Cleaning up the environment for the world's environmentalists

A decaying tourist magnet will emerge from the Earth Summit much refurbish, as JAMES BROOKE reports

WITH 30,000 visitors — environmentalists, journalists and heads of State — expected here next month for a global ecological summit meeting, Rio de Janeiro is unrolling a traditional Third World welcome mat: a new road to the airport.

Skimming past slums and swamps, the eight-lane highway is part of a $US1 billion ($A1.33 billion) facelift for a city that hopes to reverse its fading fortunes by playing host to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development from June 3 to June 14. It is the first such gathering since an ‘Earth Summit" in 1972 in Stockholm.

Amazon Indians are thatching lodges here for a congress of indigenous peoples, workers are raising white and green shelters at a beachfront park for a country fair of environmental groups, and carpenters are hammering and sawing night and day to ready conference centres for presidents and prime ministers.

Catching the spirit, Brazil’s athletic President Fernando Collor de Mello has given up his usual weekend activities: flying fighter jets or test-driving tanks. Instead, he hikes the savannah around Brasilia photographing wildflowers for a book to present to visiting world leaders.

Dashing hopes held by environmentalists a year ago, world leaders are not expected to sign substantive agreements here on controlling carbon dioxide gases, preserving forests and preserving biological diversity.

Reflecting environmentalists’ growing anger, Carlos Minc, a founder of Brazil’s Green Party, plans to erect a "mendacity meter" outside the conference hall that will ring bells and flash lights every time an operator watching a closed-circuit television deems that falsehoods are emanating from the hail.

Many residents, though, think the Government is trying to sweep the dirt under the rug to create an unreal fresh-scrubbed face. Whatever the motive, this decaying tourist magnet will emerge from the summit with a much needed refurbishing.

Aside from the new airport highway, 32 kilometres of city beaches have new footpaths, new food kiosks and new bicycle paths.

Later this month, city authorities are to open Latin America’s largest recycling plant; it can process 1,120 tonnes a day, or a quarter of Rio’s garbage. Battalions of soldiers are to blanket streets to discourage pickpockets.

Completing what one Sao Paulo newspaper called "plastic surgery", the State-run Banco do Brasil Foundation unexpectedly announced recently that it was making a $US750,000 grant to provide dormitories and soup kitchens for the hundreds of children who sleep on the footpaths.

Getting a head start on the problems of homelessness, the city government began a program in February called "Going Home": homeless migrant families are given new clothes, a small stipend for six months and one-way bus tickets home.

Fountains along the scenic drive hugging Guanabara Bay have been fenced off, keeping away the droves of beggars who usually use them to wash clothes and bathe.

On famous Copacabana beach, a new iron fence around Lido Square has cooled one of Rio’s hottest spots. Prostitutes and transvestites who traditionally used the Lido as an all-night pick-up point have moved elsewhere.

The Government has said 35,000 "security agents" will be on duty during the conference. They include city, State and Federal police, the armed forces and even police academy cadets. Most will be stationed in the beachfront hotel zone.

But many residents feel the Government is trying to sweep the dirt under the rug to create an unreal fresh-scrubbed face.

"The Government sure won’t take heads of State by the slums," said Rio State legislator Paulo Melo. "When the conference gets near, it starts pulling the beggars off the street to ‘beautify’ the city."

Some say the facelift has a sinister note: Street kids reportedly are being threatened to leave the downtown area until the conference is over.

"It happens late at night," said Ivanir dos Santos, head of a street kids defense group called CEAP. "Men come up to the kids and say: if we see you here tomorrow, you die’.

Source : The New York Times and Associated Press, May 26, 1992

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