LIMA - The desert is spreading in Lambayeque department, on Peru's northern coast, due to the irrigation of rice paddies, a practice that is increasing the salinity of the soils and transforming them into sand dunes like those that already encircle the valleys in the region.

We have recorded an excessive and growing concentration of saltpeter in Lambayeque's valleys, warns Servio Cereceda, executive director of the Olmos Tinajones Irrigation Project Directorate.

Cereceda points out that the 430 km of canals built in the area to drain off the water from the paddies has not halted the salinization of the lands because the traditional technique of flooding smaller parcels continues.

RIO DE JANEIRO - In Brazil, 48 environmental organizations have joined forces in the SOS Forest Campaign to prevent the passage of a law that would expand the deforestation allowed on rural properties.

The new Forestry Code, which comes up for vote May 30 in the Brazilian Congress, would increase the destruction of forested areas and threaten the water supply to the big cities that depend on them, argue the environmentalists.

The legislative bill calls for allowing the deforestation of up to 80 percent of the properties held in six Amazonian states if they are not designated as economic-ecological zones within three years, in other words, areas set aside for specific farming activities or as environmental reserves.

The environmental groups, including Friends of the Earth, Conservation International, Greenpeace and World Wildlife Fund, fear that the states involved are delaying the zoning proceedings due to pressure from the large landowners.

NAIROBI - Klaus Topfer, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), applauded the recent recognition of environmental rights by the UN Commission on Human Rights, during its latest sessions in Geneva.

We all have the right to live in a world free of toxic pollutants and environmental degradation, stated the Commission - the UN’s maximum human rights forum

Topfer described the declaration as an historic event because many of the fundamental rights established in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights have significant environmental dimensions.

SANTIAGO - United States citizen Douglas Tompkins, a millionaire who founded the Pumalín Park, in southern Chile, hopes the government will declare the 300,000-hectare site a natural sanctuary in order to foment tourism and to preserve native forests and watersheds.

Located 200 km south of Santiago, Pumalín Park was established in 1992 when Tompkins acquired the first parcel of 17,000 hectares, which he later expanded.

The process generated resentment in some political circles and among some sectors of the military that considered the accumulation of territory by a foreigner to be a ''threat to Chilean sovereignty.''

During last summer's high season, which is January and February in the Southern Hemisphere, the park attracted 8,500 tourists.