BRAZIL: Brazil’s leading weekly magazine, Veja has named the country’s Top Ten landowners responsible for most of the deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, based on analysis of a report from the Brazilian Environment Institute, IBAMA. The names are Emílio Zamproni, who cut 3524 hectares of forest, Canrobert da Costa (2.770), Sadi Bortolotti (2.724), Carlos Eduardo Barbosa (2.689), Mário Augusto Carvalho (2.662), Mário Carvalho (2.645), Edras Soares (2.590), Antoninho Ravanello (2.580), un propietario no identificado (2.470) and Loinir Gatto (2.400).

Source: El Pais.

ZIMBABWE: Harare may face another water shortage if it fails to raise several million dollars to upgrade its main pump. Last year the city experienced a serious water crisis that led to the closure of industries, schools and clinics. The Harare city council whose mayor and councillors were recently suspended by the national government for gross mismanagement says the cash-strapped council has to raise the equivalent of at least Rand 11M in the next few months for the pump project if it is to avoid another crisis.

Source: WORLD WATER & Environmental Engineering

CHINA: Morgan Stanley Dean Witter shareholders have sent a message that they do not want the investment behemoth funding the Three Gorges Dam in China. The company’s management responded by calling for talks in May 1999 with human rights and environmental activists on social and environmental guidelines for project financing. The action is part of the ongoing campaign that activists have been waging in financial centres around the world to ensure no additional foreign support is made available for the dam. In January 1998, BankAmerica agreed not to underwrite any securities that would directly finance the construction of the dam.

Source: International Rivers Network

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