RIO DE JANEIRO - Brazil's environmental product surpasses 2.2 trillion dollars annually, according to the preliminary ''conservative'' calculations of the Brazilian Institute of the Environment (IBAMA), which launched this project to measure the nation's ecological wealth in 1999.

The study, to be completed in 2002, is based on methodology developed by Robert Constanza, of the United States, who calculated the world's annual environmental product to be 33 trillion dollars, said Moacir Arruda, coordinator of IBAMA's ecosystem conservation division.

Economists, biologist and other experts are placing dollar values on the services provided to society by Brazil's seven principal biomes, which include the Amazon, Pantanal, Atlantic coast forests and the central savannas.

Examples of these services are oxygen emissions, water sources, climate stabilization and the foundations for food, energy and medicine production.

SANTIAGO - Four of the poorest and most polluted municipalities of the Chilean capital are asking the government for financial resources to improve their inhabitants' quality of life.

The mayors of Lo Prado, Quinta Normal, Pudahuel and Cerro Navia say the municipal funds should include compensation for the negative impacts of pollution as a factor in the designation and distribution of funds.

The four municipalities are home to 560,000 residents, more than 11 percent of Santiago's population of five million. They are situated at the northwest end of the mountain-enclosed valley of the Metropolitan Region, a low-lying area where air contaminants tend to accumulate.

Lawmaker Carlos Olivares, a member of the co-governing Christian Democratic Party and one of the initiative's promoters, calculates the necessary investment at 35 million dollars.

CARACAS - A total of 131 young pink flamingos, a rare variety of the Caribbean flamingo (phoenicopterus ruber ruber) living in the wetlands of coastal Venezuela, were banded in early September in the Los Olivitos marshes, located in the country's northwest.

The birds now wear an identifying ring. They were tagged after being evaluated, weighed and measured in their habitat by biologists from several universities and by experts from ProFauna, a state-run wildlife organization.

The flamingo population leaves the marsh area in March, returning in June and July. In 1999, in the first of the banding operations, the specialists evaluated 58 young birds as part of a ProFauna program to protect the flamingoes at 17 sites on the Venezuelan coast.

LIMA - Mobil Oil Company's withdrawal from the Candamo valley in the Peruvian Amazon, an area rich in biodiversity, is ''the victory of an ecological film'' that attracted the attention of the international community, says Roger Rumrill, an independent expert on the Amazon.

Four years ago, the Peruvian government authorized Mobil Oil to conduct exploration of ''Lot 78,'' which encompasses the Tambopata, Távara and Candamo rivers. But the company reported in August that it would not pursue a well-drilling project, apparently to avoid a hostile campaign by US-based environmental organizations.

The case won notoriety following various showings of ''Candamo: The Last Uninhabited Jungle,'' a documentary by Daniel Winitzky that has won several film festival honors and is slated to be shown on cable TV's Discovery Channel.


*Source: Inter Press Service.