wolfyvegan

...at least on paper.

One unusual characteristic of Latin American nations is their proclivity to adopt new constitutions that reflect periodic swings in political philosophies. These documents are notable for their length and the proliferation of sections addressing specific issues. Pan Amazon nations have relatively recent constitutions, and all have at least one article that obligates the state to protect the environment. Guyana (1980) and Suriname (1987) still use the constitutions adopted following their independence, which provide a brief statement assigning the state the ‘duty’ to protect [or improve] the environment. Similarly, the now-defunct constitutions of Ecuador (1978) and Peru (1979), written following military rule, committed the state to protecting the environment; following the traditions of constitutional jurisprudence, however, these constitutional iterations left the details to the legislature.

Brazil’s 1988 constitution was radically different. It includes ten articles that address nature conservation or environmental management – a thematic focus that is surpassed only by provisions detailing the federal governance structure. More importantly, it was the first country in the Pan Amazon to include access to a healthy environment as a basic human right. The national charter of Colombia of 1991 is similarly detailed, with seventeen articles mentioning rights and responsibilities linked to natural resource management and environmental protection. Peru’s 1993 constitution is less specific, but it identifies environmental management as a core government function. The Colombian Constitutional Court ruled in favor of the Indigenous authorities of Pirá Paraná in Vaupés in their legal action against the Redd+ Baka Rokarire project. Image courtesy of Mauricio Romero Mendoza.

Venezuela’s 1999 constitution is radically different from those of Peru, Colombia and Brazil, because it lays out the framework for a socialist state, but it is not substantially different on environmental issues.

The constitutions of Ecuador (2008) and Bolivia (2009) represent another radical change in constitutional law. Not only do they include a phenomenal number of provisions that are typically the domain of legislation (land, water, air, forests, and biodiversity), but they also legalize the relationship between culture and the environment. Ecuador’s is the most emphatic, stating that Mother Nature (Pachamama) has rights that must be honored by human society.

archived (Wayback Machine)

archived (Wayback Machine)

While this article is about climate disinformation from the fossil fuel industry, it is worth noting that there are other dangerous myths about climate change, such as that grazing animals can be "regenerative" or that the leading cause of climate change is purely related to fossil fuels.

archived (Wayback Machine)

archived (Wayback Machine)

As trees choked by saltwater die along low-lying coasts, marshes may move in — for better or worse, scientists are learning

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In 2024, Bolivia’s state-owned lithium company, signed contracts worth a combined $2 billion with Russian and Chinese companies to mine lithium from Salar de Uyuni in the country’s southwest.

Local communities already experiencing water shortages say they’re concerned the projects will divert large amounts of freshwater from agricultural lands.

Experts have pointed out inconsistencies with the contracts, including the lack of environmental impact assessments required under Bolivian law, and the lack of community consultation.

Bolivia holds an estimated 23 million metric tons of lithium reserves, or about a fifth of the global total, which is in growing demand for production of electric vehicle batteries.

archived (Wayback Machine)

In 2024, Bolivia’s state-owned lithium company, signed contracts worth a combined $2 billion with Russian and Chinese companies to mine lithium from Salar de Uyuni in the country’s southwest.

Local communities already experiencing water shortages say they’re concerned the projects will divert large amounts of freshwater from agricultural lands.

Experts have pointed out inconsistencies with the contracts, including the lack of environmental impact assessments required under Bolivian law, and the lack of community consultation.

Bolivia holds an estimated 23 million metric tons of lithium reserves, or about a fifth of the global total, which is in growing demand for production of electric vehicle batteries.

archived (Wayback Machine)

In 2024, Bolivia’s state-owned lithium company, signed contracts worth a combined $2 billion with Russian and Chinese companies to mine lithium from Salar de Uyuni in the country’s southwest.

Local communities already experiencing water shortages say they’re concerned the projects will divert large amounts of freshwater from agricultural lands.

Experts have pointed out inconsistencies with the contracts, including the lack of environmental impact assessments required under Bolivian law, and the lack of community consultation.

Bolivia holds an estimated 23 million metric tons of lithium reserves, or about a fifth of the global total, which is in growing demand for production of electric vehicle batteries.

archived (Wayback Machine)

The world’s largest meat company, JBS, looks set to break its Amazon rainforest protection promises again, according to frontline workers.

Beef production is the primary driver of deforestation, as trees are cleared to raise cattle, and scientists warn this is pushing the Amazon close to a tipping point that would accelerate its shift from a carbon sink into a carbon emitter. JBS, the Brazil-headquartered multinational that dominates the Brazilian cattle market, promised to address this with a commitment to clean up its beef supply chain in the region by the end of 2025.

