Word: rios
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...hard to assess how much can actually be achieved at Rio. But it is clear that there will be plenty to do afterward, and it is not too soon to think about how new strategies might be most effectively pursued. Certainly we cannot depend on periodic mechanisms like the Earth Summit, which manage to be both ponderous and convulsive at the same time. There is a need for an interim continuing structure like the Security Council within the United Nations. An alternative might be a voluntary mechanism like the Group of Seven meetings, but one that includes some...
...delegates to the Earth Summit won't have to travel far to see an urban environmental disaster in progress. Rio de Janeiro has it all: air and water pollution on a grand scale, crumbling infrastructure, raging crime and sprawling slums. Rio even has its own troubled tropical forest, the remnants of which sweep up the hillsides behind the beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema. Those beaches have lost much of their appeal to tourists, because the ocean waters are polluted and because beachgoers are vulnerable to the crime wave that has overtaken Rio in recent years. The pollution problem is grave...
...Rio's selection as the host city will redound to its benefit. Government officials, eager to put the best face on the city for the 30,000 expected visitors, have repaved the roads, expanded the airport, built a new downtown expressway and preened the beachfront parks and promenades. Street children have been rounded up and placed in shelters, homeless migrants have been sent packing, and law enforcement has been beefed up. Officials have also started some ambitious environmental projects, chief among them the cleanup of Guanabara Bay. The project will cost $667 million, $450 million of it to be lent...
...summit will boost the flagging tourist industry, which has declined 60% in the past five years. "Protect the Tourist" has been adopted as a summit slogan, and the city has even created a special squad of "tourist police" to patrol the beaches. Says a spokesman for Mayor Marcello Alencar: "Rio is going to be one of the most secure cities in the world during the Earth Summit...
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...