Brazilian environmental activist rehabilitated

The late Brazilian environmental activist Chico Mendes has been officially rehabilitated more than 20 years after his death. The Brazilian government published the decision in today's edition of the gazette.

Mr Mendes' widow will receive 112,000 euros in damages and a life pension of 1,000 euros a month. Chico Mendes was also acquitted of all charges brought against him.

The former union leader is known as one the first prominent activists fighting for the preservation of Brazil's tropical rainforest. He was shot dead outside his house by landowners in 1988.

Before that, he was repeatedly prosecuted by the then Brazilian dictatorship.

http://www.radionetherlands.nl/news/international/6172892/Brazilian-environmental-activist-rehabilitated

France's Suez liable for illegal deforestation, "dynamite fishing" in the Amazon rainforest

A consortium building the Jirau hydroelectric dam in Brazil near the Bolivian border has been ordered to pay roughly $3.5 million in fines for illegally logging nearly 50 acres (18.6 ha) of forest and using dynamite to kill 11 tons of fish in local rivers, reports the Spanish news agency EFE.

The consortium, led by France's Suez, began construction on the project last November. The $5.3 billion dam will generate 3.3 gigawatts (GW) of power when it becomes operational in 2016. The Madeira hydroelectric complex also includes the 3.15 GW San Antonio dam, which is scheduled to go online in 2012 and will cost $5 billion.

The project has been fiercely contested by environmentalists who say it will impede migration of fish species, flood more than 200 square miles (520 sq km) of rainforest triggering greenhouse gas emissions from rotting vegetation, and promote colonization in the ecologically-sensitive area.

The Madeira is the longest tributary of the Amazon River.

$11B Amazon rainforest dam gets initial approval July 10, 2007
The Brazilian government has given preliminary go-ahead on a massive Amazon dam project that environmentalists and scientists say could be a potential ecological disaster.

http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0211-madeira_dam.html

Amazon forest may get drier, but survive warming

Amazonian forests may be less vulnerable to dying off from global warming than feared because many projections underestimate rainfall, a study showed.

The report, by scientists in Britain, said Brazil and other nations in the region would also have to act to help avert any irreversible drying of the eastern Amazon, the region most at risk from climate change, deforestation and fires.

"The rainfall regime in eastern Amazonia is likely to shift over the 21st century in a direction that favors more seasonal forests rather than savannah," they wrote in this week's U.S. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, released on Monday.

Seasonal forests have wet and dry seasons rather than the current rainforest, which is permanently drenched. That shift could favor new species of trees, other plants and animals.

The findings contrast with past projections that the Amazon forest could die and be replaced by savannah.

A 2007 report by the U.N. Climate Panel, which is a snapshot of global warming science by the world's leading experts, said: "By mid-century, increases in temperature and associated decreases in soil water are projected to lead to gradual replacement of tropical forest by savannah in eastern Amazonia."

The new study said that almost all of 19 global climate models underestimated rainfall in the world's biggest tropical forest after the scientists compared the models with observations of 20th century climate.

Lowland forests in the Amazon have annual average rainfall of 2,400 mm (94 inches), it said. Projected cuts in rainfall meant the region would still be wet enough to sustain a forest.

The experts also examined field studies of how the Amazon might react to drying. It said that seasonal forests would be more resilient to the occasional drought but more vulnerable to fires than the current rainforest.

"The fundamental way to minimize the risk of Amazon dieback is to control greenhouse gas emissions globally, particularly from fossil fuel combustion in the developed world and Asia," said Yadvinder Malhi, the lead author from Oxford University.

But he said that governments led by Brazil also needed to manage the forests better.

Global warming is "accompanied by an unprecedented intensity of direct pressure on the tropical forests through logging, deforestation, fragmentation, and fire use," the scientists wrote.

And fires, including those touched off by lightning, were more likely to cause wide damage to forests already fragmented by roads or by farmers clearing land to plant crops such as soya beans.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUKTRE5187OV20090209

Survivor search ends after Brazil plane crash kills 24

Rescue workers have ended their search following a plane crash which killed 24 people and left four survivors in Brazil's Amazon basin, authorities said Sunday.

