"SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Endowed with the Amazon and other mighty rivers, an array of huge dams and one-eighth of the world’s fresh water, Brazil is sometimes called the “Saudi Arabia of water,” so rich in the coveted resource that some liken it to living above a sea of oil. But in Brazil’s largest and wealthiest city, a more dystopian situation is unfolding: The taps are starting to run dry."

"Achuar tribe demands compensation from Argentine energy company Pluspetrol for pollution on their ancestral land."

"RIO DE JANEIRO — Calling Aldo Rebelo a climate-change skeptic would be putting it mildly. In his days as a fiery legislator in the Communist Party of Brazil, he railed against those who say human activity is warming the globe and called the international environmental movement 'nothing less, in its geopolitical essence, than the bridgehead of imperialism.'"

"A commodity boom has helped pull millions out of poverty across South America over the past decade. It has also unleashed a new scramble for oil, minerals and cropland that is accelerating deforestation and fueling a new wave of land conflicts from Colombia to Chile."

Industrial-scale palm oil plantations and processing plants in Colombia are at the center of conflict between leftist rebels, government ­forces, right-wing paramilitary groups and criminal gangs.
 

SAN PEDRO VILLAGE, Peru -- "It is a disaster hidden from the environmental leaders gathered inside the walls of a military compound in Lima on a mission to fight climate change."

"Deforestation in the Amazon rain forest dropped 18% over the past 12 months, falling to the second-lowest level in a quarter century, Brazil’s environment minister said on Wednesday."

"The nonprofit group Global Witness makes some valuable points in a new report offering Peru a path to cut the violence on its poorly governed resource frontier in the Amazon. The report, 'Peru’s Deadly Environment,' is being released today at a Manhattan event organized with the Alexander Soros Foundation."

"Climate change has shrunk Peruvian glaciers by 40 percent in the past four decades and the melt-off has spawned nearly 1,000 new high-altitude lakes since 1980, Peru's government said on Wednesday."