Word: amazons
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Financial pressures have led many developing nations to continue shortsighted policies that squander natural resources. In Brazil the appointment by President Fernando Collor de Mello of outspoken conservationist Jose Lutzenberger as Secretary of the Environment raised hopes that the burning of the Amazon rain forest would be halted. But environmentalists are still waiting for Collor to prove that his commitment to saving the Amazon is more than public relations. "Lutzenberger has not presented one significant change in internal policy," says Fabio Feldmann, the only Brazilian congressman elected on a green platform...
...little-known town in the remote western Amazon has just four dingy guesthouses and 450 phone lines and lies a rugged five-hour drive from the nearest major airport. And yet this week, normally tranquil Xapuri (pop. 6,000) is being invaded by 3,000 visitors from the surrounding territory and around the globe. They have come to witness a long-awaited event: the trial of two men accused of murdering Chico Mendes. In fact, everyone who cares about environmental issues is watching to see whether justice will prevail in the case of the humble rubber tapper whose defense...
...decades, ever widening patches of the Amazon have been burned or cut down by developers building towns, ranchers raising cattle, companies going after timber and settlers trying to grow crops. Mendes was among those forest dwellers who realized that their way of life was slowly being snuffed out. So in 1975, he organized a rural workers' union. To stop the deforestation, union members and their families formed human blockades around areas scheduled to be cleared. These Gandhiesque acts, called empates, helped save thousands of acres but also made Mendes unpopular with landowners and local officials...
...rubber tappers and Indians could live off the land without destroying the forest. Earlier this year, Brazil created its first such refuge, named after Mendes, in the Jurua River valley near Xapuri. Since then, the government has established three more. In those areas at least, the people of the Amazon have a better chance to survive, thanks to Chico Mendes...
ENVIRONMENT: Justice comes to the Amazon...