In his Chronicles of Peru, Spanish conquistador Pedro Cieza de León marveled,” And to think that God should have permitted something so great to remain hidden from the world for so long in history, unknown to men, and then let it be found, discovered and won all in our own time!”

Latin America continues to inspire shock and awe in voyagers, though now they’re more of the backpacking than the stake-in-the-ground variety. Whether it’s rocky mountains, brilliant beaches, charming colonial towns, or rugged cowboys you’re after, you’re likely to find it in the countries of Central and South America.

(above) Volcan Arenal, Costa Rica

Valles Calchaquíes, Argentina

Soriano, Uruguay

Cartagena, Colombia

Salvador de Bahía, Brazil

Goff’s Caye, Belize

Pacific Coast, Costa Rica

Volcán Mombacho, Nicaragua

Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil

Ruta 40, Chile

Armero, Colombia

Machu Picchu, Peru

Lago Suchitlan, El Salvador

Antigua, Guatemala

Sao Paulo, Brazil

Cordillera Province, Chile

Camino al Monte Roraima, Venezuela

Rio de la Plata, Argentina

Montevideo, Uruguay

Ica, Peru

La Paz, Bolivia

Galapagos Islands, Ecuador

Los Altares, Chubut, Argentina

Perito Moreno, El Calafate, Argentina

Laguna Hedionda, Bolivia

Copacabana Beach, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Chile

Mt. Humboldt, Venezuela

Concón, Chile

Amazonas, Brazil

Tenorio National Park, Costa Rica

Gamboa, Panama

La Colmena, Paraguay

Caye Caulker, Belize

Canchis, Peru

Montevideo, Uruguay

Curitiba, Brazil

Lake Atitlan, Guatemala

Roatan, Honduras

Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia

SEE ALSO:

40 Gorgeous Photos of Europe

40 Gorgeous Photos of North America

25 Photos of Islands Threatened By Climate Change

40 Gorgeous Photos of Asia

Thanksgiving is for lots of things – feasting on turkey or vegetarian alternatives with family, watching or tolerating football, and if you’re celebrating it in the U.S., contemplating the origins of the country. European colonists here learned and gained a great deal from Native Americans, yet not how to live in harmony without ownership and abuse of land.

Appropriately, all week the topic of land ownership has been heating up the blogosphere. Why? Contrasting concepts.

First, two tax breaks that make it easier, economically, for U.S. property owners to dedicate their land to a trust, thereby protecting it from potentially damaging development could expire if they’re not refreshed by Congress by the year’s end: The Conservation Easement Incentive Act; and the Rural Heritage Conservation Extension Act.

Second, there have been new reports circulating about the way protected lands are profitable, especially for nations that are growing or emerging in the “green tourism” market.

Russell Shay, the director of public policy for the Land Trust Alliance in D.C., an organization that lobbies for conservation-friendly policies, and solicits donations of private land to public trusts, nationwide, cautions free market enthusiasts: “The benefit of protecting natural resources should not be measured in dollars. Even if green tourism is important to the economy.”

In order to get people to protect land in the U.S., Shay says, financial incentives (like tax breaks) aren’t big enough compared to the money sellers here can get from a juicy real estate deal. The extreme example can be seen in Napa Valley, he notes:

“In Napa, you have the most valuable agricultural land. People prize the grapes grown there. The money an agricultural landowner could get there translates to about $45,000 an acre. But then people will spend $700,000 an acre or more to buy it for residential use, to build a house on it.”

Is Shay right, or can the worth of protected land in the U.S. be measured in dollars? Link, learn, and comment below!

BASIC READING:

“Investment in the protection of Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve is generating an annual of income of close to US$50 million a year, has generated 7,000 jobs and boosted local family incomes…” – A SustainableBusiness.com feature

“Brazilian states give 25% of the Tax on Circulation of Goods and Services (ICMS) to cities. Some municipalities allocate 5% of these funds for environmental preservation projects…” – A story on Brazil’s green taxation practices via World Resources Institute

“Conservation easements allow a landowner to voluntarily sell or donate the development rights of their property to a not-for-profit land trust group. By placing land into a conservation easement, owners can continue to farm and hunt the land, but they forgo ever subdividing the land for residential or commercial use…But, it’s not for everyone.” – A A news item in NewWest.net by Dan Testa

FURTHER RESOURCES:

“An amazing 261 Representatives from all 50 states – including majorities of both parties – have signed on as co-sponsors of H.R. 1831! Senate legislation, S. 812, now has 38 co-sponsors”¦” – A news brief in Citizenlink.org

“There is [a] belief that there are some species of birds which are only found in Sierra Leone, and for which tourists could spend millions just to come and see”¦While other countries continue to make inroads into making tourism a profitable venture, we are yet to come out of our usual concept of tourism as a non profit endeavor.” – EcoMeme, a column featuring eco news, tech and business highlights by Lora Kolodny.