An investigation is underway into the cause of the accident which happened on Saturday, with survivors' accounts and officials' initial assessments pointing to engine failure as a possible cause.

The Embraer, chartered by Manaus Aerotaxis, was carrying two crew members and 26 passengers, including children, when it went down after taking off from the city of Coari en route to the inland Amazon basin's largest city, Manaus.

The plane was forced to make an emergency landing in the River Manacapuru, a tributary of the Amazon, between Santo Antonio and the island of Montecristo, some 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Manaus.

Seven children were among those killed, Brazil's Legal Medicine Institute said.

Almost 40 firefighters including nine divers (frogmen) and civil defense officials searched through the night for survivors, but confirmed that just four people survived while the death toll rose from six from late Saturday to 24.

Authorities suspect the plane tried to make an emergency landing at the Panamacapuru airport but went down instead in the river.

The director of Manacapuru Regional Hospital, Marcelo Alves, told local media that survivors had relayed how "they heard one of the motors stop and the plane lost altitude. They hit something and then went nose first into the water," he said.

Some survivors said they were able to jump from a door at the rear of the plane shortly before impact.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jehyfwE2-qSXmNfSR7XFEKCtyhNg

Pure Acai Products to Market New Line of Acai Zone Products

After signing an agreement with Apex-Nutra, Pure Acai Products has unveiled three new Acai Zone brand products that are set to take the health-food industry by storm.

Pure Acai Products, one of the world's leading suppliers of acai berry products, recently signed an agreement with Apex-Nutra to develop a new line of three high-quality, private-label acai juices and supplements under the Acai Zone brand.

Acai Zone products are 100% pure acai and have been developed using cutting edge technology.
The joining of forces with Apex-Nutra was a natural progression for Pure Acai Products. Initially, Acai Zone will be marketed exclusively through Acai Berry Site, but will later be distributed through other online retailers.

These new products combine the wide range of health benefits of the acai berry with functional nutritional supplements developed by Apex-Nutra. Acai Ultra Slim is engineered to provide maximum aid to people looking to lose and keep off excess pounds. Acai Maxx is an energy booster and mood enhancer. Finally, Acai Rejuvenate is for anyone who wants to look and feel younger.

It is obvious that the explosion of interest in the acai berry is largely due to the wide range of benefits it provides. So we decided to combine our experience with producing quality acai products with the homeopathic knowledge of Apex-Nutra to market products that better target the specific needs of our customers. The Acai Zone brand is well known for the standard of the products available.

All of us behind Acai Zone have seen and felt how much of a change acai berry products can have on a person's life. By going into the acai berry business we are championing a product that we have complete faith in because we use it ourselves.
Bryan Nettles, who deals with the business side of the company, said, "It is obvious that the explosion of interest in the acai berry is largely due to the wide range of benefits it provides. So we decided to combine our experience with producing quality acai products with the homeopathic knowledge of Apex-Nutra to market products that better target the specific needs of our customers. The Acai Zone brand is well known for the standard of the products available."

Acai berries are the world's newest superfood. A native of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, the fruit has become recognized the world over thanks to its incredible health values.

There are several key benefits to consuming acai berry products such as Acai Zone. These range from an increased libido, better sleep and enhanced energy to better mental focus, an improved immune system and less aches and pains.

The berries are no wonder cure, but they could be the next best thing. Acai berries have also been linked to weight loss and decreasing the risk of cancer. Most of all, however, users say that a diet that includes the berries makes them feel great.

Pure Acai Products is a company founded by a group of friends who first came across acai berries while on a surfing trip to Rio in 2004. The adventurers ate the berries during their trip and could tell that there was something special about the fruit.

After returning to their homes in the Bay Area in San Francisco, the friends dug up all the information they could about acai berries. What they discovered was fascinating: the berries are full of helpful substances. However, it was near impossible to get acai products in the US.

