Rio: 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."