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  • ‘There will be no decisions about us, without us’

    COPENHAGEN—The anger in Juan Carlos Soriano’s voice was clear when he rose to a podium in the Bella Center Friday afternoon. And it was easy to understand why: the climate-treaty talks were (and still are at this writing) stuck between competing draft texts, none of which offer plans to keep global warming within safe scientific […]

  • Science diplomacy: An expectations game

    In “The Limits of Science Diplomacy,” SciDev.net Director David Dickson argues that scientific collaboration can achieve only very limited diplomatic victories. A conference hosted by the Royal Society in London earlier this month, entitled “New Frontiers in Science Diplomacy” (agenda), seems to have arrived at a similar conclusion. But this view of science diplomacy is […]

  • Peruvian Amazon under threat from oil exploration, illegal logging

    There’s no better way to start off a Monday than with depressing news from the Peruvian Amazon, which is under threat from both fossil-fuel development and illegal logging. Despite protests from environmental and human rights groups, Peru’s government plans to auction off dozens of parcels of remote rainforest for oil and gas companies to explore. […]

  • Indigenous leader Julio Cusurichi Palacios battles for an intact Amazon

    Julio Cusurichi Palacios. Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize. The Peruvian Amazon is one of the most remote places in the world. In its wildest corners, in the Madre de Dios region along the Brazilian border, some indigenous communities continue to live far from modern society. But their solitude is eroding: Loggers are pushing deeper into the […]

  • Activists are fighting a new agreement between the U.S. and Peru

    A logger drives his freshly cut mahogany logs upriver toward Ivochote, a scratchy, low-slung jungle town in Peru’s eastern Amazon. Hoping to convert his illegal revenues into some weekend lovin’, he takes maca, a traditional Peruvian libido enhancer. He heads to a nearby brothel, but its employees are too busy protesting pollution caused by a […]

  • Roger Mustalish, Amazon researcher and protector, answers questions

    Roger Mustalish. With what environmental organization are you affiliated? I’m president of the Amazon Center for Environmental Education and Research Foundation, a U.S. nonprofit with offices in West Chester, Penn., and in Iquitos and Puerto Maldonado, Peru. What does your organization do? ACEER’s mission is to promote environmental conservation by being a catalyst for awareness, […]

  • Critics say Peru pipeline is an accident waiting to happen

    The boat ride down southeastern Peru’s Urubamba River cuts through mountains and sweltering jungle, passing wooden shacks of colonos — mixed race and grindingly poor Peruvians lured to the jungle with promises of free land — and nativos, tribes recently brought into contact with the modern world. The area is a biological gold mine, home […]

  • A photo journey to the far reaches of Peru

    In a collection of photos, Gary Braasch takes us on a visit to Peru’s rivers, mountains, ancient temples, and young faces — the country’s true gems. Photos: © Gary Braasch   Peru is dominated by two features that are, to most outsiders, the stuff of legend: the Amazon and the Andes. The lush forests and […]

  • A Peruvian activist takes on the fishmeal industry

    Maria Elena Foronda Farro was born to be an activist. Her father, a union lawyer in Chimbote, Peru, taught her — through words and by example — about the importance of social justice. Foronda, who grew up in Chimbote and earned a master’s degree in sociology in Mexico, is now applying her father’s lessons to […]