SAN JOSE - Forestation in the developing South to create carbon-absorbing areas is a profitable opportunity for the nations of the industrialized North, according to a study by a Costa Rican scientist at Harvard University in the United States.

The study, conducted by Costa Rica's former minister of Environment, René Castro, and published in October by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), shows that creating this type of ''carbon sink'' in the North costs more than in the South.

Investments in planting trees in the United States to absorb the industrial emissions of greenhouse gases would reach 100 dollars per ton of carbon captured, while doing so in Costa Rica would cost half that, according to the report.

Utilizing tropical forests as carbon sinks would offer economic benefits and favor the transfer of technology from North to South, Castro points out.

CARACAS - Venezuela's Ministry of Environment ordered the destruction of genetically modified papaya plants that were part of a project at the University of the Andes, in the western state of Mérida.

The genetic manipulation of papaya in the San Juan de Lagunillas region, 700 km from Caracas, began four years ago with funding from the governmental National Council for Scientific and Technological Research.

The National Office of Biological Diversity, part of the Ministry of Environment, ordered the plants to be incinerated, though allowed scientists to preserve the fruit produced.

The ministry also called for the complete suspension of the project until experts are able to conduct a complete evaluation.

LIMA - The Ministries of Health and of the Presidency in Peru are coordinating the delivery of food and potable water to 39 communities of indigenous peoples and migrant farmers whose water supplies have been contaminated by sulfur emissions from a volcano.

Effluvium from the Tungurahua volcano, located in neighboring Ecuador, contaminated a stretch of the Pastaza River, in the extreme north of the Peruvian Amazon.

Authorities sent water treatment equipment to the area, as well as two inflatable tanks with a 10,000-liter storage capacity, to be filled with water from uncontaminated rivers.

''The first warning sign came from the fish, which sought refuge in the small streams feeding the river. Then the cloudiness and stench of the river frightened the 2,610 families in the area,'' reported the Pastaza regional government.

* Source: Inter Press Service