RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 26 (Tierramérica) - Greenhouse gases produced by Sao Paulo's Carnival, Feb. 16-24, will be "compensated" by the planting of trees through an agreement with the environmental group SOS Mata Atlantica.

It was an "ecologically correct" Carnival, says Caio de Carvalho, president of Sao Paulo Tourism, an office of the municipal government.

The project is important for raising awareness about the problem of global warming, but it should not create a feeling of "I've done my duty," without true changes for curbing greenhouse gas emissions, Rubens Born, coordinator of the environmental group Vitae Civilis, told Tierramérica.

The initiative to join the global "zero carbon" movement complies with an official rule, adopted Jan. 24, which requires compensating for the carbon emissions produced by public events in municipal parks and other venues.

CARACAS, Feb 26 (Tierramérica) - The Caracas city government forced hundreds of street vendors off the main avenues of Caracas in January, resulting in a mass migration of rats to neighboring residential areas. The rodents had fed on the tons of garbage generated daily by the informal vendors, said residents.

"Giant rats are entering gardens and even the fourth floor of buildings in our district," said Carlos Godoy, member of the residents' association of La Campiña. In Catia, to the west, a neighborhood group conducted a study that "found up to 70 rats per inhabitant."

The rodents "emigrate when the source of food is exhausted, but to associate this increase with the clean-up of the pedestrian thoroughfares would require a study that the authorities haven't yet done, and they should act quickly to prevent the many diseases carried by rats," Diego Díaz, president of the environmental group Vitalis, told Tierramérica.

TEGUCIGALPA, Feb 26 (Tierramérica) - The February 1995 murder of environmentalist Janeth Kawas will be presented in May before the Inter-American Court on Human Rights, for impunity and delay of justice, human rights activist Bertha Oliva told Tierramérica.

Kawas, the first woman and environmental activist to be murdered in Honduras for her efforts to protect the Punta Sal nature reserve on the Caribbean, was killed by unknown assailants when she was reviewing reports at her home in Tela, a city 450 km from the capital.

Oliva says that after 12 years "the perpetrators remain free, with impunity, despite testimony with a wealth of details about the crime. Furthermore, we see an escalation against environmental leaders, without the government taking action on the death threats against those people."

In the past decade, seven activists have been killed in Honduras, mostly in the northeastern region of Olancho.

SANTIAGO, Feb 26 (Tierramérica) - The intense and unexpected rainfall over central Chile in mid-February will affect the production of various fresh vegetables, mostly onions for export, the Chilean vegetable producers association, Hortach, announced.

The rains came in the middle of the southern hemisphere summer, associated with El Niño phenomenon, and will delay harvest, reduce product availability and drive up prices.

"The vegetables for export are the ones that suffered the most significant damage, because the rains near harvest time, plus the heat in the days following, induce the 'hidden vices' or diseases of the product to appear, affecting their condition for transport to distant markets," Hortach president Alejandro Cifuentes told Tierramérica.