In the year 2000, Germany will be hosting the EXPO 2000 World Exposition in Hannover. And WYRE will hold a competition in the environmental sciences providing young researchers from all five continents with an opportunity to measure their ideas and skills against each other. All the contestants in the WYRE Competition will already have won qualifying contests in their home countries. No Borders conveys the essence of the WYRE Competition which, at the turn of the millenium, will for the first time be presenting the work of the world's finest young researchers to an international audience in Germany.
W e are on the threshold of a new millenium.
Yet we live in a world where over six billion people must be fed and their living conditions preserved, and in many areas improved, while climatic changes, deforestation and loss of habitats in general, damage to the ozone layer and water pollution are growing sources of concern. Reaching a new balance with Nature while continuing to expand economic opportunities for people all over the world are the biggest challenges in the next century. At the Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, an action programme, the Agenda 21, was set up by 170 nations. Hence, the international effort, set forth in Rio, must go on in the individual nations, but also as a dialogue between nations. Both partners had considerable experience in their respective fields of expertise.