Flooding, wildfires shake Argentina

Terra Daily via AFP: The heaviest rain in decades pounded much of central and western Argentina on Tuesday, prompting evacuations, even as wildfires roared across much of the parched far south.

Rain has been heaviest in the provinces of Cordoba, San Luis, Santiago del Estero and Santa Fe's capital city of the same name, forecasters said. In the central-western region, "this is the worst weather disaster we have seen in the past 50 years," said Cordoba governor Jose Manuel de la Sota.

His province alone has seen at least seven people killed and 1,000 evacuated in the past two weeks. In San Luis province "there are families who have lost everything," said Facundo Dominguez, mayor of Concaran.

Argentine dam deal awarded to Chinese, domestic firms

Space Daily via AFP: The construction of two hydroelectric dams in Argentina's Patagonia region has been awarded to a consortium of domestic and Chinese companies, President Cristina Kirchner announced Wednesday.

Local Electroingenieria e Hidrocuyo and China-based Gezhouba Group Company Limited secured the deal, Kirchner said. Those losing out include Alstom (France)- Odebrecht (Brazil), Isolux (Spain), Sinohydro (China) and Hyundai (South Korea).

The dams, to be built on the Santa Cruz river, will have a production capacity of 1.740 megawatts, or 4.7 percent of national electric production.

Kirchner said the new construction would mean that the Santa Cruz river would have the second largest dam after Yacyreta, a dam located on the Parana river and jointly administered by Argentina and Paraguay. Argentina relies heavily on the Yacyreta dam, which covers 22 percent of the country's electricity needs....

A bridge over the Santa Cruz River at Comandante Luis Piedra Buena, Argentina.  Shot by James Cadwell, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 1.0 Generic license

Toll climbs to 59 in deadly Argentina flooding

Space Daily via AFP: The number of deaths from record rains and flooding in Argentina climbed to 59, officials said as they searched Thursday for about 20 people still missing.

Most of the bodies were found Wednesday after a second day of record rainfall deluged Buenos Aires and nearby La Plata, where flooding submerged cars and sent people scrambling to rooftops for safety.

President Cristina Kirchner declared three days of national mourning starting Thursday in honor of the victims. Kirchner surveyed the devastation by helicopter the day before, flying over La Plata, a bustling university town of about one million inhabitants where she grew up, about 60 kilometers (40 miles) south of the capital.

Several people perished in Buenos Aires and its suburbs, while various others were missing and feared dead...

Argentine soybean yield goes below budget

Seed Daily via UPI: Argentina's soybean yield will be much lower than expected, affecting national income projections based on exports in the coming months. The government blamed drought for the downturn. Argentine agriculture suffered from dry weather most of 2012 but some relief was seen after February rains.

Argentina's earnings projections are far from clear because of the reported setback to timely irrigation. Trading on the International Exchange in Chicago is mixed because of poor crop results from across South America and the United States. Soybean futures were supported by reports of long delays at Brazilian ports and mixed weather elsewhere in South America, including major exporter Argentina.

The Rosario Chamber of Commerce in Santa Fe province estimated Argentina will produce 48 million tons of soybeans in the 2012-13 season. "There is at least a million tons reduction against previous forecasts," Agriculture.com reported on its website....

An Argentine soy field, shot by Alfonso, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Argentine court upholds glacier law in mining area

Reuters: Argentina's Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that key articles of a glacier protection law should apply in a northern province where the world's largest gold miner, Barrick Gold Corp, is building a huge mine high in the Andes.

Tuesday's ruling takes precedence over a 2010 decision by a federal judge in San Juan province who suspended the application of six key articles of the law following a complaint presented by mining industry groups.

"The Supreme Court revokes the precautionary measures that suspended the application of the glacier law in the province of San Juan," the official judicial news agency said.

San Juan province is home to Barrick's Veladero mine, which lies at an altitude of more than 4,000 meters (13,000-feet) not far from the company's huge Pascua Lama project - a roughly $5 billion gold-silver mine set to enter production in 2013...

At the Veladero mine, shot by GRITTA, Antonio, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Drought hits Argentine corn and soy crops

Seed Daily via UPI: Drought is claiming a heavy toll on Argentina's corn and soy crops, creating new problems for the economy amid an increasingly fraught confrontation between farmer groups and the government. Drought isn't a new threat to Argentine agriculture and has affected crops with varying severity over the past three years but officials said this year's yields could be the worst in 15 years.