Image: fmc.nikon.d40

My old college bud, Kenny Scharf, is arguably the original green artist – a brilliant guy from L.A. who began his career nabbing trash from the streets of Manhattan and embellishing old appliances with his phantasmagorical, Fifties-inspired, squiggly creatures and symbols.

Working alongside East Village graffiti muralists like Keith Haring and Jean Michel Basquiat, his uproariously spacey icons were quickly embraced by Andy Warhol and other enthusiasts with clout. He quickly rose to the ranks of artist superstar.

Scharf  conveyed his erumpent celeb status to me when I caught up with him back in 1984. I was covering festivals and parades during my first big break as a TV reporter in Central Pennsylvania.

“I’m really big now, Luanne,” he informed me. “I mean really big.”

Oh, yeah? Well, I just downed my 10th funnel cake at another Keystone country shindig, so there!

A few decades later, the prolific, globally-acclaimed pop star is still doing what he does best: painting, scavenging beaches for trash for his sculptures, performing at his recycled Brooklyn live-work space and enjoying the fanfare of a new retrospective book, Kenny Scharf by Rizzoli.

Oh, and another thing he’s still doing – riding his bike instead of driving whenever possible. It’s been his favorite mode of transport for the past 30 years. In fact, he was riding with cell in ear when I caught up with him, yet again, huffing only so slightly. Quite admirable for 51.

“I ride my bike everywhere,” he says. “I live in Brooklyn and ride over the bridge and back, sometimes twice a day. Why drive a few blocks when you can walk or ride?”

His biking is admirable not only for cutting fuel emissions, but also for keeping him as fit as the new crop of young artists who form his entourage in New York. They include Daniel Heidkamp, who encouraged Scharf to lend his magic to one of the many empty commercial storefronts hit by the recession.

Landlords have been luring in artists to keep up appearances in the darkened spaces with that edgy, gallery feel. According to the New York Times, the goal is to deter crime while attracting tenants who can afford the rent. Scharf agreed to be part of a group show in one of these pop-up galleries, finding it exciting to be part of the scene.

“I said I didn’t have work I could donate, but I could do something directly on the wall like a spray painting,” he told me. “I will do that pretty much anywhere. So I did my spray painting and there was a photographer and a reporter from the New York Times waiting for me there.”

The unexpected coverage boosted the opening of the show, entitled ‘Too Big to Fail: Big Paintings’.

“I went and it was nice, like a bunch of 20-something artists,” he says. “I liked the work and to be part of the youngsters [scene].”

I assured him he’s still a youngster, too. After all, I still sense a wide-eyed wonder in his current work that merges organic earth elements with sensual, knobby creatures in the perspective of a damaged Cable Guy way over-exposed to TV Land stimuli. The familiarity of his fantasies make us laugh as we drink in the irony and nostalgia.

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Today, the high-energy Scharf divides his time between homes in Brazil and NYC.

He enjoyed a recent show of his paintings (above) and sculptures at the Honor Fraser Gallery in Venice, Ca. At home in Brooklyn, he lives in a basement studio called the Cosmic Cavern A-Go-Go, which moonlights as a psychedelic nightclub for parties and performance art.

“I have been working with garbage and refuse for all these years, and the Cavern is made out of found objects from the street that I pull in and decorate,” he explains.

The Cavern attracts a following of young visionaries (like the space Cadette with Kenny, below) eager to talk trash with the painter and celebrate his lighthearted sensibilities.

“We have actual performances when the music stops playing,” Scharf tells me about the club. “People appear as art objects and they go all out. It’s about being inclusive and everyone being allowed to be a part of it.”

The lucky patrons who come unadulterated get a quick Scharfian make-over.

“I just paint their faces,” he says. “Then they sweat it off dancing.”

Guess we can’t really call that sustainable craft, but the artist himself is enduring longer than most of his peers, many of whom passed on years ago from AIDS (like Haring).

“I miss my dead friends very much, but I’m used to not having them around,” Scharf says.

Instead, he surrounds himself with their art (he used to trade his for theirs) and his golden memories, while forging ahead in a brave, new and green world. A world where the resourceful painter is as much at home in Orbit City as George Jetson.

