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The U.S. federal government has agreed to a debt-for-nature swap with Costa Rica that will see $26 million of the Central American country's debt owed to the U.S. go instead toward conservation of its rainforests. The Nature Conservancy and Conservation International each donated about $1.2 million to the effort while the U.S. is financing $12.6 million of it. Those funds, as well as the interest they generate, should be enough to eliminate $26 million in debt over 16 years. The State Department bills the program as a win-win for debtor countries. "They get some or all of their debt wiped out, and they get help in preserving an important natural resource," said Claudia McMurray, an assistant secretary of state. To be eligible for the program, countries must play nice with the United States, cooperating on drug enforcement and so-called "counterterrorism" policies as well as other requirements.

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Driving down either of El Salvador's two principal highways, you're almost sure to end up braking behind a pickup truck that's jammed with people standing shoulder to shoulder. Occasionally these rural taxis are new vehicles, but most are rickety, rusted, and running on antiquated engines and exhaust-spewing diesel.

Even though 48 percent of Salvadorans live below the poverty line, according to the United Nations Development Program, the huge influx of remittances from migrants in the United States means that more Salvadorans are buying cars, formerly a luxury reserved only for the very rich. And El Salvador is not alone: while Americans and Europeans are buying fewer SUVs and driving less, vehicle sales in most developing countries are on the rise. Toyota's 2006 first-quarter sales in Central America, for example, were up 9 percent from 2005.

More cars means more gasoline, and gasoline consumption in Central America increased by 10 percent between 2000 and 2003, according to the International Energy Agency. Every Central American country imports oil, so the recent price increases have been painful for these economically weak countries. Costa Rica, for example, saw an increase of 45 percent in oil costs between 2004 and 2005.

With both consumption and oil prices on the rise, leaders are looking for an alternative. Enter biofuels.

The fuss over Brazil's biofuels bonanza has not gone unnoticed by many of its Latin American and Caribbean neighbors, who, like the mammoth South American country, have been producing sugarcane for centuries. With an annual output of 4.8 billion gallons, Brazil has worked the energy world into a tizzy over the possibility that petroleum-based gasoline may have a viable competitor -- or at least partner -- in the form of ethanol. It's an opportunity that has many environmentalists cheering, corn and sugar growers salivating, and oil companies scratching their heads to figure out how to get in on the action.

And it seems that Central America may offer some of the best prospects for biofuel production: a Brazilian government study recently identified the area as a good candidate for reproducing Brazil's ethanol experiment.

Latin America's potential has also not escaped notice in the international community. In June, when former U.S. President Bill Clinton met with Inter-American Development Bank President Luis Alberto Moreno, Clinton made the case for Latin America "lead[ing] the world" in biofuels. An alternative-energy strategy in the region, he said, could create jobs, protect the environment, and sharpen Latin America's competitive edge in the global economy.

Before oil prices surged, most sugar-producing countries saw little reason to invest in ethanol. But oil is up, and sugar is too -- prices for the sweet stuff have doubled since early 2005. That's left many warming to the notion that it may be more profitable to produce sugar for ethanol production than for consumption as a foodstuff. Economically and environmentally, biofuels seem to make good sense.

Several countries in South and Central America have either initiated or are planning national biofuel programs of some kind, including Argentina, Costa Rica, Colombia, El Salvador, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela.

Now that's where I'm talking about.

Photo: iStockphoto

It's not just ethanol that's attracting attention. These countries are also looking at new ways of producing biodiesel with native and oil-rich plants like Jatropha curcus, a tree native to the American tropics whose nut can produce about 200 gallons of oil per acre, and African palm, a tree rich with oil.

So who's venturing into the biofuels arena at full speed? Here's a look.

Honduras, among the poorest nations in Central America, is seeing dollar signs in sugar, a product that until recently has not held much promise. "We need to reduce our dependence on oil by promoting the production of ethanol and biodiesel," President Manuel Zelaya said earlier this year. "In addition to fuel, what we can generate is a number of important jobs growing sugarcane."

