BOGOTA - Rivers are not just flows of water, but also of chemical products and other waste that carry with them the history of a city, says Uribe Group, which this month launches a series of photo exhibits in four Colombian regional capitals.

The Uribe Group, of the northwestern city of Medellin, won a Ministry of Culture prize in 1999 with its project titled ''Thirst,'' a lyrical overview of the streams and riverbeds that urban development has turned into garbage dumps or paved avenues.

The Thirst project includes nine photo expositions that will be in place until October. According to Miguel Rojas, the Ministry of Culture's director of visual arts, it is a multi-city show that ''transcends the concept of what is considered art and entails an aesthetic-historic reflection of the ecological and the urban.''

HAVANA - The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) will provide Cuba with more than 900,000 dollars over the next two years to carry out three sustainable development projects in rural areas.

Some 550,000 dollars are earmarked for natural resource conservation in Ciénaga de Zapata, the largest inland wetland in the Caribbean and an international refuge for the region's birds.

The rest of the funding, according to the agreement signed July 24, is to be invested in re-establishing tropical fruit trees to reverse the decline in production over the last decade, and in measures to prevent forest fires.

QUITO - Environmental organisations in Ecuador plan to continue their protests against the use of the transgenic fungus 'fusarium oxysporum' until they win a ban on this ''biological weapon'' that is set to be used - at the behest of the United States - to eradicate illegal coca crops in neighbouring Colombia.

Ecuador's environment minister, Rodolfo Rendón, denied in the US-based 'Nuevo Herald' newspaper that he had suggested experiments involving fusarium oxysporum in Lago Agrio, capital of the Amazon region province of Sucumbíos, bordering Colombia.

But Rendón did not convince environmentalists. On July 27 they marched to the Ministry of Foreign Relations to ''protest the use of biological weapons like fusarium oxysporum in Ecuador,'' stated Elizabeth Bravo, member of the group Ecological Action.

Activists announced new demonstrations for the coming weeks with the goal of preventing experiments with the fungus and the demand that this Andean country stay out of the Colombian drug conflict.

BUENOS AIRES.- The Wildlife Foundation of Argentina has warned that 800 Pampas deer - 40 percent of the species - are at risk in the central province of San Luis.

The provincial government is set to build two roads through the planned National Deer Park meant to preserve this species native to the area known as the wetland Pampa.

The Pampas deer were abundant during the pre-Hispanic period, but now there are just 1,000 animals left, according to Wildlife Foundation data. The creation of the park, proposed by this environmental organisation, is being studied by the National Park Directorate and would require financing from the World Bank, but the provincial authorities have gone ahead with the road construction project.

*Fuente: Inter Press Service.