions, Nairobi, Kenya, is leading a scoping study for the International Development Research Centre (IDRC-Canada) on the model of payments for environmental services (PES) as applied in developing countries, to determine how the poor are affected by these schemes and whether the schemes are compatible with poverty reduction objectives.

As part of the study, CGRR, together with Forest Trends and IUCN, were responsible for organizing a Latin American workshop on PES and poverty. The workshop was held in Quito, Ecuador, April 26-28, 2006. This report covers the organization and planning process of the workshop. It includes summaries of all presentations made as well as summaries of the case studies presented by international participants. A synthesis of the current situation and trends in the region concerning PES and poverty is presented and followed by conclusions and recommendations proposed by workshop participants.

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http://www.worldagroforestry.org

Global warming is drying up mountain lakes and wetlands in the Andes and threatening water supplies to major South American cities such as La Paz, Bogota and Quito, World Bank research shows.

The risk is especially great to an Andean wetland habitat called the paramo, which supplies 80 percent of the water to Bogota's 7 million people.

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http://in.reuters.com