Word: mitraud
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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That theme promises to resonate as loudly as a jungle waterfall in the next century. As the lacerating strains on the planet become bona fide national-security issues--just wait until water scarcity supplants religion as the reason for hate in the Middle East--folks like Mitraud will be staring world leaders in the face more directly than ever...
...Among Mitraud's current projects is a $1.2 million W.W.F. plan to preserve the 1.5 million-sq-km area of Brazilian savanna known as the cerrado. (The less than $1-an-acre budget shows how badly outmatched many environmental actions still are.) The cerrado is one of the world's most diverse swaths of nature, a kind of National Geographic theme park where howler monkeys and hyacinth macaws dance and sing from buriti palms and vast treeless grasslands. But in the past 30 years, more than half its original vegetation has been chewed away--and almost 75% will be gone...
From her field office in the town of Alto Paraiso, 150 miles north of Brasilia, Mitraud bears a message to locals that is a delicate mix of dire warnings and creative alternatives. Unless you take steps now, she says--use natural fertilizers, market the cerrado's evergreen flowers and fruits, or turn county-size chunks of the region into nature parks for tourists--your children will inherit a wasteland. The message seems to be getting through: in and around Alto Paraiso, a fourth of the residents live off enterprises that don't involve trashing the land...
...strength the environment has in opinion polls today can only translate into the polling place in the next century," says Duane Silverstein, executive director of the Goldman Foundation in San Francisco, which hands out annual $100,000 prizes to environmentalists. As a result, environmentalism can expect to attract more Mitrauds, with aspirations that flow beyond the local aquifer. "I am," Mitraud admits, "very ambitious." She has no plans to seek political office, only to acquire a Ph.D...
...even Mitraud knows there's a battle ahead and that the real challenge comes in spreading environmental passion to a much larger community. "All I can do is implement the process," says Mitraud, as she hurries to another meeting in Alto Paraiso. "If within five years I don't feel like I can leave here, then we've failed." But Mitraud's evangelism seems to be taking root. Says Irani Avelino Nascimento, an unemployed quartz miner turned park guide: "Before, I abused the environment and got little out of it," he says. "Now I respect it and earn a better...