“I’ve been an eco-artist for a long time,” he tells me. “Though I’m not some puritan. I use spray paint; I take airplanes; I make sculptures out of resin when I need to, but I’m very conscious of it.”

I believe you, Kenny. You are really big and you are really conscious. Anyway, it’s not easy to spray paint with vegetable dye and ride a bike to Brazil. But if you could, you would.

Main Image: New York Times

Image One: Kenny Scharf

Image Two: RizzoliUsa

Image Three: Honor Fraser Gallery

Images Three, Four, Five : Kenny Scharf

Debate is raging over Rio De Janeiro’s proposed eco-barriers designed, according to officials, to protect its endangered Atlantic coast forest.

There’s no question that the Atlantic forest, which has over 20,000 plant species, 950 bird species and more than two dozen Critically Endangered vertebrate species, needs protecting. More than 90 percent of the forest has already disappeared over the past hundred years – initially due to coffee and sugarcane plantations and later, to urbanization.

But the building of the huge concrete walls (up to 10 feet in some places) as “eco-barriers’” to contain urban sprawl is seen by critics  not as a means of protecting the forest but a strategy for walling in and containing the city’s favelas (slums).

The wall critics argue that the eco-barriers are a cover for cleaning up the city in preparation for the World Cup in 2014 and the possibility of the city hosting the Olympics in 2016.

Officials, however, say that’s simply not the case. What remains of Brazil’s Atlantic forest needs to be protected and eco-barriers appear to be the best and easiest way to do this.

Construction of the controversial concrete walls began in March, but so far only a few hundred yards have been completed.

Meanwhile, at least one city neighbourhood, the Rocinha favela, has come up with an alternative solution that both residents and local officials are happy with. Instead of a high concrete wall, Rocinha’s eco-barrier will take the form of a park, complete with nature paths and community space.

It remains to be seen whether this alternative solution could also be created at the other 12 designated locations that the local officials have determine require barriers. After all, it sounds like a much more environmentally friendly way to deal with protecting the forest.

Further reading about this fascinating debate can be found at the Christian Science Monitor‘s bright green blog.

Image: Rocinha aerial view courtesy skyscrapercity

When farmers in Mato Grosso, the top soy-producing state in Brazil, were introduced to GMO soy varieties, they jumped at the chance to plant them, even though the country’s government hadn’t yet approved their use. It was a foolish risk to take; the GM soy these farmers planted has consistently provided lower yields than conventional soy varieties.

About half of the soy grown in Mato Grosso is genetically modified, but because of the lower yields – and the fact that many distributors are shunning GMO – quite a few farmers are turning back to conventional crops. However, so much research has been done on GM crops in the past decade that it may be difficult, at least initially, for conventional-minded farmers to compete. Concerned consumers and environmental scientists alike hope they can act quickly enough to preserve the seed base of non-genetically modified soy.

Image: tabithahawk

The topic of soy can create a big debate among healthy folks, and the viewpoints can be extreme. Who knew a humble green bean could be so controversial? Some tout soy products as a panacea for health and wellness, while others swear that soy is a sure ticket to infertility and “man boobs”. What are the facts?

Aren’t Asian cultures particularly healthy because of consumption of soy?

Asians don’t actually eat as much soy as we think – only about 10-36 grams per day. In contrast, a cup of tofu or soy milk contains over 200 grams of soy. Besides, the most common soy foods in Asia are fermented products such as tempeh, miso and shoyu (soy sauce), while most Westerners eat unfermented, highly processed versions of soy. Unfermented soy contains enzyme inhibitors that block protein digestion (among other things we’ll get to below).

Isn’t soy healthy because it’s a natural plant product?

Most soy foods are highly processed and bear very little resemblance to the natural soybean (think soy hotdogs or TVP – textured vegetable protein). Just because something is touted as a “health” food, doesn’t really make it healthy. Whole foods are always the best way to get your food nutrition – the more processed a food is, the less natural and ultimately less healthy it is.

What’s so wrong with soy hotdogs and TVP anyway? Aren’t they good, protein-rich, meat substitutes?

Soy is more filler than food. For many years, the protein left over from the extraction of soy oil was sold to farms as animal feed. After some time, the food industry figured out how to make this highly processed soy protein palatable to the human tongue and began to aggressively market it in foods like soy dogs, soy meat substitutes and the like. Sure, there’s protein, but it also takes quite a bit of sugar, salt or MSG to make soy protein actually taste good. The healthiest foods are whole foods, not processed ones.