The government has encouraged sugar production with subsidies, and farmers have responded by planting 27,200 acres of new sugarcane to supply two ethanol refineries. Zelaya's agricultural ministry is also looking to enter the biodiesel market, and is using abandoned farmland to plant 494,000 acres of African palm.

In March, El Salvador opened Central America's first biodiesel plant with financial support from Finland to produce 400 liters a day. The project is part of a public-private partnership between Finland's Environment and Foreign Affairs Ministries and 34 Central American companies and institutions to cultivate renewable energies and combat climate change. They are feeding the plant with seeds from the Higuerillo tree and the fruits of the Jatropha bush, both native plants.

"Agriculture and biofuels have a future here because we have the ideal climate, good quality land, and six months of rain a year," said Mario Ernesto Salaverría, El Salvador's minister of agriculture and livestock. "We also have a lot of available land: only 70 percent of the country's arable land is currently in use."

Guatemala already has a Brazilian-designed ethanol plant, though it is not producing car-ready ethanol because local demand is not yet high enough. But experts at the IDB say the country's ethanol producers will soon be able to sell it internationally. Farmers in Guatemala are also planting Jatropha like their neighbors in Mexico and El Salvador; 300,000 plants are already in the ground courtesy of a private investment by Guatemalan business leader Ricardo Asturias.

Costa Rica, a country well known for its environmental and conservation prowess, has set a target of substituting 7 percent of its gasoline with ethanol by the end of 2008. In early 2006, Costa Rica's state-run national gasoline refinery RECOPE began a pilot project with Brazilian oil company Petrobras to introduce 7.5 percent ethanol into gasoline at 63 gas stations. But while ethanol is available at virtually every gas station in Brazil, Central American countries may face far more resistance in building consumer confidence in the product: According to IDB, the Costa Rican government hopes to expand the $15 million program across the nation, but ran up against consumer suspicions that the ethanol would ruin car engines.

Brazil's partnership with Central American biofuel producers may look like a helping hand, but it's motivated by bigger-picture interests. Brazilian ethanol producers, who have to pay a 54-cent tariff to export to the United States, have invested in facilities in El Salvador and Jamaica that get duty-free access to the U.S. through the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act, a trade agreement initiated in 1983 designed to promote export-oriented growth in the Caribbean Basin countries. Guatemala, Panama, and the Dominican Republic are also said to be collaborating with the Brazilians to build new distilleries.

Congresspeople get their knickers
in a twist over CAFTA.

Photo: house.gov

The Central America Free Trade Agreement, passed last year by the U.S. Congress and signed by nearly every Central American country, provides other incentives for ramping up biofuels. "The support for sugarcane in CAFTA will help us to expand our alternative-fuel program," said Ricardo Esmahan d'Aubuisson, president of the Agricultural and Agroindustrial Council of El Salvador.

That has pushed members of the nascent U.S. ethanol industry to complain, saying it hurts those trying to produce ethanol from corn. "By enabling ethanol imports into the U.S., CAFTA undercuts decades of work by farmers, rural communities, and millions of dollars in taxpayers' investments in federal and state government programs to build this U.S. ethanol industry," says a report by the Minneapolis-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

Central America's biofuel operators will also have to face up to some environmental critics who wonder what they will do with the vinasse, the high-potassium byproduct of ethanol production from sugarcane. In Brazil they are reusing vinasse as a fertilizer, and IDB hopes Central America can do the same; the agency is beginning a study on the topic.

Other environmentalists have called biodiesel "deforestation diesel" because of a perception that producers are deforesting precious forests to plant oil palms. "There is no limit on [available farmland] in Central America, so I don't think they'll have to convert cropland or cut down trees," said Arnaldo Vieira de Carvalho, a sustainable-energy expert at the IDB. "But we do need to study and plan for these things so that we avoid those kind of impacts. So far it's not happening in Brazil, so I think it can be avoided elsewhere in the region."

