Word: brazil
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...gist of Collor's disagreement with his former Environment Secretary goes right to the core of the Rio summit agenda. Lutzenberger refused to endorse Collor's version of "sustainable development" -- the notion that preservation of Brazil's rain forests and other natural resources is compatible with economic growth. The interim Secretary, a nuclear physicist named Jose Goldemberg, is a strong advocate of this vision of controlled development...
Collor argues that "we cannot discuss the environment issue without taking into account the situation of poverty and misery in which three-quarters of humanity lives" -- including the 70% of Brazil's 146 million people who < barely earn enough to feed themselves. Even fervent environmentalists concede the point. "Brazil is very important to the international community because of its biological diversity," says Feldmann, "but within the country, other issues are much more important. It's hard to relate to sustainable development when you also have problems of equity and social justice...
...official meetings leading up to the Earth Summit, Brazil's representatives argued that the developing world cannot let environmental concerns get in the way of the need to find homes and jobs for its citizens. In February, 800 representatives of Brazilian environmental groups, universities and government agencies signed the Vitoria Declaration, which, among other things, states that the developed world is responsible for global warming and that "Third World countries have the right to increase their consumption of energy to attend to their development needs...
...Brazil has so far declined to sign any separate U.N. agreement on protecting forests. The government is also reluctant to join what it describes as "schemes to transform forests in developing countries into preserved areas in return for compensation from the industrialized world." This is an apparent reference to suggestions that Brazil should receive relief from its huge foreign debt in return for protecting the Amazon Basin. While Collor in principle has endorsed debt-for-nature swaps for small projects, only one deal has been negotiated...
Collor's opponents charge that Big Business is the real force behind the government's policy. "The antiecology lobby is better organized than we are," says Alfredo Sirkis, head of Brazil's Green Party. "What does sustainable development mean in the Amazon? The big polluters are hiding behind these two words." In fact, a wood-pulp producer in the Amazonian state of Para has described as "sustainable development" a plan to clear-cut 5,000 hectares (12,000 acres) of virgin tropical forest and replant the area with eucalyptus trees...