Word: summiteering
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...with one week to go before the opening ceremonies, the outlook for the Rio conference is far from certain. It is still possible that the Earth Summit will be one of those landmark events that change the course of history, recasting the relationship of the nations of the world not only to one another but also to their environment. Or it could end up to be a diplomatic disaster of global proportions, driving the wedge deeper between the industrial countries and developing countries and thus setting back the cause of environmentalism...
...world has changed dramatically since the first Earth Summit, held 20 years ago in Stockholm (and also chaired by the indefatigable Strong). That event, which launched thousands of grass-roots conservation groups around the world and spawned environmental agencies and ministries in more than 115 nations, was held in the shadow of the cold war, when the planet was divided into rival East and West blocs and preoccupied with the perils of the nuclear arms race. With the collapse of the East bloc and the thawing of the cold war, a fundamental shift in the global axis of power...
...issue in Stockholm, has grown significantly worse in most cities. Even more alarming, it is now overshadowed by broad atmospheric changes, such as ozone depletion and the buildup of greenhouse gases. According to the Washington- based Worldwatch Institute, one of the hundreds of environmental pressure groups advising the Earth Summit negotiators, the world has lost 200 million hectares (500 million acres) of trees since 1972, an area roughly one-third the size of the continental U.S. The world's farmers, meanwhile, have lost nearly 500 million tons of topsoil, an amount equal to the tillable soil coverage of India...
...idea behind the Earth Summit was that the relaxation of cold war tensions, combined with the heightened awareness of these growing ecological crises, offered a rare opportunity to persuade countries to look beyond their national interests and agree to some basic changes in the way they treat the environment. The broad issues are clear: the developed countries of the North have grown accustomed to life-styles that are consuming a disproportionate share of natural resources and generating the bulk of global pollution. Many of the developing countries of the South, for their part, are consuming irreplaceable global resources -- eating...
...says, would have to put up an additional $500 billion a year.) To put that in context, the annual U.S. defense budget is $290 billion. "The bottom line is money," says Kamal Nath, India's Minister of Environment and Forests. "If the West does not give funds, the Earth Summit will die a natural death...