MEXICO CITY - Young people from 17 countries are gathering this month in Huatulco, on the Mexican Pacific coast, to draft the first GEO Youth Report, a diagnosis of the environmental problems in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as initiatives to resolve them.

The assessment discussed from Nov 12 to 18 will be the youth version for the ''Global Environment Outlook'' (GEO), a report produced by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).

In its first year of activities, the GEO Youth project for Latin America and the Caribbean led to a productive exchange of ideas in the search for solutions to the region's environmental problems, Luis Betanzos, coordinator of the First Editorial Meeting of GEO Youth, explained to Tierramérica.

The proposals will be further shaped in the first GEO Youth report to be concluded in February and March 2001 at a conference in Argentina.

BUENOS AIRES - The Argentine government promised this month before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to stop infrastructure works in indigenous territories and to prevent the land from being divided among individual owners.

The commitment was the result of a hearing that involved delegates from the Argentine Foreign Ministry, the Association of Aboriginal ''Lhata Honhat'' Communities and the human rights organization representing the native group.

The people affected by the bridge construction project include approximately 6,000 descendents of indigenous peoples in the northern province of Salta, who lack land titles to support their claims to their ancestral territories.

The government promised it would not give out titles to individual landowners, even to indigenous peoples, and offered to provide certification of the group's collective ownership of the land in question.

HAVANA - The production of a refreshing drink in eastern Cuba is threatening fields of 'bejuco indio' or 'lenero,' the principal source of food for bees in this region during the final months of the year.

Beekeepers affirm that private producers of the so-called eastern ''pru'' and state-owned entities ''indiscriminately cut down wide swaths of this bush for commercial purposes, without considering the damage caused.''

In addition to the massive cultivation of 'lenatero,' beekeeper Gudelio Casanova recommends seeking alternative raw materials for making pru.

The lenatero root reproduces on its own, but experts stress that intensive exploitation of the plant does not give it time to complete its natural reproduction cycle.

BOGOTA - A university project that provides peasant farmers with the technology to recover soil and pursue sustainable and organic farming has been up and running since April 1999 in the northwestern Colombian department of Antioquia.

The project is managed by the Agricultural Sciences Faculty of the private Catholic University of the East and by the Regional Autonomous Corporation of Rionegro-Nare (environmental authority), and is entrusted to 24 students in the agro-environmental, agronomy and zoo-technical programs.

The plan is operating in 12 sites of five Antioquia municipalities, where the program's leaders visit schools to foment interest among the students in environmental conservation.

* Source: Inter Press Service