This archive covers progress stories and milestones from across South America, spanning countries from Brazil and Colombia to Argentina and Peru. Expect reporting on conservation wins, public health advances, economic shifts, and community-led efforts shaping life across the continent.
In a historic decision, Chile’s House of Representatives voted this Wednesday to ban the usage of plastic bags in all types of shops across the entire territory, making it the only country to prohibit them in the American continent.
Brazil now has 320 MW of distributed solar generation, a sector which grew 270% in 2016, 304% in 2017, and is expected to increase by 358% in 2018.
At a ceremony on Monday, Chilean president Michelle Bachelet officially declared a major expansion of Chile’s parklands, creating two new national parks and protecting vast swaths of the country’s rainforests, grasslands, and other wild terrains.
The Andes Amazon Fund celebrates the creation of Yaguas National Park, established today by the Peruvian government. Located in the northern region of Loreto, Peru’s newest national park will safeguard 2,147,166 acres of rainforest and a vast river system with one of the richest fish faunas in the world.
The Temer government claims the decision is a response to intense resistance from environmentalists and indigenous groups
Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and American conservationist Kristine Tompkins on Wednesday pledged to grow Chile’s national park lands by roughly 11 million acres, an area more than four times the size of Yellowstone National Park.
This week, the Chilean government gave the green light to development of SolarReserve’s 450 megawatt (MW) Tamarugal concentrated solar power project.
Lesotho decriminalized male same-sex activity in 2012, lifting a colonial-era common law offense that had long shadowed gay and bisexual men in the small southern African kingdom. A year later, Maseru held its first pride march, with police escorting hundreds through the streets. The reform echoed Basotho traditions of same-sex partnership that predated colonial rule.
The Amazon Fund launched in 2009, when Brazil built a public finance mechanism that paid for verified reductions in rainforest loss rather than promises. Managed by the national development bank and backed early by Norway, it has since supported more than 115 projects across the Amazon Biome. It became an influential model for paying to keep forests standing.
UNASUR was born on May 23, 2008, when all 12 South American nations gathered in Brasília to sign a single treaty binding a continent of more than 400 million people into one union. For a region long defined by rivalry and isolation, it was a rare written promise that their futures would be shaped together.
