RIO DE JANEIRO - "No to Coal!" is the slogan of a coalition of two-dozen environmental groups formalized last week to demand a ban in Brazil on this energy source. Their priority is to prevent the construction of five coal-fired electrical plants in southern Brazil, where the country's coal deposits are located.

The environmental harm caused by this fossil fuel is described in "Coal: Yesterday's Fuel", a book published by Friends of the Earth-Brazil and Greenpeace, released May 25 to mark the launch of the new coalition.

Its goal is to promote renewable energy sources, such as wind, biomass, and southern Brazil has an abundance of rice chaff and strong winds, Friends coordinator Kathia Monteiro told Tierramérica. The new movement also rejects nuclear energy and major hydroelectric dams, she said.

CARACAS - Venezuela will invest 4.2 million dollars on destroying a thousand tons of pesticides, including DDT (dichloro dyphenil trychloroethane), toxaphene, lead arsenate and methyl bromide.

Barrels containing these "persistent organic pollutants" (POPs) will be sent this month to Germany, where they will be incinerated, stored in high-security drums and buried in a salt mine.

According to the environmental group Aguaclara, Venezuelan imported more than eight thousand tons of POPs in the 1960s for the beneficiaries of an agrarian reform process.

"These pollutants are no longer used, but have medium and long term effects," Environment Ministry representative Emilio Chacón told Tierramérica.

Aguaclara activist María Eugenia Gil told Tierramérica, "It's essential to investigate in order to find more pollutants that were buried or are being stored" in Venezuela.

On May 17, the Stockholm Convention on POPs entered into force for the 59 countries that ratified the treaty, but Venezuela is not among them.

TEGUCIGALPA - The government of Honduras announced that beginning next year it will work to eliminate dive-fishing for lobster in the Caribbean department of La Mosquitia, a fishing technique that has left at least 4,200 indigenous divers injured.

Miguel Suazo, head of the fishing division of the Agriculture Secretariat, explained to Tierramérica that diving for lobster, without the necessary safety measures, leads to decompression syndrome, characterized by lack of oxygen to the brain and various kinds of neurological disorders.

"There's a certain amount of resistance in the business community to implement the fishing regulations and protect the divers, but we cannot continue allowing more people to be injured and we are going to eliminate dive fishing in 2005," said Suazo.

Arquídimes López, one of the Misquito Indians living with a diving injury, told Tierramérica that he is pleased with the government's announcement because "we feel unprotected. We are slowly dying and it seemed that nobody was aware of it."

GUATEMALA CITY - Guatemala's Ministry of Agriculture is set to protect the Xayá and Pixcayá rivers in the western department of Chimaltenango, which supply 38 percent of the potable water consumed in the capital.

The program already has the approval of President Oscar Berger, but its cost has not yet been established, nor the source of financing, José Duro, the ministry's geographic planning coordinator, told Tierramérica.

The protection strategy for the two river basins consists of three phases, says Duro. The first is focused on preserving forests and parks, the second promotes planting of fruit trees in the high erosion zones, and the third is to diversify economic activities in the river valleys, located some 150 km west of the capital.

HAVANA - A canal to begin curbing the severe contamination of Los Cangilones del Río Máximo, a natural pool set 550 km east of the Cuban capital, is nearly ready to begin operating.

Sources form the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment confirmed for Tierramérica that the project, extending 1,700 meters, would be complete before World Environment Day, June 5.

This natural limestone pool is 350 meters long and is unique in the Cuban landscape. It has been heavily polluted in recent years by the waste produced at a nearby fish farming station.

Because the pool water had become clouded, the rocks stained, and sediment collected in the lake bed, environmental authorities had to ban swimming and close down the nearby campground.

SANTIAGO - The annual report to Congress by Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, presented May 21, shows that "the government has not complied nor does it aim to comply with its promises" on environmental issues, said Sara Larraín, coordinator of the Sustainable Chile Program.

The parliament's inaction on the native forest protection bill, the lack of territorial planning based on preservation and sustainability criteria, the absence of solutions for air pollution in Santiago and the lack of initiative to improve environmental legislation are among the unkept promises, she said.

Larraín condemned Lagos's defense of a project to import natural gas by ship to make up for the cutbacks in supplies from Argentina.

"That is not diversification (of energy sources). It is more of the same," said the activist, and she went on to criticize the decision to put into operation contaminating petroleum and coal fired electrical plants until natural gas supplies are stabilized.

As a result, "particulate matter and nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere will increase 30 percent, ozone emissions 20 percent and sulfur 40 percent," said Larraín.