MEXICO CITY - The Latin American Water Tribunal will present in March 2006, during the 4th World Water Forum to be held in Mexico, resolutions on 11 or 12 cases related to damage or threats to the region's water resources.

Tribunal director Javier Bogantes told Tierramérica as much when he was in Mexico last week to attend hearings in which eight cases were presented on water contamination from petroleum, mining and human displacement resulting from construction of hydroelectric dams, among others.

The Water Tribunal, created in 1998 and whose rulings are non-binding, has been receiving reports since April to turn them into cases. The Tribunal evaluates the charges, and if it accepts the case notifies the parties, hears the arguments and issues a verdict with proposals for resolving the disputes.

LIMA - Peru will work beginning this month to force mining companies to meet their obligations for environmental reparations, lawmaker Jaime Velásquez told Tierramérica.

The Environmental Code, enacted in September 1990, established for the first time that mining companies are responsible for the damage they cause, and their obligation to compensate the government and the local communities.

But some have avoided responsibility by formally transferring the mines to new companies or ''requesting the cancellation of their rights to the mining concession,'' Velásquez said.

As a result of legal reforms approved on May 2, the responsibility for remediation of environmental damages existing at the moment of transfer of a mine falls equally to the transferring party and the recipient.

The Peruvian Congress also increased the fines 600 percent for companies that fail to present their respective environmental damage reparations plans in a timely manner.

BUENOS AIRES - A team of environmentalists will begin volunteer work this month at the Buenos Aires Southern Coast Ecological Reserve in order to raise citizen awareness about the need to preserve species.

The group was created by 40 young people, almost all of them students in environmentally related fields, and who received training from the local government about the wealth of the nature reserve and ways to help preserve it.

The reserve is located near the center of Buenos Aires, on the banks of Rio de la Plata, and holds a great variety of tree, shrub and grass species, as well as a diversity of birds, small mammals, fish, amphibians and reptiles.

The city government's Environmental Program Coordinator is in charge of the project. One of its members, Pilar Molina, told Tierramérica that with the volunteers they hope to ''develop citizen responsibility'' in environmental and species preservation.

BOGOTA - The Colombian Caribbean city of Barranquilla was informed on May 6 that the national government has earmarked some 20 million dollars to improve the municipal sanitation system, which currently flows into the Magdalena River.

The existing system has deteriorated as a result of the nearby public market, the urbanization process and inadequate city planning.

The aim of the public work project, which is slated for completion in 2010, is to channel wastewater to a single point of discharge in the Magdalena.

Oscar Borda, expert in city planning, told Tierramérica that the project will not only improve the quality of life and health conditions of the people living in nearby neighborhoods, but also the majority of the city's population of 1.3 million, who shop in the public market for meat, fruit and vegetables.

GUATEMALA CITY - A reduced population of manatees (Trichechus manatus) is in danger of extinction due, among other factors, to destructive human activities in the ecosystems of the Guatemalan Caribbean.

José Luis López, an expert with the National Council of Protected Areas (CONAP), sounded the alarm by revealing that a study found that the population of this marine mammal barely reaches a hundred in the area.

López explained to Tierramérica that the situation of the manatee is critical and has negative effects on the marine ecosystem because this mammal feeds on the algae that can be dangerous for other species.

CONAP is coordinating actions with the Mesoamerican Reef System to raise awareness and train residents in the region about preserving this species of gentle, slow-moving sea mammals, which average 10 feet long and a weight of 1,000 pounds as adults.

The Mesoamerican Reef System promotes the use of local natural resources for sustainable development of a million residents along the Atlantic coast of Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and Honduras as a means to protect the extended reef system.