It took several rounds of phone calls to find manufacturers who were prepared to export acai berries. However, as the berries spoil within a day of harvesting, it is necessary to process the berries before transporting.

The most convenient way of getting the product out of Brazil is in freeze-dried powder form, which is then consumed in capsule form. Acai berry juice is also popular with consumers, but is often diluted with water or other fruit juices and the end product is usually less than 10% acai berry.

The Acai Zone beverages are purees and are pulverized acai berry, with no water or other fruit juices added, so consumers get the maximum effect possible.

Nettles in particular was an immediate convert to acai berries after that trip to Brazil. "All of us behind Acai Zone have seen and felt how much of a change acai berry products can have on a person's life. By going into the acai berry business we are championing a product that we have complete faith in because we use it ourselves."

Apex-Nutra is a direct supplier of raw materials, including goji, camu camu and, of course, acai. Apex-Nutra has strong connections with the growers and manufacturers of these products, ensuring that Acai Zone is a high-quality, affordable acai product.

All of Apex-Nutra's suppliers and manufacturers have been handpicked and are CGMPs and HACCP compliant. Nothing is shipped without being thoroughly examined and tested.

The Acai berry has become the most talked about health food in the world. The fruit is full of antioxidants, which helps keep bodies healthy. Furthermore, antioxidants combat the effects of aging by targeting free radicals.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2009/02/prweb1974634.htm

Dear capitalists, admit you got it wrong

Buoyed up by a crisis and with five presidents in attendance, the international left has ideas for fixing the world that a neoliberal might recognise

OFTEN mocked for an endless ability to disagree with itself, the World Social Forum—an annual jamboree for NGOs, anti-capitalists, leftish intellectuals, bohemians and bishops—was unusually united this year. More united, in some ways, than the recent World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos, a gathering of political and corporate bigwigs to which the social forum supposedly responds.

While Davos Man was busy looking for someone to blame for his predicament, no such doubts troubled his opposite number in Belém, a city on the edge of the Brazilian rainforest where mango trees grow so tall that their fruits can shatter car windscreens when they fall. The culprit was the whole current design of the world economy, promoting competition. Free trade and free movement of capital needed to be re-thought, participants insisted. Some even had ideas on what should replace it.

The forum’s main purpose is to bring together social movements (which generally dislike being called NGOs) from around the world to network. In that respect, it is rather like any other business conference, though some participants carry spears and wear the feathers of various unfortunate parrots on their heads. The forum is skewed towards Latin America, especially Brazil. One of the founders of the forum is a Brazilian businessman called Oded Grajew, and its first meeting was held in Porto Alegre, in southern Brazil.

Of more than 5,000 accredited organisations, 4,193 were from South America, roughly ten times the number of African outfits present. This partly reflects the number and prominence of NGOs in South America and the semi-official role which some governments give them. This year Brazil’s left-leaning government gave the forum a subsidy of R$120m ($52m)—a piece of generosity that was not universally popular at a time when economic growth may be on the verge of halting.

As a result, many causes dear to the Brazilian left were well represented. T-shirts demanded asylum for Cesare Battisti, a left-wing Italian émigré convicted of murder in Rome, who is currently in Brazil. Banners called for Brazilian troops to be withdrawn from Haiti, where they are doing a good job of containing violence.

A proposed hydroelectric dam on the Madeira river (a tributary of the Amazon) was denounced, and the country’s new oil find claimed for its people. Plenty of people came from further afield, like the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, with a Delphic slogan: “We would rather sweat in peace than bleed in war.” And there were swarms of young, largely white folk who treated the forum like a music festival.

This cacophony sometimes sat awkwardly with the presence of five leftish presidents—Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil—who dropped in to be fêted. The flurry of helicopters and security men seemed out of place. Four leaders (President Lula was elsewhere) appeared together at a meeting that was billed as a dialogue with the social movements. But the talking was mostly one way. Mr Chávez gave a long, rambling speech in which he struggled to animate the crowd. “Another world is possible! No! Another world is necessary,” was as inspiring as it got.