And still others say biofuels are too energy-intensive to produce and will drive up the cost of foodstuffs the poor barely have access to now. Earth Policy Institute founder Lester Brown, writing in Fortune in August, said, "For the world's poorest people, many of whom spend half or more of their income on food, rising grain prices can quickly become life threatening."

Ultimately, experts say, the large-scale development of biofuels in Central America will depend on an influx of private investment and strong political will. And the region should not expect to be able to replicate Brazil's success.

"Sugarcane production for ethanol is much more oriented toward the large scale, which Brazil has done," said Suzanne Hunt, biofuels program manager at the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, D.C. "But biodiesel is better suited to the small scale, and Central American governments could focus on biodiesel production."

Before its potential is tapped, Central America will remain in the position it's in now: a great unknown between two major biofuels players, Brazil and the U.S. Whether it will be a linchpin or a loser, no one knows.

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José A. Zaglul.

What work do you do?

I am the president of EARTH University, a private, not-for-profit, international institution.

What does your organization do?

Our mission is to promote sustainable development in the tropics through the creation of professionals with strong values, solid technical and scientific skills, entrepreneurial spirit, and social and environmental consciousness. When EARTH opened in 1990, we made a commitment to reach out to the poor in rural communities throughout Latin America. We believe that if we offer them the right education, instill values and ethics in a pluralistic environment, provide entrepreneurial training with a strong social and environmental focus, and return them to their countries and communities as agents of change, we can make a difference in the world.

What do you really do, on a day-to-day basis?

I travel a lot and meet with people inside and outside EARTH, trying to spread the mission of our institution.

EARTH is dedicated to providing educational opportunities to the most economically disadvantaged in Latin America and provides full or partial scholarships to 80 percent of our students. As a result, we are actively fund-raising year round.

I am currently working on my speech for our 11th graduation, in December. Another 89 professionals will join the 987 graduates who are already creating change and contributing to the sustainable development of their communities in 20 countries in Latin America.

What long and winding road led you to your current position?

I was born in Costa Rica to parents of Lebanese descent. In 1965, when I was 17 years old, I decided to spend a year in Lebanon to study and experience Lebanese culture. By the end of that first year, I had decided to enroll in the American University of Beirut where I completed my Bachelor of Science in agricultural economics and a master's in animal science. At the University of Florida, I completed another master's in food science and human nutrition and a doctorate in meat and muscle biology.

I returned to Costa Rica and held a faculty post as a food-science professor at Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica and later became the vice president of research and extension. I also served as the head of the Animal Production Department at the Centro Agrícola Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza in Costa Rica, an international center for tropical research and the oldest postgraduate school of agriculture in Latin America.

In 1989, I became the first president of EARTH University, leading the design of the campus and the establishment of the university's academic programs, values, and mission.

Where were you born? Where do you live now?

I was born in San Ramon, Costa Rica. I currently live on the EARTH University campus in the rural Caribbean lowlands in northeast Costa Rica.

What's been the best moment in your professional life to date?

The day we handed the degrees to our first EARTH graduates. We refer to that group of graduates as "pioneers" because truly they had put their trust, hope, and dreams in a model that had not been proven or done before. In that moment, we saw the tangible result of all of our efforts, and we saw a group of individuals before us -- most from very humble backgrounds -- who were full of unlimited promise. Since that day, I have seen how this group has transformed communities, influenced governments, and become guides and leaders for sustainable development.

What environmental offense has infuriated you the most?

I feel powerless when I see trucks with huge logs that are clearly from virgin forests.

What is your environmental nightmare?

I'm very concerned with the widely held belief that our environment will auto-correct. A lot of the environmental degradation occurring now is irreversible, and there will be consequences for those actions or our inaction in the future. My nightmare is the end result of treating the environment as we are.