How will a diet heavy in soy impact my health?

Unfermented soy can inhibit protein absorption, cause flatulence and increase the chance of developing kidney stones. The processing of soy may remove some of these problems. Soy also inhibits growth. Even within the animal feed industry, the amount of soy protein that can be fed to animals has to be limited or the animals themselves will suffer problems with growth and fertility.

What’s up with genetically modified soy?

Most soy grown in the world is genetically modified (GM) – with 87% of American soy being GM. And what’s the big deal about that? Not a lot of research has been done on the effects of GM foods, but one particular study on rats showed that unborn babies and young infants were particularly harmed by the effects of genetically modified soy.

But aren’t a lot of infants fed soy-based formulas?

Soy infant formula, a common alternative to cow’s milk for lactose-intolerant babies, contains endocrine disruptors and phytoestrogens, plant hormones which have been shown to cause premature puberty in young girls and delayed puberty in adolescent boys. It’s a bit like giving a baby birth control pills. Soy infant formula also contributes to soy allergies. (Breast milk is undoubtedly the best food for babies, and if that’s not an option, goat’s milk is the next best thing to try.)

Speaking of allergies…

Soy is among the 8 most common food allergens, with reactions being particularly common among children.

Would this have anything to do with pesticides?

That remains uncertain. However, unless you buy strictly organic, you can bet your soy products are heavily contaminated with pesticides. As a matter of fact, soy is the most contaminated crop we grow in the United States. And don’t forget, non-organic soy is almost certainly genetically modified as well.

How has the demand for soy affected the Amazon rainforest?

The huge global demand for soy (for use in processed foods, animal feed and biofuels) is eating up the rainforest, because farmers have been financially motivated to clear more rainforest land in order to plant this export crop. More deforestation, more global warming.

But still, aren’t soy farms providing jobs?

Actually, for many, soy farming is less like employment and more like slavery. Although slavery was officially outlawed in Brazil over 130 years ago, debt bondage for over 25,000 people continues on Brazilian soy plantations. This is not the kind of farming industry I want to support.

Bottom line: soy is not the magical health food that many tout it to be. Let’s be clear, however, that fermented soy products don’t carry the same negative consequences as unfermented, highly processed soy foods. So if you’re shopping for miso or tempeh, make sure to choose brands that are organic and not genetically modified. And if you’ve been depending on tofu (an unfermented food) for vegetarian protein, try out some of these other vegetarian proteins instead.

Image: Umeboshi Panda

Princess Isabella of Spain outlawed slavery in Brazil on May 13, 1888. And that would seem to be that. But it’s not. Raj Patel, in his book Stuffed and Starved, writes that there are somewhere between 25,000 and 50,000 people enslaved in Brazil.

Though sugarcane and cattle ranches are known culprits, slavery happens on soy plantations, too. In 2003, the last year for which figures are cited, 4,932 slaves were freed from farms in Brazil – and that’s just the farms that were inspected.

As we saw in our last piece on soy, deforestation for biofuels, soy, sugar cane, cattle ranches, and other uses ruins the land that indigenous people once lived on. Combine that with massive inequalities in land ownership, and you have a recipe for slavery. As the rural poor are left with few options to make a living, they are vulnerable to promises of good jobs with decent wages on faraway plantations. What they find instead once they arrive is that they owe money for meals and transportation as well as their housing and clothing. The good wages they were promised never materialize and pretty soon they find themselves in debt bondage – stuck with no way home.

This article details some of the conditions workers endure on Brazil’s soy plantations. Workers often toil 7 days a week for more than 12 hours a day, without adequate shelter, toilets, or drinking water. They are exposed to pesticides and beaten if they try to leave. (Here’s a graphic that illustrates the problem geographically.)

This is tragic, but there is hope:

Brazil’s Landless Rural Worker’s Movement, or MST after its Portuguese name (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra), is a huge and successful social movement comprised of rural farm laborers and peasant farmers ousted from land they once farmed. According to Patel’s book, in 2002 there were 5 million landless families in Brazil, with 150,000 camped out on the side of the road. The MST secures land for these families – land that they can live on, work, and begin to build a functional society upon.

Here’s how MST works: A group of people occupies unused land and works to build a society from scratch complete with farms, schools and clinics, while petitioning the government to win title to the land. After years of struggle, often violent, these groups sometimes do win title to the land.

Though some of the settlements are farmed collectively, the movement is built on democratic ideals with a highly egalitarian structure. Importantly, there is also a strong foundation in sustainable agriculture. One key tenet assures the rights of farmers to save their own seeds, which preserves biological diversity and ensures that the farmers don’t become dependent on companies like Monsanto.