Dry, hot weather conditions are blamed on La Nina, the weather phenomenon that is the opposite of El Nino. The last major La Nina phase began in mid-2007 and lasted through 2009 but its adverse effects returned in parts of Latin America in 2010 and in other parts in 2011.

Venezuela is another regional country affected by La Nina's vagaries. Drought-related yield reports from across the country earlier led the Agriculture Ministry in Buenos Aires to slash soy output forecast to 42.9 million tons. Economists from Argentina's Rosario grain exchange said they were revising the soy harvest estimates further downward -- from 40.9 million tons to 40.5 million tons for soy planted in the last season.

Rosario's latest figures represented a sharp revision of yield forecasts issued as recently as May and a drastic departure from earlier estimates that predicted soy yields of 52 million-53 million tons. Analysts said that continued drought conditions made it likely the yield forecasts could be revised again....

A soy field in Argentina, shot by Maggilautaro, public domain

Drought-resistant Argentine soy raises hopes, concerns

Liliana Samuel in PhysOrg: Researchers in Argentina have isolated a drought-resistant sunflower gene and spliced it into soy, bolstering hopes for improved yields as the South American agricultural powerhouse grapples with global warming.

Raquel Chan's team identified the HAHB4 gene that makes sunflowers resist dry conditions and implanted it in rockcress flowering plants known as arabidopsis, whose resistance to drought increased considerably.

Her team has signed an agreement with Argentine firm Bioceres, which is co-owned by over 230 agricultural producers, to use and exploit the gene. The firm has conducted tests on soy, wheat and corn crops.

Soy is the biggest cash crop in Argentina, a major exporter of byproducts like soybean oil and flour, but the prospect of creating a transgenic soy plant has some experts concerned about the potential for environmental harm.

Supporters of the technology say the boost in productivity could mean as much as $10 billion in added profits each year, particularly after a severe drought recently slashed Argentina's soy output by more than a third.

But the environmental advocacy group Greenpeace said the transgenic seeds would promote deforestation and the expansion of soy crops into new regions such as Patagonia, as well as cause a "significant loss" in biodiversity and force thousands of farmers and native people to relocate.

And because it is genetically modified, the new soy seed would have little to no prospects of being sold in markets where such crops are opposed or outlawed, as in Europe....

Harvesting soy in Argentina, shot by Arpatt, under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication

Drought spreads to Brazil, crop yields hit

Terra Daily via UPI: Drought has spread from Argentina and Paraguay to Brazil and is hitting soy yields at a time of concerns that regional economic growth may suffer as pressures mount on commodity prices.

Argentine yields of soy were affected by drought and labor disputes in that country are making farmers and grain traders jittery. Drought caused widespread economic dislocation in Paraguay, which was also hit by cattle disease.

Analysts said drought-related developments in Brazil had led to lower yield estimates, slicing about 2.8 million tons off an original estimate of 67.1 million tons for this year's harvest. The revised estimates are subject to further review, said the analysts.

Soy oil has gained importance in the energy market as a feedstock for the booming international biofuels sector....

Biodiesel from soy, shot by Leandro Maranghetti Lourenço, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Ice dam collapses at Argentine glacier

Terra Daily via AFP: An ice dam at Argentina's Perito Moreno glacier collapsed early Sunday, creating an impressive spectacle not seen since July 2008, although few tourists were actually awake to experience the moment. Several tons of ice fell off the 60-meter (200 foot) ice dam into Lago Argentina at the national park in southern Santa Cruz province.

Some 5,000 tourists had been in the park Saturday awaiting the ice show, park rangers said, but the slight movement of ice which began Wednesday turned into an avalanche at around 4:00 am (0700 GMT), leaving visitors disappointed.

Only a group of rangers witnessed the collapse, which created a crash heard several kilometers away, accelerated by heavy rainfall overnight. "The noise was very great, it was coming down in buckets," said park ranger Carlos Corvalan....

Iceberg floating in Lago Argentina broken off from the Perito Moreno Glacier, shot by IlyaHaykinson, Wikimedia Commons (where it is a featured image), under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Argentina tries to combat a drier future

Ana Belluscio in AlertNet: For almost two months, an intense drought has been damaging crops in Argentina, especially corn and soy, threatening the economic and food security of a country where agriculture and livestock account for approximately 10 percent of GDP.

...According to specialists, the drought is the consequence of a recent La Nina episode - the cooling of the surface temperature of the equatorial Pacific Ocean that influences wind and rainfall. In Argentina, La Nina causes rainfall below normal levels, coupled with higher than average temperatures, especially during December and January, said Pablo Mercuri, director of the Institute of Weather and Water of the National Agricultural Technology Institute (INTA).

Scientists are working to determine whether there is a correlation between the higher incidence of La Nina events in recent decades and climate change. Historical records show that La Nina-induced droughts formerly were not to be as long or severe as today’s, said Lucas di Pietro Paolo, climate change adaptation coordinator at the government’s Secretariat of Environment and Sustainable Development.

Although investigations are incomplete, Mercuri and his team have noted an increasing number of extreme climate events occurring in the country along with high climatic variability compared to recent decades. Both of these parameters are associated with climate change, the scientists say.

...Historical records show that La Nina-induced droughts formerly were not to be as long or severe as today’s, said Lucas di Pietro Paolo, climate change adaptation coordinator at the government’s Secretariat of Environment and Sustainable Development.

Salta province in Argentina, shot by Josh, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Drought threatens Argentina

Marcela Valente in IPS: The low humidity in Argentina's most agriculturally productive region has already caused a decline in grain yield - in particular corn and soybean - with ensuing losses for producers and the government.

So far, this austral summer's drought has been less intense than the one that affected the 2008-2009 harvest. That drought, which was the worst in the last 100 years, caused a more than 37-percent drop in agricultural production and resulted in livestock losses. However, and even with the respite afforded by the rains that finally fell in recent days, grain production, exports and revenue collection are expected to fall.

Cereals account for 38 percent of all foreign sales in Argentina, not counting agricultural processed goods. "A record production of 111 million tonnes of grain had been projected for this year, but with the current lack of rainfall, estimates are down to 97 million for now," analyst Gustavo López, of the consultancy firm Agritrend Argentina, told IPS.

López said that right now the "most compromised" grain was corn, with marked losses that could not be reversed even if heavy rains came, and he could not rule out the possibility that the 2008-2009 losses would be repeated. Argentina is the second largest corn exporter in the world after the United States. In 2011, 23 million tonnes of corn were harvested, and 29 million were initially projected for this year, but López said a more accurate estimate now would be 22 million, at best....

Corn growing in Argentina, shot by Maggilautaro, Wikimedia Commons, nder the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Drought worsening in Argentina, Paraguay

Terra Daily via UPI: Drought conditions are worsening in Latin America, especially Argentina and Paraguay, and may become a flash point for political and rural unrest, latest data and sector analysis said. In Argentina's politically fraught agriculture sector, anger over what farmers' representatives see as ineffective policies of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner surfaced again in pronouncements by farmers' representatives.

Fernandez is accused of refusing to increase a state emergency fund for tackling the drought. The president has also turned down pleas for a fiscal review to ease the tax burden of farmer communities. "Farmers are always expected to pay up but are never entitled to government help," Argentine Agrarian Federation chief Eduardo Buzzi said. "The government wants farmers approaching the counter in order to pay, not asking for money."

Farmers' representatives say Fernandez is even less responsive to their demands and expectations since last year's landslide victory. Buzzi said the distressed farmers, especially those with small or medium-sized holdings, expected the government to drop export duties on grain and oilseed exports....

A field of soy in Paso de La Arena, Argentina, shot by Arielex, public domain

Clock ticking for rains to save Argentine soy crop

Hugh Bronstein in Reuters: Unrelenting sun in Argentina has scorched as much as a fifth of its corn crop and the drought will start biting into the country's vast soy harvest unless rains come to the rescue this month or next.

Benchmark Chicago corn and soybean prices have both rallied more than 10 percent in the past three weeks as a hot, dry southern hemisphere summer has roasted grain fields across Argentina's legendary Pampas farm and cattle region.

Argentina is the world's second-largest corn exporter and third-largest soybean seller. So with rising food prices threatening to push more people around the world into poverty and hunger, global markets are watching the South American country's spotless blue horizon for signs of rain. The fiscal health of Argentina's government also hinges on revenue from the country's biggest export, soy.

Late-season corn planting has ground to a halt in Argentina while soy farmers have started to compare this year to the nightmarish drought of 2008/09, which cost them 30 percent of their harvest. That year, corn growers lost 40 percent of their crop.

...The outlook for soybeans, Argentina's larger and more essential crop, remains up in the air. The country exports about half of the world's soyoil, used for cooking and in the booming international biofuels sector...

A soy field in Zarate, Provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina. Shot by Maggilautaro, Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Argentina needs sustained effort to eradicate Chagas' disease

Marcela Valente in IPS: One of the potential impacts of climate change that arouses most concern is an increase in diseases transmitted by tropical insects, like Chagas' disease, Argentina's main endemic illness. However, while they are aware of shifting climate zones, experts consider the biggest threat of expansion of Chagas' disease to arise not from global warming, but from inadequate control of its transmission vectors (insect carriers), which have already been eliminated in Brazil, Chile and Uruguay.

"Vectors capable of transmitting the disease are present in 19 of Argentina's 24 provinces," epidemiologist Sergio Sosa-Estani, head of the vector-borne disease unit at the Health Ministry, told IPS. "In some areas, the vectors are under control, but if vigilance lapses, they are back within two years." His unit has registered close to two million infected persons, 30 percent of whom will go on to develop heart problems.

…The disease is caused by the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, which is transmitted to humans by Triatoma infestans, a blood-sucking insect known in the Southern Cone of South America as the "vinchuca", which lurks in crevices in the mud walls or thatched roofs in the houses of the rural poor.

....He emphasised that to keep the disease under control, houses must be sprayed, walls must be smoothed or plastered, thatched roofs should be avoided, and hen runs or animal pens should not be located close to bedrooms. Boxes containing clothing or shoes may also be hiding places for vinchucas and should be removed.

...Biologist Ricardo Gürtler, a researcher on vector-transmitted diseases, told IPS it was "very difficult to predict the true impact of climate change on the vinchuca and in general terms on the transmission of Chagas' disease.

…Gürtler said some areas of Argentina "still require continuous hard work at the national and provincial levels" to curb transmission of the disease. He stressed the difficulties of implementing national government policies at the local level….

Heart pathology from Chagas' disease, from the US Centers for Disease Control

Fighting to save glaciers

Marcela Valente in IPS via Tierramérica: Argentina's glaciers, along with Chile's the most extensive of South America, manifest the damage caused by climate change, while they also face threats from mining and major transportation infrastructure projects. A law to protect them has been postponed yet again. Glaciers are vast reserves of freshwater, vital for feeding rivers, lakes and underground water tables. But rising global temperatures are shrinking their ability to serve that function.

"Climate change is the main cause of glacier retraction, but also affecting them are the petroleum industry, large-scale mining, high-impact tourism and infrastructure projects," glaciologist Ricardo Villalba, director of the Argentine Institute of Snow and Glacier Research and Environmental Sciences (IANIGLA), told Tierramérica.

….Experts from IANIGLA and environmental organisations are promoting a law to preserve these ice masses, which the Argentine Congress passed in 2008. But President Cristina Fernández vetoed it, saying the law was "excessive" in banning economic activities on or around the glaciers. After that failure, the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, voted in August on a new text, which was to come up for debate in the Senate on Sep. 8, but the Senators decided to put it off until the end of the month. The greatest resistance comes from lawmakers representing Argentina's western mining provinces, including San Juan and La Rioja.

…The proposed legislation calls for the creation of a national glacier inventory, an essential tool that would be entrusted to the experts at IANIGLA. If the law is passed, the Institute would be given the authority to decide on every mining or infrastructure project.

Controversial projects like Pascua Lama -- an open-pit gold mine extending into both Chile and Argentina, run by the Canadian company Barrick Gold -- would be subject to audit by the Institute, and could be suspended if preservation of the glaciers is not guaranteed….

The Spegazzini glacier in Argentina, shot by Remi Jouan, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Argentine farmers face ruin as drought kills cattle, crops

CNN: …Argentina is one of the world's breadbaskets, providing commodities such as soy, wheat, corn and beef to countries around the globe. In recent years, record-high prices for these products reaped millions of dollars for Argentine farmers, but since the global economic crisis hit, demand and profits have dropped. Now the drought is making matters even worse.

…Facing pressure from farmers, Argentina President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner announced emergency measures this week that will exempt the worst-hit farmers from paying most taxes for one year. "This is a big boost of patriotism, and a sign of support from all Argentines," Kirchner said on January 26. "All other sectors of the economy will continue to contribute, so we can help the farmers who have been affected by this drought."

Kirchner has had a contentious relationship with farmers, who staged noisy protests and strikes last year over an increase in export taxes. Those taxes eventually were reduced, but farming leaders still contend that the government is out of touch with their needs.

They say the measures announced this week fall short, and are demanding a cohesive, long-term plan for dealing with emergencies such as the current drought. If not, they say, they may strike again. "Sure, this plan is approved now, and it helps, but we need money to feed cows, to go back to planting crops, because this drought is impacting life in every sector of society," said Eduardo Buzzi of the Argentine Agrarian Federation….