What are you reading these days?

As the Future Catches You and Pity the Nation.

What's your favorite meal?

I love my mom's traditional Lebanese recipe with green and red beans.

If you could have every InterActivist reader do one thing, what would it be?

Plant a tree on the campus of EARTH University.

Down to EARTH

José A. Zaglul, president of EARTH University.

Can you give us some examples of how EARTH University graduates have promoted sustainability in their home countries?    -- Tom Yuill, Madison, Wis.

With nearly 1,000 graduates to date, the success stories are numerous and inspiring. Graduates are implementing innovative and sustainable agriculture techniques, founding companies, creating jobs, and improving the quality of life for those around them. Remember that the majority of our students come from marginalized, poor, rural areas, and that our scholarship program is the only way they could ever obtain a first-class education. As a result, we see them transforming lives and communities where such change is most urgently needed. And it surprises many people that 94 percent of graduates continue to live in Latin America, most of them back in their own countries and communities.

Is EARTH an acronym?    -- Name not provided

Yes, EARTH is an acronym for Escuela de Agricultura de la Región Tropical Húmeda, or School of Agriculture for the Humid Tropical Region.

Have people on other continents become interested in what you are doing?    -- Jerry Broadbent, Bucoda, Wash.

During the last several years, many institutions in Asia and Africa have expressed interest in our program. Encouraged by many of our supporters, EARTH University conducted a series of conferences around the world to share the EARTH "model" for sustainable, tropical-agriculture education. As a result of the SEMCIT (Sustainability, Education, and the Management of Change in the Tropics) program, some changes are already occurring in universities in Africa and Asia. Also, we are seeing results through student and faculty exchanges; we now have students from Mozambique, Uganda, Indonesia, and Spain.

EARTH was also mentioned earlier this year in the United Nations Millennium Project report as a model for higher education that could help alleviate poverty in rural areas of marginalized societies throughout Africa and Asia.

What types of classes do you offer?    -- Name not provided

Our graduates hold a degree in Agronomy and Natural Resource Management. Students must complete about 200 credit hours through a rigorous four-year program -- closer to the U.S. equivalent of a master's degree.

Our curriculum is unique because it is experiential and participatory. We emphasize learning rather than teaching, and the students are essential participants in the process. The curriculum is an integrated one, not segregated into departments, and a crucial component is the fact that we -- students, faculty, administrators -- all live on campus. This allows for a very intense and rigorous program but one in which skills, values, and ethics can be transmitted by example as we all live together.

Do you sponsor field trips for U.S. citizens during school vacations?    -- Beverly Teach Wiegler, Goffstown, N.H.

Since we are a nonprofit, we do not sponsor field trips per se; however, we sometimes accommodate American students either as part of an exchange or as a part of their educational experience. Often, groups include a visit on our campus as part of a trip to Costa Rica or Central America.

How many students do you have at EARTH?    -- Name not provided

Our students are selected in a very intentional manner, including in-person interviews by a member of our faculty in each country where we recruit. Of the roughly 1,300 qualified applicants we review each year, we eventually select about 110 to enter the university. Currently, we have a total of 413 students from 23 countries. Our faculty of 40 represents 20 countries.

I cannot go to Costa Rica anytime soon, but would like to honor your request to plant a tree on campus. Is there a way to send funds specifically to plant a tree?    -- Scott Kender, Eureka, Calif.

Please email our U.S. support organization, EARTH University Foundation, and they will be glad to provide you with that information. EARTH's "Plant a Tree" campaign helps provide scholarships for deserving students. Our U.S. foundation is our principal vehicle for raising the $4 million that we need each year to provide scholarship support to more than 80 percent of our students.

What effects have you noticed, positive or negative, from ecotourism in Costa Rica?    -- Name not provided

Generally, ecotourism has been very positive for Costa Rica. The country was early in creating protected areas and in restricting access even before the current boom in tourism. However, this activity has to be controlled carefully so that we can observe and admire nature without destroying it. I believe that we can be successful if we balance our need for economic benefit with the needs of the environment.

I try not to buy produce that has been shipped from outside my region, but I do buy organic bananas and shade-grown coffee with the thought that the money spent to grow these businesses will offset the oil and energy required to bring them to me. Is this a realistic view?    -- Jared Webb, Rocky Mount, Va.

I think this is a very realistic view. I would also add that by doing so, you are supporting rural farmers in largely marginalized communities, whose future lies in creating a global market for their crops. But I would also like to encourage the large companies who are buyers of these products to give more profit-sharing opportunities to producers by involving them in the distribution or commercialization of their crops.

It is unforgivable that you did not give us your mom's Lebanese recipe for green and red beans. We need all the specifics!    -- Cesar Benalcazar, Melbourne, Australia

My mother says that her recipe is a deep secret! However, she told me that if you visit her in San Ramón, she will be glad to prepare it for you.

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Tropical nations want payment for protecting carbon-sinking rainforests

"Cough up the dough, Mr. West, or the forest gets it!" OK, we're being a little dramatic. But a group of 10 developing nations has made it clear this week at the U.N. climate summit in Montreal that it wants a little ... inducement ... to preserve its rainforests. The "Rainforest Coalition," led by Papua New Guinea and Costa Rica, argues that the world free-rides on the carbon-sink effect of its forests, while its easiest options for economic growth involve razing them for timber and cropland. The coalition proposes being included in the Kyoto-spurred global carbon-trading market so it can sell rainforest-generated carbon credits to countries that produce an abundance of greenhouse gases -- with revenues providing financial incentive to save the forests instead of destroying them. "We are trying to arrange it so that the Brazilian squatter farmer gets as much out of these schemes as the fat, cigar-chomping London banker," says carbon-trading entrepreneur Edward Seyfried.

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Even with mining laws, environmental laws, and international free-trade agreements heavily weighted against them, activists in Latin America have had a string of recent successes stopping open-pit and cyanide heap-leach mines from polluting their groundwater and decimating hillsides. In Peru last November, protestors blocked roads near the city of Cajamarca, forcing U.S.-based gold giant Newmont Mining Corp. to close an exploration site, marking the first time Newmont caved to pressure to close a mine. Last summer, officials in Honduras halted a Canadian company's strip mine, saying it intruded on a nature reserve. And the highest court in Costa Rica nixed a gold mine in December, ruling it would damage the environment. But with gold prices at over $430 an ounce, the number of U.S.- and Canadian-owned mines in the region is only expected to increase, even in the face of fierce resistance.

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Insert oil rig here?

When most people think of Costa Rica, they don't imagine oil rigs stationed off the pristine beaches. Nor do they envision pit mines cutting into the cloud-forested mountains. But, despite the country's noteworthy conservation efforts, its scenic vistas and extraordinary biodiversity face ongoing threats from extractive industries -- and from international trade deals.

Nearly two years ago, Costa Rican nationals and admirers thought they'd been given reason to rest easy. In May 2002, responding to a large-scale mobilization of the country's environmentalists, President Abel Pacheco announced a moratorium on oil exploration and open-pit mining in Costa Rica. Legislators are currently working to give congressional backing to the executive order and repeal laws that expose the country to extractive industries.

At least one multinational interest isn't happy about the developments, however, and its model of corporate discontent may soon end the prospects of an activist siesta.

Harken Energy, a Texas-based oil company with close ties to U.S. President George W. Bush, had previously obtained rights to search for crude in Costa Rica. Before failing an environmental impact review in February 2002, it had planned to drill offshore. Now Harken is demanding that the Costa Rican government pay upwards of $12 million in reparations for its aborted exploits.

