LIMA - Peru is investing 57 million dollars to reinforce protection of its rivers and irrigation canals in its northwestern coastal region to prevent the flooding that could be caused by El Niño, the cyclical phenomenon of a warm Pacific Ocean current that usually triggers extreme weather around the globe.

Weather patterns will likely begin to change here between December and the middle of next year, according to Alvaro Ledesma, director of irrigation at Peru's Ministry of Agriculture.

Peruvian fishing communities long ago noticed that this three-to-seven year cycle usually was manifest around Christmas, so dubbed the phenomenon El Niño (the Christ child).

MEXICO CITY - Mexican experts are assessing treatments for fighting an infestation that attacks the 'parotas' (Enterolobium ciclocarpum), trees that live over a hundred years, in the western state of Colima.

Biologist José Cibrián Tovar, director of the forest health office at Mexico's Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources, explained to Tierramérica that a study of pruning and the application of sealant and fungicide to the affected trees will help scientists determine the best remedy to the problem.

Parotas are broad trees, with treetops extending 20 meters in diameter and reaching heights of 20 to 35 meters. They serve as an important food source for many species during the Northern Hemisphere summer.

The tree species began to show signs of disease three years ago in some areas of Colima. Tests show that the Brotidiplodia sp. fungus is the principal agent associated with the disease, says Cibrián Tovar.

BOGOTA - The government of Colombia, a country that is a world leader in the production of illegal narcotics, is shifting its strategy away from crop substitution towards income substitution for peasant farmers who commit to taking care of forests and preserving the environment instead of growing coca, the raw material for cocaine, or poppies, used to produce heroin.

Environment minister Cecilia Rodríguez announced the new program, which recognizes that efforts to substitute drug crops with food crops did not produce the desired results and failed to protect the Colombian environment.

The new policy will serve as a mechanism to finance 50,000 families that have previously subsisted from coca and poppy crops in launching new projects to eliminate the illicit crops and recuperate forested areas.

TEGUCIGALPA - The Honduran government will begin construction next year on the first wastewater treatment station in the nation's capital, one of the most polluted cities in Central America.

With backing from the European Union (EU), the project will provide sanitation and drainage to 380,000 families in the outlying neighborhoods of the Tegucigalpa, who are otherwise exposed to the contamination of the rivers that run through the city's periphery, said Roberto Martínez Lozano, manager of the government's National Aqueduct and Drainage Service.

The new station will treat wastewater, and once it is clean it will be channeled into the city's rivers. The complex will also be equipped with devices to prevent the emission of foul-smelling gases, according to Lutz Scholtz, an EU representative.

MANAGUA - Thirteen people, including five children, have died of hunger in La Dalia and San Ramón, in the northern Nicaraguan department of Matagalpa, where 894 families have been left without resources to buy food due to declining coffee prices.

The children were with their parents in what are known here as "hunger sit-ins", protests by peasant farmers and families who have lost their jobs at local coffee plantations.

This situation violates the right to life of more than 3,000 people suffering hunger, and national and international laws, says human rights defense attorney Carlos Emilio López. "This is shocking. There are already people dying, and more children could die if the state does not take immediate action," he said.

Peasant farmer Leoncio Rivas says, "poverty has come to this area like a fever. They won't hire us at the farms, which is why poverty is worse for us each year."

SAN SALVADOR - Two Salvadoran scientists have been honored for their work in developing an organic insecticide for fighting the white fly, a pest that causes crop loss in the Americas and in Spain.

The white fly, an insect measuring one millimeter and covered by a fine white dust, leaves behind a substance that prevents plants from "breathing" adequately.

The insecticide is the work of mother-daughter team Blanca Avila de Solano and María Gabriela Solano Avila. Their idea, to fight the white fly without using toxic chemicals, received the national research prize, awarded annually by the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources.