Word: virginal
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...east, hills to the north and the forbidding Ndoki River to the west, the region is almost inaccessible. Pygmies have crisscrossed central Africa for thousands of years, but there is no evidence that they have entered beyond the fringes of this 3 million-hectare (7.5 million-acre) expanse of virgin forest, which is about the size of Belgium...
...author of The Old Gringo and The Death of Artemio Cruz shakes his head in wonder. "It's a great example of Mexican culture -- the Indian and the Spanish religion coming together," he says. "What more perfect symbol than a pyramid topped by a church devoted to the Virgin Mary...
...addressed the environmentally damaging consequences of present international assistance and domestic subsidies. World Bank initiatives like the Tropical Forestry Action Plan were billed as efforts to halt the destruction of rain forests, but in many cases the plan became an instrument of deforestation by fostering projects to open virgin forests to loggers. World Bank president Lewis Preston announced at the summit that the institution was willing to contribute $1.5 billion of its profits toward environment-related projects, but the bank still must show that it knows how to use these and other funds wisely...
...Green Party. "What does sustainable development mean in the Amazon? The big polluters are hiding behind these two words." In fact, a wood-pulp producer in the Amazonian state of Para has described as "sustainable development" a plan to clear-cut 5,000 hectares (12,000 acres) of virgin tropical forest and replant the area with eucalyptus trees...
Except for finances, no issue has divided North and South more sharply than the question of what to do about the world's remaining virgin forests. At the heart of the debate are the tropical rain forests -- and a fundamental difference in how each side sees them. To industrial countries they are a treasure trove of biodiversity and greenhouse-gas "sinks" that absorb CO2 and thus help keep global warming in check. To developing nations the forests are resources ripe for exploitation: potential farmland, a free source of fuel and a storehouse of exotic kinds of wood that command high...