On March 11, Costa Rica announced that it would not accept a proposed out-of-court resolution to the dispute, delivering another blow to the bitter oil interest.

But that's not the last word on the subject. Even as the company contemplates sending the case back into international courts, the Bush administration is brokering a treaty that threatens to make the Harken suit into something more than an obscure legal grudge match. That treaty is the Central American Free Trade Agreement.

With the U.S. and five Central American countries working to ratify CAFTA, it's not just local environmentalists and Texas oil barons closely watching ongoing developments in the Harken dispute. International observers say the case is shaping up as the latest cautionary tale of how "free trade" agreements give corporations the power to trump local environmental laws.

In 1994, the Costa Rican legislative assembly passed a hydrocarbons law as part of a series of measures designed to comply with a Structural Adjustment Program sponsored by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The law opened the way for foreign corporations to win concessions on oil exploration. Subsequently, a little-known Louisiana-based company named MKJ Xploration successfully bid to prospect in several blocks on the nation's Caribbean coast. The company later sold its Costa Rican interests to Harken Energy.

Residents of Limon, Costa Rica
protest drilling.

Photo: Accion de Lucha Antipetrolera (ADELA).

Area residents, fishers, indigenous groups, and environmentalists learned of the deal by reading about it in the newspapers. They quickly realized that lack of local consultation was only the first of the plan's many problems. Offshore drilling, they argued, would damage coral reefs and mangrove swamps and threaten endangered sea life. They waged a prolonged battle against the deal, and a national board came to take their side. It ruled that Harken's plan was not permissible under the country's environmental impact laws. Shortly thereafter, in denying Harken's appeal, the board cited more than 50 reasons why the company's impact statement did not make the grade.

Harken was furious. Arguing that it had already invested more than $12 million in the deal, it turned to international investment treaties to sue Costa Rica -- for $57 billion.

That's no misprint. Harken wanted $57 billion, a figure it said represented the total projected profits of the scuttled deal. Costa Rica's annual GDP is around $17 billion, and the government's entire annual budget around $5 billion.

In late September 2003, soon after the World Bank's International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes notified the Costa Rican government of Harken's claim against it, Pacheco announced that his country would not submit to international arbitration. He refused to acknowledge any decision made by the bank's body, insisting instead that Costa Rica's national court system was the legitimate venue for the dispute. A few days later, Harken withdrew its claim and pursued plans to reach an out-of-court agreement.

In January of this year, former U.S. Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) traveled to San Jose to negotiate on behalf of Harken. At the time, the Costa Rican government appeared grateful to be eliminating the specter of a costly international lawsuit. Environmental groups, however, greeted Torricelli with protests outside the Environment Ministry. They argued that the negotiations were a form of "oil extortion" -- that Harken was punishing the country for enforcing its environmental laws.

Whether the protests worked or, more likely the case, Costa Rica and Harken were unable to agree on a settlement amount, it now appears that the talks have failed. On March 11, the government announced its position that Harken did not have legal grounds to demand compensation and that Costa Rica is not obliged to pay anything. The dispute, freshly reignited, is on course to return to international arbitration in the near future.

Bigwigs from Central America and
the U.S. talk trade.

Photo: U.S. State Department.

As the Harken case has moved forward, so has CAFTA. In December, the U.S. finished negotiations with Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua on the regional free trade agreement. Costa Rica, which had held back over concerns about privatizing public industries, was brought into the accord in January. Now, each country must ratify the treaty if it is to become law.

For opponents of CAFTA, the Harken case is a paradigmatic example of how corporations use international agreements to bully countries into dropping environmental protections. CAFTA's investor protections, which are similar to NAFTA's notorious Chapter 11, allow companies to bring complaints directly to international tribunals. Under the new agreement, Costa Rica would not be able to rebuff efforts to bypass its national courts. Instead, it would have to allow deliberations about Harken's astronomical $57 billion "compensation claim" to move forward on the international level.

