The Tierramérica International Centre for Sustainable Development and Environmental Defence held its founding assembly Thursday in Manaus, a city in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, during a seminar on the world’s big environmental challenges.

The Centre will continue and expand the work of Tierramérica, an environmental newswire whose weekly news insert and radio broadcasts are carried by more than 20 newspapers and 700 conventional and community radio stations in Latin America, and are posted on web sites in Spanish, Portuguese and English.

The Centre’s Consultative Council is headed by Marina Silva, Mariano Arana and Yolanda Kakabadse, former environment ministers of Brazil, Uruguay and Ecuador, respectively.

Tierramérica is produced by the international news agency Inter Press Service (IPS) and sponsored by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the World Bank.

Representatives of IPS, the UNDP, UNEP and the World Bank were invited by the assembly of the new Tierramérica Centre to take part in its Deliberative Council, which will also include personalities from Brazil and other Latin American countries.

The Centre will take Tierramérica beyond the production of news on the environment and into the areas of research and training, to reflect what Latin America has to offer in the dialogue between intellectuals, journalists, international bodies and society in favour of sustainable development, said IPS Director General Mario Lubetkin.

This is a "qualitative leap" for Tierramérica, which was launched on a somewhat precarious basis 13 years ago, but gradually gained regularity and expanded its reach.

Its contribution to environmental action leading to positive change in society was recognised this year by the Zayed International Prize for the Environment, granted by the government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), said Ricardo Sánchez, UNEP regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Tierramérica helps to "enhance the political and ethical sustainability" of development, which must be based on "the meeting of the best of traditional and modern society," and the combination of "two ways of knowing": scientific knowledge and the knowledge of traditional peoples, said Senator Silva in a video in which she explained why she was unable to attend the opening ceremony for the new Centre.

Latin America must reduce the environmental costs of its economy, whose growth is fuelled by the "intensive use of natural resources," Sánchez told the seminar on "Climate Change, Energy and Food Crises: Challenges of Sustainable Development", held Thursday and Friday at the Superintendency of the Manaus Duty Free Zone (SUFRAMA).

That cost amounts to 10 percent of gross domestic product in Mexico, a country that mainly exports manufactured products -- an exception in the region -- as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), noted the UNEP official, who said this indicates that in the rest of the region, natural resources are used even more intensely.

Energy efficiency, which has only increased two percent in the last 30 years in Latin America, compared to 30 percent in the industrialised world, is the region’s big challenge today, said Sánchez.

The northwestern state of Amazonas, of which Manaus is the capital, has "taken the lead in environmental questions," by passing a law on climate change last year, the first in Brazil, which established a legal and political framework to tackle the problem, said Nadia Dávila Ferreira, state secretary on the environment and sustainable development.

One of the steps will be to incorporate the issue of climate change into the basic educational curriculum for the entire state, she said, after stating that she and her government hoped the Tierramérica Centre would establish its headquarters in Manaus.

Amazonas state also adopted a mechanism for the remuneration of environmental services, through the "Bolsa Floresta" (Forest Conservation Grant), which has helped cut deforestation from 1,582 sq km in 2002-2003 to one third of that in 2006-2007, at the same time that the state’s economy grew nine percent a year, said Virgilio Viana, former Amazonas secretary on the environment.

The Amazon jungle is a "biotic pump that reprocesses water" and spreads moisture to the Southern Cone of South America and to North America and Europe, which is one of the reasons that its preservation is a global concern, said Viana, who is now director of the Sustainable Amazonas Foundation, that carries out state government programmes.

Deforestation is not "an act of stupidity, but of intelligence," said Viana. He pointed out that it is fuelled by the profit motive and by political incentives which encourage the clearing of land by agribusiness -- for livestock raising and soy cultivation -- as well as by small farmers and traditional communities, "whose individual impact is smaller, but not if millions of people are doing it."

The Tierramérica Centre’s task will be to provide society with more information on climate change and on existing, successful solutions, as sources of inspiration, he said.

Amazonas, which has preserved 98 percent of its forests, has an industrial district that produces 26 billion dollars worth of goods and generates more than 100,000 direct jobs in Manaus, said Flavia Grosso, who hosted the seminar as the superintendent of SUFRAMA, which sponsors "showcase projects" for the processing of native fruits from the highly biodiverse Amazon jungle region.

The large number of factories, especially home appliance manufacturers, drawn to Manaus by special tax incentives since the 1960s played a decisive role in the city’s expansion to its current population of 1.7 million.

The heavy concentration of the state’s economic activities and population in the capital is one of the factors that have contributed to the conservation of the jungle.

The founding of the Tierramérica Centre was celebrated at the end of the first day of the seminar, which was coordinated by Carlos Tiburcio, adviser to the general secretariat of the Brazilian president’s office.

The Centre, which has 24 members and is open to the admission of new members, also elected a provisional board of directors.

Interim chairman of the board is Tadao Takahashi, an engineer who has played a key role in Internet policy in Japan.

The Tierramérica Centre is associated with the Celso Furtado International Centre for Development Policies, which carries the name of Brazil’s most influential and prestigious 20th century economist.