Word: amazon
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Among the world's untamed and unexplored regions, there is none richer than the Amazon Basin. For decades, Brazilian governments have sought to protect from foreign exploitation the vast rain forest's gold and minerals, oil and gas, hardwoods and cattle ranges. The great push to settle and industrialize the Amazon has been propelled in part by the government's determination to prevent neighboring countries and multinational corporations from making off with the riches that Brazilians regard as their national patrimony. Despite the precautions, however, the dreaded foreign invasion has finally come. Its name: environmentalism...
...been under relentless attack from environmental activists worldwide. They charge that its policies are not only resulting in the wanton destruction of Brazil's forest, its wildlife and its native peoples, but are also endangering the world environment. Scientists say the fires set by ranchers and homesteaders in the Amazon region are spewing into the atmosphere 7% of the carbon dioxide responsible for the global warming process known as the greenhouse effect...
...Establishing a five-year, $100 million program to zone the Amazon region for agriculture, mining and other uses. The zoning scheme would be partly financed by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization...
...Suspending, temporarily, raw-timber exports and tax incentives long awarded to Amazon cattle ranchers...
...which will cost $350 million in its first two years, Sarney angrily denounced what he called the "unjust, defamatory, cruel and indecent" international campaign against Brazil. He defended his government's environmental record and denounced the "alarmist" tone of its ecological critics. He insisted that just 5% of the Amazon has been deforested; the more widely accepted figure...