Word: rios
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...midpoint a week ago, the giant Earth Summit in Rio seemed to be on the verge of completely disintegrating. Angered by Washington's refusal to sign the "biodiversity" treaty to protect the world's plants and animals, several poorer nations considered withdrawing their support for the pact and even spoke of reviewing their position on the agreement to combat global warming. At summit headquarters trivialities and private agendas derailed serious debate over the plan of action called Agenda 21. Arab delegates pushed for oblique references to emotional and irrelevant issues like the plight of Israel's occupied territories, while...
...organizations as H.E.M.P. (Help End Marijuana Prohibition). Asked what the drug had to do with sustainable development, spokesman Ron Tisbury had his offbeat sound bite ready: "Anything you can build with petrochemicals, you can make out of marijuana." The media began using words like farce and fiasco to describe Rio, and one participant called the conference the "greatest fraud ever perpetrated...
Still others applauded the creation of a U.N. Sustainable Development Commission, modeled on the Human Rights Commission, which will use public criticism and pressure to hold governments to account for achieving the goals laid out in Rio. Whether the new commission becomes a real watchdog will be determined later this year when U.N. nations decide whether to make it a body composed of government ministers or of officials at the margins of influence...
Given the lack of leadership by governments, Maurice Strong, the summit's secretary-general, hopes ordinary people will force politicians to live up to the obligations articulated at Rio. He plans to make his own contribution to this grass-roots movement by heading an Earth Council, which he sees as a watchdog organization like the Helsinki Watch groups that sprang up after the 1975 Helsinki accords on human rights. The Earth Council's goal would be to ensure that institutions such as the Sustainable Development Commission actually do their...
PERHAPS GEORGE BUSH SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETter than to think a brief stop in Panama on his way to an uncomfortable appearance at the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro would remind Americans of the foreign policy successes that have otherwise marked his Administration. Panama City is notoriously prone to ugly street demonstrations, and on the eve of Bush's hastily arranged visit, an American G.I. was killed and another wounded in a drive-by shooting...