In a project to understand the barriers to progress on Amazon deforestation, a team of journalists from the Guardian, Unearthed and Repórter Brasil interviewed more than 35 people, including ranchers and ranching union leaders who represent thousands of farms in the states of Pará and Rondônia. The investigation found widespread disbelief that JBS would be able to complete the groundwork and hit its deforestation targets.

“They certainly have the will to do it, just as we have the will to do it,” said one rancher. But the goal that all the cattle they bought would be deforestation-free was unreachable, he said. “They say this is going to be implemented. I’d say straight away: that’s impossible.”

https://archive.ph/iS7pg

Shrouded in the lush vegetation of the páramo, the Andean tundra landscape, the quiet wetlands and moorlands of Quimsacocha in southern Ecuador are at the center of a dispute. Hortensia Zhagüi, a water defender and leader of the Tarqui community in the country’s Cuenca canton, said members of her community have campaigned against a mining project on these lands for the last three decades.

“All the páramos, everything that is our life, are about to be destroyed,” Zhagüi, who is also a member of the Kimsacocha Women’s School of Agroecology, told Mongabay by phone. “That’s why we’re fighting to defend it. Our principles are formed this way because our parents and ancestors also preserved these beautiful places.”

For 30 years, the protected páramo of Quimsacocha, at an elevation of 3,000 meters (9,800 feet), between the cantons of Cuenca and Girón in Azuay province, has faced the imminent threat of underground mining. The Loma Larga mine project, owned by Canada-based Dundee Precious Metals Inc., is still prospecting for gold, silver and copper. It spans 7,960 hectares (19,669 acres) and has plans to extract 3,000 metric tons of metal-containing ore per day, and more than 14 million tons over a 12-year project life.

archived (Wayback Machine)

archived (Wayback Machine)

The climate implications of this biocide compound the tragedy beyond mere species loss. When ancient forests burn or decompose following clearance, carbon stores accumulated over centuries release into the atmosphere with astonishing rapidity. The southeastern Amazon, once a reliable carbon sink that helped moderate humanity’s fossil fuel addiction, has now become — through our collective negligence — a carbon source. This perverse inversion represents not just an ecological tipping point but a moral one: we have transformed one of Earth’s great life-support systems into a contributor to planetary fever. The disruption extends beyond carbon cycling; hydrological patterns shift as forest cover diminishes, potentially altering rainfall across South America. The ripple effects could destabilize agricultural productivity across multiple countries — a self-defeating prophecy in which forest clearing for agriculture ultimately undermines agricultural viability itself.

The human suffering entangled with deforestation receives criminally insufficient attention in policy discussions. Indigenous communities — many with cultural histories extending thousands of years before European arrival — face violent displacement that would provoke international condemnation if perpetrated against Europeans. Land defenders face assassination with depressing regularity; between 2012 and 2020, over 1,500 environmental activists were murdered globally, with Brazil consistently ranking among the deadliest countries for such work. The soy-cattle complex drains aquifers and poisons waterways with agrochemicals, forcing local communities to bear the externalized costs of a production system designed to benefit distant consumers and multinational corporations. This arrangement constitutes a form of ecological colonialism; the wealthy consume the products while the vulnerable suffer the consequences. The moral mathematics should disgust any person with functioning conscience: no hamburger can justify this human cost.

Yet against this landscape of devastation, empirical evidence points toward a solution so straightforward that its continued marginalization represents a profound failure of both policy and imagination: plant-based diets. The Oxford research quantifying this potential reads like environmental science fiction — global farmland requirements could contract by 75%, an area equivalent to the combined landmasses of the United States, China, European Union, and Australia. The efficiency differential between growing soy for direct human consumption versus cycling it through livestock approaches mathematical absurdity; direct consumption could reduce associated deforestation by 94%. This figure deserves repetition: ninety-four percent. Such a reduction would not represent incremental progress but transformative change — millions of hectares of forest standing rather than burning. The obstinate refusal to acknowledge this solution constitutes not merely oversight but willful blindness to empirical reality.

The climate implications of dietary transformation further strengthen the case beyond reasonable dispute. Agricultural emissions would plummet by 84–86% under widespread adoption of plant-based diets — a reduction so substantial it would significantly extend the carbon budget remaining before critical temperature thresholds. Even modest dietary shifts yield disproportionate benefits; halving animal product consumption could decrease agriculture’s climate footprint by nearly a third. The land freed through dietary change could, if allowed to regenerate, sequester 152 gigatons of carbon — a figure that dwarfs many proposed technological solutions. This sequestration potential represents not merely theoretical calculation but tangible hope; forests, if permitted to recover, would draw down atmospheric carbon while simultaneously rebuilding biodiversity. The fact that this approach remains sidelined in climate negotiations while far more speculative technologies receive funding billions represents a triumph of industrial lobbying over scientific judgment.

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