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1992-10-19
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ENVIRONMENT, Page 76Rio: Soiled Gem
The 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: some 400 tons of
untreated sewage are dumped in Guanabara Bay every day. Indoor
plumbing is a luxury in Rio's fetid hillside slums, and health
officials are concerned that the cholera epidemic advancing
across Latin America will soon descend on Rio.
But 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
by the Inter-American Development Bank; it would be the largest
environmental loan the bank has ever made. The plan includes the
construction of six sewage-treatment plants and two solid-waste
recycling plants and the reforestation of the eroding banks of
the rivers that feed into the bay.
The city hopes the 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."