RIO DE JANEIRO, May 7 (Tierramérica) - Indigenous groups -- fisherfolk and rubber tappers in the Brazilian Amazon -- have relaunched the Aliança dos Povos da Floresta (Alliance of Forest Peoples - APF), founded in the 1980s, to demand recognition of their role in the preservation of the jungle and of the world's climate.

At a recent seminar in the Amazonian city of Manaus, its leaders approved a manifesto in favor of international remuneration for halting deforestation and announced the creation of their own approach for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

"We want more than payment for maintaining the forests," but rather public policies that "consider the human beings who live in the Amazon," improving the quality of life, Jecinaldo Cabral, leader of the federation of indigenous organizations of the Brazilian Amazon, told Tierramérica.

The APF will hold its second national meeting in September, he said.

SANTIAGO, May 7 (Tierramérica) - Chilean environmentalists reject the United Nations appointment of former president Ricardo Lagos (2000-2006) as one of three special envoys on climate change.

In a communiqué released May 1, the UN underscored as one of Lagos's merits his creation of the Democracy and Development Foundation.

"I think it's outrageous and worrisome, given that during his administration he had no sensitivity to environmental issues. On the contrary, he put public policies below the big private interests," Luis Mariano Rendón, of the Ecological Action Movement, told Tierramérica.

Lagos, who will share the post with Norway's former prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland and South Korea's former foreign affairs minister Han Seung-Soo, assured that under his government "there were efforts" to fight climate change, but he conceded that "we could have done more."

HAVANA, May 7 (Tierramérica) - A Cuban-developed method of construction with ecological materials is among the four finalist projects for the World Habitat Award, sponsored by the United Nations.

Implemented in Cuba and in at least eight other countries, the approach focuses on developing building materials from alternative raw materials, ones that are cheaper and more resistant to natural disasters.

The Cuban eco-construction technique has already "proved its viability, and could change the paradigms of the relationship between academic institutions and the communities surrounding it," says Fernanda Martirena, of CIDEM, a structures and material research center at the Central University of Villas, which designed it.

The award is given each October to projects that offer innovative solutions to housing problems around the globe.

CARACAS, May 7 (Tierramérica) - The subway here in the Venezuelan capital caught its passengers by surprise last week at the Plaza Venezuela station, with its walls newly covered by gigantic, full-color photographs of the country's plains, teeming with plant and animal life.

"It's an effort to promote identification of the people with the country and with environmental preservation. We'll be bringing to other stops photos of the plains, the Caribbean, and the Guayana region (southeast) and the Andes of the southwest," subway spokeswoman Nadia Pérez told Tierramérica.

The images were supplied by the environmental group Provita, "with emphasis on showing species that are threatened amidst our natural riches and beauty," said coordinator Jeannette Rojas.