Regardless of whether such corporate claims are upheld, the threat of a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit is enough to persuade many developing countries to back down on enforcing their environmental laws. The example of NAFTA shows that even powerful countries are susceptible to what activists dub environmental "blackmail." In one famous 1998 case, the Ethyl Corporation sued Canada over its public health ban on MMT, a fuel additive. Canada chose to overturn its environmental provision and pay $13 million to Ethyl rather than risk $251 million in damages.

With such cases on record, Australia refused to include a provision in its trade agreement with the U.S. that would let investors bypass national courts and take disputes to international bodies. But that's something poorer nations, who feel they cannot afford to risk losing access to U.S. markets, do not have the power to do.

Bob says CAFTA is
planet-friendly.

Photo: Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

U.S. Trade Rep. Robert Zoellick claims that CAFTA contains strong protections for the environment. Likewise, Costa Rica's minister of energy and environment, Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, argues that CAFTA "presents an opportunity for [Costa Rica] to seriously apply its environmental legislation."

It is true that the agreement includes provisions for citizens to submit charges regarding violations of environmental laws. However, while there are clear consequences for violating the agreement's investor provisions, there is no clear enforcement mechanism to ensure action on public complaints.

Moreover, CAFTA will affect legislative efforts to solidify Pacheco's extractive industries ban. Environmental groups such as the Costa Rican Federation for Environmental Conservation have warned that CAFTA could complicate if not thwart efforts by the assembly in San Jose to reverse the 1994 hydrocarbons law.

"Costa Rica of course can repeal its hydrocarbons law. But under the final CAFTA text, the oil companies would be empowered to sue for lost profits," says Lori Wallach, director of Global Trade Watch at Public Citizen. "Plus, governments could claim that a repeal would infringe on their rights to market access in the service sector."

It remains to be seen if the Costa Rican legislature will continue with existing plans to reverse the law. But it is clear that CAFTA bodes ill for environmental protection in the participating countries. Should a subsequent administration make the decision to go oil-rig-free two or three years from now, it may be nearly impossible to implement.

Of course, that's only if CAFTA gains ratification. In the U.S., the deal faces a bruising battle in Congress if the Bush administration tries to push it through in an election year.

Back in Costa Rica, legislators committed to extending the country's conservationist tradition may yet prove hesitant to subject their environmental laws to the threat of corporate attack -- a threat that the ongoing dispute with Harken has made all too vivid.

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If Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has his way, some developing nations will create an OPEC-like cartel to protect plants and animals from exploitation by the industrialized world. Speaking earlier this week at the close of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, Chavez said, "If these [developed] countries carry off a medical formula from some jungle ... they should be authorized by the respective country and by the local community." He described the cooperative efforts of 12 countries to protect their biodiversity and ensure that profits made by corporations taking advantage of rare species stayed in developing nations. The countries in question -- Brazil, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Peru, South Africa, and Venezuela -- have banded together to form what they call a "like-minded group of mega-diverse states." Mega-diverse, indeed: As a group, the nations are home to 70 percent of the world's species. By joining forces, the countries hope to be able to set both standard practices and higher prices for pharmaceutical companies and other industries hoping to exploit the biodiversity.

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Starbucks announced this week that it will pay an extra 10 cents per pound for coffee beans that are grown on environmentally and socially responsible farms. The announcement, which was made at a growers conference in Costa Rica, comes at a time when a world coffee surplus has depressed wholesale prices to 40 cents per pound, with devastating effects on many growers. Starbucks, which pays at least $1.20 per pound and buys about 1 percent of the world's coffee and 15 percent of specialty coffee, said it would reward suppliers who conserve water and energy, reduce pesticide use, recycle, provide safe working conditions, and comply with local wage and benefit laws. The group Conservation International will help to oversee third-party verification of the suppliers. However, critics say that until the company publicly discloses information about its suppliers, the announcement amounts to little more than a P.R. stunt.

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