Since its inception, the forum has struggled to get the right balance between a range of attractions: intellectual stars such as Noam Chomsky and Joseph Stiglitz, both of whom have addressed previous meetings; sympathetic politicians; large NGOs and the smaller single-issue organisations which often feel squeezed out.

This tension produced the best exchange in the presidential meeting. “You all talk about doing these things,” said João Pedro Stedile, a founder of the Landless Movement in Brazil, “but when you met in Bahia [in December] you just went to the beach.” “I didn’t go to the beach,” muttered the Venezuelan leader. “Well, perhaps those of you who are a bit overweight didn’t go,” Mr Stedile fired back.

Away from this set-piece spat, people were sitting in meeting rooms and coming up with proposals. The ones that dealt with reforming finance read a bit like a co-production between militant anti-capitalists and more cautious types, which was no accident. At the far edge was the idea that money and finance are public goods and should be shared out accordingly, through democracy. The familiar call for a special tax on international transactions was repeated. But there was plenty of talk that was more moderate and rather more interesting.

The forum suggested that the United Nations should be charged with preventing large trade surpluses and deficits from building up. Controls on exchange rates and the international movement of capital should be re-established. Credit-rating agencies should be reformed, incentives for excessive risk-taking reduced and bankers’ bonuses paid on the basis of long-term performance. Hedge funds, private-equity firms and other parts of the shadow banking system should go, along with over-the-counter derivatives (OTCs), collateralised-debt obligations (CDOs) and other nefarious structured products.

In general, a “speculator pays” principle should be introduced and applied when things go wrong. Finally, the world’s economy should get a stimulus in the form of a green New Deal.

Bits of this belong to the realm of reality; indeed, they might have come from America’s Democratic Party, or even from the op-ed pages of a respectable business daily. Interestingly, the forum proposed an outright ban on subprime mortgages, even though it might have been expected to look favourably on lending to people who would otherwise struggle to get credit.

If some delegates seemed to have thought hard about the economic crisis, the same could not be said of the visiting presidents. After leading the crowd in a chant of “Fidel, Fidel, Fidel!” Mr Chávez joined Messrs Lugo, Morales and Correa in a karaoke rendition of “Hasta siempre commandante”—a dirge about the exploits of Che Guevara—before disappearing. That was far too cruel a fate for the assembled company of Asian bishops, indigenous types in all their finery, would-be financial reformers and anti-capitalist warriors.

http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13061828

Predicting diversity within hotspots to enhance conservation

New strategy can identify hotspots within hotspots, focusing effort and money

With limited funding and an inadequate number of scientists, governments in countries containing "hotspots" of threatened biodiversity are wrestling with how to protect plants and animals in disappearing habitats.

But a new strategy developed by University of California, Berkeley, biologists could help scientists, governments and private organizations worldwide to identify the areas within hotspots where they should focus their time, effort and money - areas likely to have a wealth of unique diversity.

The research, led by UC Berkeley post-doctoral fellow Ana Carolina Carnaval and evolutionary biologist Craig Moritz, professor of integrative biology and director of UC Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, appears this week in the journal Science. Their colleagues are Michael J. Hickerson of Queens College, New York, Célio F. B. Haddad of Universidade Estadual Paulista, and Miguel T. Rodrigues of Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil.

The UC Berkeley researchers' strategy involves looking at multiple species in an area and, based on current range and models of past climate, estimating the species' past distributions. This gives an indication of which regions have been climatically stable, and thus likely to harbor a diversity of species, and which areas have been unstable and likely to be less biodiverse.

"With this method, we can identify areas that have been working as refugia for biodiversity," Carnaval said. "These are areas that have remained climatically stable through time, where local communities have been able to persist. Despite the fact that we haven't sampled them exhaustively yet, we think there is a lot of undocumented, hidden diversity there, the potential for a lot of species still unknown to science, and, especially, a lot of endemism."

Applying their strategy to the Atlantic forest hotspot, which extends from Brazil's southern border, stretching inland to Argentina and Paraguay, to the country's northeast coast, they pinpointed the central part of the Atlantic forest, much of it in Bahia state, as more diverse than previously thought. This is all the more remarkable because the central forest is among the least studied yet most threatened components of the Atlantic forest, Carnaval said.

