The Ministers of Environment of Brazil, Marina Silva, and Paraguay, Alfredo Molinas, will jointly open, today, an international forum on the Rio de la Plata basin region (Diálogos da Bacia do Prata) in the city of Foz do Iguaçu, state of Paraná.
Also participating will be representatives of Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay and Bolivia. It is expected that 1,300 people, most of them from civil associations, will attend the three-day event.
The event is sponsored by Itaipu Binacional, Green Cross Internacional and the Plata Basin Country Intergovernmental Coordinating Committee and will focus on the use and protection of Plata basin waters.
The meeting is the first of its kind in which the five interested countries will discuss one of the world’s greatest hydrographic basins. They will discuss common interests and joint action plans.
Under discussion will be many topics, such as whether or not there should be charges for water use, and if it should be controlled by the private or public sector.
On Friday the meeting will be closed by Fritjof Capra, a physicist and educator who says that the problems of pollution and environmental degradation have gone beyond being technical problems and are now strictly political.
"What we need are laws and political willpower," he says, pointing out that it is the industrial system itself that is destructive.
Agência Brasil