MEXICO CITY - Indigenous communities in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca applaud a report detailing how genetically modified maize has contaminated local cornfields. The study was prepared by the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC).

The document was distributed last week by the environmental watchdog Greenpeace, before the governments of Canada, Mexico and the United States -- the three members of the CEC -- had decided whether to make the study public.

The authors of the report recommend strengthening the moratorium on cultivating transgenic corn, limiting corn imports from the United States, and developing ways to eradicate the modified genes that contaminated local maize varieties.

''We have zero trust in the Mexican government. We don't believe it is going to take into consideration this report, a document that we fully support,'' Aldo González, of the Oaxaca Union of Sierra Juárez Organizations -- representing 15,000 peasant farmers -- told Tierramérica.

BUENOS AIRES - Ecologists, academics and concerned citizens will present a complaint to UNESCO in December against the Argentine federal government and the government of the western province of San Juan for permitting mining activity by the Canadian firm Barrick Gold.

The Environmental Defense Foundation, headed by Raúl Montenegro, will file the complaint with the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) on behalf of San Juan citizen and environmental groups.

Barrick is mining on Veladero mountain, near Jachal, a town of 24,000 people. Earlier this month a meeting was held to protest the contamination caused by the mining, especially of water supplies, and its impact on agricultural activities.

Montenegro, winner of this year's Right Livelihood Award -- the ''Alternative Nobel'' -- says the environmental impact study presented by Barrick should never have been approved. The mining company's operations produce 4,000 tons of cyanide waste each year.

BOGOTA - Half of the water that Colombians drink is not fit for human consumption, according to a study released Oct. 19 by a group of lawmakers.

Legislative deputy Berner Zambrano, of the Regional Integration Movement, told Tierramérica that, according to the report, only 28 percent of the population has potable water in the home, and most of the 967 water and sanitation companies have inadequate operation, administrative and financial capacities.

The same study says the increase in water service rates between 1997 and 2000 in some cases reached 238 percent, and to keep up with payments ''families have had to cut their spending on basics like food, education and health.''

The report states that 91 percent of Colombia's water sources are contaminated and there are no plans in place to clean up the micro-watersheds that supply the larger bodies of water. Nor is there investment to help small towns to set up their own potable water services.