Word: brazil
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...years Brazilian authorities viewed ecological concerns with suspicion and scorn, as if they were part of an international plot to thwart the country's development. All that was supposed to change with the March 1990 inauguration of Fernando Collor de Mello, Brazil's first President with a green heart. Collor named Jose Lutzenberger, one of the world's foremost champions of rain-forest preservation, head of a new environment secretariat. The President also vowed to reverse decades of untrammeled development that destroyed 415,000 sq km (160,000 sq. mi.) -- an area the size of Iraq -- of the Amazon rain...
Collor proclaimed a "change of mentality" in Brazil, and his early measures earned international applause. But now he is under the same fire from environmental critics as his predecessors. "There has been no forward movement," says Fabio Feldmann, the leading environmentalist in Brazil's Congress. "On the contrary, what we have seen is total paralysis...
...Brazil is the perfect setting for the Earth Summit, which will bring nearly 100 world leaders and 30,000 other participants to Rio de Janeiro during the next two weeks. There is no better showcase of the natural wonders that the summiteers will pledge to preserve and protect: the country contains the world's largest tropical rain forest, its biggest river system and its richest array of plant and animal life. And there is also no better showplace for the threats that face such natural wonders: with the world's 10th largest economy, the country is guilty...
Activists put much of the blame for Brazil's lack of progress on Lutzenberger, the brilliant but eccentric and irascible Environment Secretary. Branded a disaster for his lack of administrative and political skills, he was abruptly fired by Collor in March. The dismissal came a week after Lutzenberger urged World Bank officials in New York City not to lend Brazil money to clean up its environment because the main government agency that would handle the funds was a "nest of corruption." Collor sacked the head of that agency at the same time he fired Lutzenberger...
This international attention led to a series of environmental meetings across the globe, culminating in an international Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Brundtland comes to Cambridge directly from the summit and is expected to address the graduates about balancing economic growth and ecological well-being...