Calingasta River in the Andes Mountains, Calingasta department in the Province of San Juan Argentina, shot by EagLau, Wikimedia Commons, under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2

Argentina vetoes glacier law that curbed mining

Reuters: Argentina's president has vetoed a law protecting the country's glaciers that would have restricted mining and oil drilling, officials and environmental campaigners said on Friday. The law, which was passed by Congress last month, might have complicated plans by the world's biggest gold miner, Barrick Gold Corp, to build a $2.4 billion mine straddling the snowy Andean peaks between Argentina and Chile.

But President Cristina Fernandez used her veto, saying in a decree that governors in Andean provinces feared the glacier law could threaten economic development in their regions. "Banning mining and oil exploration and extraction ... would give environmental considerations preeminence over activities that could be undertaken in a way that protects the environment," said the decree, published earlier this week in the government's official gazette.

…Environmental campaigners condemned the government's veto of the glacier law, which they saw as a vital tool to protect and study glaciers in the face of global warming. "If these natural storage tanks of fresh water supply us with drinking water, supply farming, industry and help generate electricity, then we think water is worth more than gold," said Norberto Ovando, vice president of the Friends of the National Parks association….

Argentina's Upsala Glacier, shot by David, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License

Argentina makes environmental insurance a must

Reuters: Argentine officials said on Thursday theirs is the first government worldwide to require that companies engaged in potentially hazardous activities buy insurance to cover environmental damage. Government officials said preliminary figures show that about 35,000 companies would have to comply with the new rules.

"Argentina is taking a leadership role in the region on this issue," Sergio Chodos, an undersecretary at the Environment Secretariat, told Reuters. "There's a lot of environmental insurance sold in Europe, but it's not obligatory because it doesn't have to be. In Argentina, lawmakers understood that this had to be made obligatory," he said.

Argentina's Congress passed a law to this effect in 2002 and it was finally implemented last month. The insurance policies will range in price from 120,000 pesos ($36,090) a year to 50 million pesos ($15 million), depending on a given company's activities, output and the potential risk involved….

Aconcagua in Argentina, shot by Roland Baumschlager, who has generously released it into the public domain via Wikimedia Commons. Thank you, Roland

Argentina bans fishing on part of coast to protect marine wildlife

Environment News Service: The government of Argentina has banned commercial fishing along an underwater island submerged in the South Atlantic Ocean 136 miles off the long country's southern tip. Known as Burdwood Bank, the protected area encompasses 694 square miles rich in hard and soft coral species found nowhere else on Earth.

Burdwood Bank serves as an important feeding ground for whales, sea lions, penguins, and albatross. It is also the breeding ground for two ecologically important fish species - southern blue whiting and Fuegian sardines. The community of top predators and migratory species in this area come from as far away as Antarctica, South Georgia Island, and New Zealand.

The New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society has identified Burdwood Bank as a critical wildlife area under its Sea and Sky initiative, which seeks to promote precautionary management of the vast Patagonian Shelf Large Marine Ecosystem, one of the most productive regions in the southern hemisphere.

…"Armed with sound science, Consejo Federal Pesquero has taken a big step in ensuring sustainability in Argentina's fishing industry by protecting Burdwood Bank," said Dr. Claudio Campagna, of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Sea and Sky Program. … "With the protection of this small, but critical area, the ocean is better able to replenish what we take from it, and equally important, Argentina's unique biodiversity is preserved," said Campagna.

The ecosystem which contains and surrounds the Patagonian Shelf, harbors some of the southern hemisphere's richest marine resources, sustained by the nutrient-rich Falklands-Malvinas and Brazil currents….

Map of Argentina from the CIA World Factbook

Ice dam to break prematurely on Argentine glacier

Agence France Presse: A huge ice dam on Argentina's Perito Moreno glacier will break apart for the first time in the southern hemisphere winter, likely as a result of global warming, scientists and environmentalists said Monday.

The 60-meter (yard) high wall of ice holding back a portion of Lake Argentina breaks apart spectacularly in cycles of one year to several years, but always in summer, and is one of Patagonia's top tourist attractions. "This is the first time the glacier breaks up in winter. It could be related to global warming as rising temperatures affects ice friction," said Los Glaciares National Park director Carlos Corvalan....

The Petito Moreno glacier in Argentina, shot by "Akshat" ( I think), Wikimedia Commons, under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation license, Version 1.2