Farmers on the settlements grow a variety of crops for local, human consumption and eschew the IMF and World Bank encouraged model of primarily growing cash crops for export, a practice that has led to food insecurity and famine in other developing countries. (Climate change is likely to reduce the demand for soy, incidentally.)

From the website of MST: Since 1985 the MST has won land titles for more than 350,000 families in 2,000 settlements. As a result of MST actions, and 180,000 encamped families currently await government recognition. Land occupations are rooted in the Brazilian Constitution, which says land that remains unproductive should be used for a “larger social function.”

Forget the smoothie. Put down that soy protein powder and look for Friday’s recipe using miso, one of the traditional, fermented soy products that are good for your heath.

Note: Slavery figures come from the International Labor Organization.

Image: Peter from Wellington

You may have seen or read exposés on corn monoculture – notably, the series here at EcoSalon back in November. But there’s another crop that is just as pervasive and potentially problematic. It’s soy, which we will be exploring in a series of articles over the next few weeks.

Soybeans were first cultivated in China at least 3,000 years ago and are now an important worldwide crop for use in cooking oil, animal feed, processed food, and bio-fuels.

The U.S., Brazil, Argentina, and China produce close to 90% of the world’s soybeans. Brazil is now the world’s largest exporter of soybeans, producing about one-quarter of all soybeans, and exporting a large percentage to Europe where most of the beans are processed and used for animal feed.

The soy industry in Brazil started growing in earnest in the 1970s and has been accelerating since the early part of this century. (Between 1995 and 2004 soy output increased by 77%.)

Soybeans, like all beans, nourish the soil by fixing nitrogen, so they are not congenitally bad. But explosive growth of any monoculture crop puts pressure on the environment and the people and other creatures that depend on it.

The soy industry has been blamed for deforestation in the Amazon, and the resulting increase in greenhouse gas emissions. But that is a bit simplistic. In some ways, soy is a result of deforestation, not a cause. Illegal logging has been going on in the Amazon for a long time because the wood fetches such high prices. Once the forests are cleared, the cattle ranchers move in. After the cattle deplete the soil, the land is no longer useful for pasture. Soybeans are then planted because that’s the only thing the soil is useful for at that point, which sounds like a good fix for a bad situation.

Not so fast.

Soy is now having its own effect on accelerating the deforestation. National Geographic details how soy brings with it big infrastructure, like the highway, BR-163, that runs through the Mato Grosso, the center of soy, north to the port in Santarém. The road provides access to the forest that didn’t exist before, fueling illegal logging.

The government has tried to control the logging, but with limited resources, rampant corruption by local officials, and disputed land titles, they’ve had minimal success. Recent high demand for soy as animal feed for a burgeoning world population and for use in biofuels have caused the price of soy to skyrocket, meaning that farmers of soy plantations that abut forest are beginning to clear forest land themselves to plant more soy.

Government restrictions and the heroic efforts of indigenous people and activists slowed deforestation for a time in 2003. In 2005 Greenpeace pressured major industrial purchasers of soy to sign onto a 2-year moratorium of soy purchases from newly deforested lands, partially bolstered by the publicity generated by the murder of nun Dorothy Stang, at the hands of criminal land grabbers. The moratorium, which was set to expire in the summer of 2008, was extended for another year last summer.

However, these efforts haven’t been enough. Recently released figures from Brazil show a 3.8% increase in deforestation between August 2007 and July 2008, a period during which 3 million acres of forests were cut.

Added to the American multinationals and rich Brazilian landowners are new players in a new foreign land grab. According to The Guardian, the world food crisis is fueling a new rush to purchase Brazilian land by foreign governments like Saudi Arabia and China.

As the land becomes even more profitable, this new land rush doesn’t bode well for the forest or for the indigenous people who understand how to sustainably manage its resources.

What can we do? The first thing is to begin to question the dominance of processed soy in our food system and vote with our dollars whenever we can. The easiest way is to banish processed food, fast food, and animals fattened on soy. Cook your own fresh, local vegetables, grains and beans from scratch, and look for animal products that are organic, local and have not been produced with soy.

We’ll also be providing recipes using healthy, traditional soy products in the upcoming weeks. In the next article in this series we’ll learn about the hopeful efforts of social movements in Brazil and other countries in Latin America that work for land reform policies that serve the people, not the multinational grain, seed, pesticide, and fertilizer companies.

Image: Clearly Ambiguous