"The study demonstrates that the southern portion of the Atlantic forest was more climatically unstable during the Late Pleistocene, relative to the central corridor, which served as a large climatic refuge for neotropical species," she said. "Yet, the central region is poorly known and under extreme anthropogenic pressure. This unveils new priorities for conservation that must reach policymakers, the public and NGOs (non-governmental organizations)."

Two decades ago, scientists proposed identifying "biodiversity hotspots" where "exceptional concentrations of endemic species are undergoing exceptional loss of habitat" so that conservation planners could focus on these hotspots "in proportion to their share of the world's species at risk," in the words of Oxford University's Norman Myers and colleagues, who published the first hotspot map in 2000 in the journal Nature. Endemic species are native species found nowhere else.

Carnaval and her colleagues have taken the next step, which is to narrow the focus even more, using the Atlantic forest of Brazil - which, unlike the much larger Amazon, is considered a threatened hotspot - as a test case.

The central Atlantic rainforests, home to tamarins and marmosets, include mangrove swamps along the coast, moist evergreen tropical forests nearby, semi-deciduous inland forests, where many trees drop their leaves in the dry season, and dry forests of deciduous trees even farther from the coast. Much of this rainforest has been cleared for farming, primarily for sugar cane, and only an estimated 8 percent of the original area remains. More than 60 percent of Brazil's population - approximately 100 million people - lives in cleared forest areas in the region.

Focusing on three species of tree frogs found throughout the forest, the UC Berkeley researchers modeled the species' distributions 6,000 years ago, when local conditions were generally cooler and wetter, as well as 21,000 years ago, a cool-dry period. Based on their model, they predicted that southern areas of the forest appear to have been comparatively less stable from a climatic standpoint, and thus recently colonized by the study species and likely to hold far less genetic diversity than the central region.

The team tested this prediction by looking at genetic variation among the frog species today. Frogs in stable areas should have more genetic variation because they have lived and evolved for a longer period of time, while in unstable areas, frogs that may have moved in recently should have less variation. Presumably, frog diversity will reflect diversity throughout the ecosystem.

That is exactly the pattern the researchers found. Taking DNA samples from 184 frogs of three treefrog species - Hypsiboas albomarginatus, H. semilineatus and H. faber - at dozens of sites within the Brazilian coastal rainforest, they sequenced mitochondrial DNA from each and compared the sequences of the same gene from all individuals. Southern frogs had much less genetic diversity than those in the central and northern regions.

"We find a lot of diversity in areas shown as climatically stable by the paleomodels and much less diversity in the south, where models suggest climatic instability," said Carnaval. "Also, we find evidence of population expansion from the central region to the south."

Reanalyzing previously published genetic data by others, Carnaval and Moritz also found supporting evidence from mammals and reptiles. Similar patterns have also been published for birds.

"The study has shown us that the central Atlantic forest, which hasn't had the investment of resources and effort as the southern, has been stable from a climatic standpoint and therefore is likely more diverse than currently believed. But because this area is under great human impact, it deserves conservation and research priority," Moritz said.

"We are not saying the south is not important; today, we find lots of endemics in the south and lots of diversity in the south," she added. "But the data point to another area that should receive more attention from both the conservation and research standpoint."

The method tested on Brazil's Atlantic forest should work in other understudied, highly threatened tropical regions worldwide, Moritz and Carnaval emphasized.

"The broader story is that we think this technique could be applied in other countries and other hotspot areas to identify regions that haven't been well sampled yet, regions that could possibly harbor as yet undiscovered unique diversity," Carnaval said. "This is a general method for identifying and prioritizing hotspots within hotspots, for finding highly diverse areas that have not been fully explored."

"Ana and her colleagues have discovered, using a very simple approach of combining genetics and environmental modeling, how we can make pretty strong predictions that can guide conservation efforts," Moritz said.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-02/uoc--pdw020209.php