BOGOTA - Colombia obtained international financing for 31 industrial conversion projects related to protecting the atmosphere's ozone layer after the country was identified as one of the developing nations that has best complied with the Montreal Protocol on climate change.

The approximately 12 million dollars for the projects come from the Montreal Protocol's Multilateral Fund, which distributes credits to adapt industries whose activities are harmful to the ozone layer, the earth's filter for ultraviolet solar radiation.

The Montreal Protocol, signed in 1987, contains the international community's commitments to fight the depletion of the ozone layer resulting from the emission of polluting industrial gases.

The Colombian Ministry of Environment issued a report in late September on the encouraging measurements taken in Bogota and other areas of the country, indicating a reduction in ozone-depleting emissions.

SANTIAGO - The Pudahuel community, a municipality in the western area of the Chilean capital, filed legal charges Oct 2 in court against four companies, accusing them of polluting a marsh with industrial waste.

The initiative of the 'Comité Ecológico Aguas Claras' (Clear Waters Ecological Committee), created by Pudahuel residents, has the support of the non-governmental Latin American Observatory of Environmental Disputes.

The Las Cruces marsh, which crosses part of the municipality, is the most polluted natural wetland in the Santiago metropolitan region and the source of disease among the low-income families that live along its banks. Its polluted waters have also caused the deaths of domestic birds.

The lawsuit against Explotaciones Sanitarias, Fábrica de Levaduras Golondrina, Tintorerías P y P and Cervecerías Chile seek ''to recover the biodiversity of the marsh,'' says the Clear Waters Ecological Committee.

SAN JOSE - Costa Rican scientists, at the request of the United States National Forest Service, are to study the biodiversity and impact of climate change on 130 islands of the Pacific Ocean.

The non-governmental Tropical Science Center (CCT), founded in 1962 with a staff of Costa Rican biologists, geologists and environmentalists, will map the ecosystems of Hawaii, a US state, and Samoa, the Mariana and Marshall islands, among other territories administered by Washington DC.

To measure the characteristics particular to each natural medium, the CCT will use the Zones of Life classification system, a method created by the center's founders.

Research is to begin this month and will allow the specialists to calculate the quantity of carbon being absorbed by the Pacific islands' tropical vegetation.

CARACAS - The ground is sinking beneath Lagunillas, a town west of Venezuela that may disappear due to the effects of petroleum exploitation.

Lagunillas mayor, Mervin Méndez, told Tierramérica that the town has already sunk 12 centimeters below the water of level of nearby Maracaibo Lake.

The greatest threat comes from a neighboring 70-year-old dam. According to experts from the state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela oil company, if the dam were to develop a crack - from an earthquake perhaps - the ensuing flood would wipe out Lagunillas, home to 35,000 people.

Marino Alvarado, of the human rights organization Provea, stressed that the government enacted a law in 1992 to move the entire town to a safe location, but authorities have yet to comply with the legislation.

*Fuente: Inter Press Service.