Word: summiteering
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...problem is that the negotiators cannot operate in a world divorced from dogmas. In the case of discussions about birth control, the pressures came from the Vatican and fundamentalist Muslims. Ironically, according to summit officials, feminists led by former U.S. Congresswoman Bella Abzug may have unintentionally aided the forces aligned against family planning by pushing aggressively for a more liberal women's reproductive-rights agenda than the conservative cultures in the developing world could accept...
Unfortunately, the summit's capitulation on the population question will probably nullify whatever progress the conference makes on other issues. The United Nations Population Fund has just released new forecasts for population growth, which have been raised sharply. In 1980 the agency projected that the world's population, now at 5.4 billion, would stabilize at 10 billion people roughly 100 years from now, but the new estimates show it surpassing 11.6 billion by the year...
...Earth Summit enthusiasts argue that efforts to raise incomes and educational levels for the poor will have the side effect of lowering population growth. In the fastest-growing countries, however, population increases prevent development by sopping up investment capital that might otherwise improve lives. If the summit is to be more than a bureaucratic sideshow unrelated to ( the forces threatening the globe, it will have to do more than offer camouflaged references to the population explosion...
...size and ambition were the measures of success, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro would take all the prizes. The so-called Earth Summit, more than two years in the making, will be the largest and most complex conference ever held -- bigger than the momentous meetings at Versailles, Yalta and Potsdam...
...Those summits carved up empires, drew new borders and settled world wars. The agenda for the Earth Summit is more far reaching: it sets out to confront not only the world's most pressing environmental problems -- from global warming to deforestation -- but poverty and underdevelopment as well. A five- week preparatory meeting in New York City that ended last month produced 24 million pages of documents. "It's a Herculean task," admits Maurice Strong, the former Canadian oil executive who organized and serves as secretary- general for the giant get-together...