Word: rios
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...lines have been so sharply drawn on all the forest-protection of issues that what was originally intended to be a legally binding forestry convention was watered down months ago to a nonbinding "statement of principles" that will probably be adopted at Rio. Whether a full-fledged treaty will be negotiated later is still uncertain...
Both documents will be adopted at Rio, but neither bears much resemblance to the original conception. After weeks of debate, the Earth Charter was abandoned and replaced by a woodenly written declaration filled with the kind of pious promises ("eradicating poverty," "eliminat((ing)) unsustainable patterns of production and consumption") that world leaders often make but never keep. In what is perhaps the worst example of bureaucratic obfuscation, ^ the text at one point endorses the promotion of "appropriate demographic policies" -- the nearest negotiators could come to confronting the explosive issue of population control...
...negotiators despaired of settling the funding questions in advance and agreed to reopen the issue in Rio. Some observers think the Group of 77 may have made a tactical blunder by pushing so hard for financial and technical aid. Sir Crispin Tickell, Britain's former ambassador to the U.N., has called it a "diplomatic mistake of the highest magnitude." Others criticize the Earth Summit organizers, who by putting so many environmental problems on the negotiating table may have inadvertently ensured that none of them get solved...
That is not likely to change when those 100 or so heads of state meet in Rio next week. If the world's environmental problems did not get solved in two ! years of preparatory negotiations, they can hardly be settled in 10 days dominated by banquets, receptions and photo opportunities. But it is not too late to salvage something of great value from the Earth Summit. If the leaders who go there -- and the people watching them from around the world -- can be convinced that the crisis facing the planet is serious enough to demand a new alliance between North...
Those are among the larger questions on the agenda of an extraordinary meeting of more than 100 world leaders and 30,000 other participants in Rio de Janeiro beginning June 3. The central premise of this unprecedented Earth < Summit is that environmental problems can no longer be solved at the national level. Will the countries represented in Rio -- notably the U.S. -- show the courage and vision and leadership necessary to protect our planet for future generations? The answer is not certain, but there is some hope...