The beautiful forests of the Amazon are today a battleground between two visions. On the one side, that of the people who live within the forest, who were inspired by one Brazilian to set up reserves to extract forest products - nuts, oils, sustainable timber.

On the other side, is Brazil's mechanized agriculture which is advancing into the Amazon basin. Its dream is to turn the forest into the granary of the world . This week's Earth Report takes a look at which side is winning out in the battle to use, or save, the rainforests of Brazil.

Visionary Man

Chico Mendes was a second-generation rubber tapper, or seringueiro. After World War II, the international demand for rubber decreased and those harvesting it from rainforest trees were faced with increasingly hardship. The land expansion plans of the 1970s threatened the livelihood of the seringueiros further. The most damning for the natural rubber harvesters was Brazilian president Medici's announcement to build a super-highway into Amazonia, offering "a land without men to men without lands".

In the 1980s, Chico Mendes was confronting the developers who were clearing the forest. Squatters opened fire. All over Amazonia their attempts to drive out rubber tappers and squatters were leading to bloody battles.

Chico continued his reistance to developers and in 1997 won the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Global 500 Roll of Honour for Environmental Achievement, bringing him international recognition.

The suddenly in 1988 at his back door, Chico was shot by the son of a rancher. Darci Alves' confession explains the simple motive: "My father bought a rubber estate called Cachoeira. Chico Mendes found out and tried to block it, to stop my father taking it over. That's why I killed him."

The Dream Continues

Chico's funeral was a bitter moment for all his friends. His dream to protect the rainforest had turned to ashes. So, 15 years later, when Chico's party leader and friend, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, became the President of Brazil in January 2003, it seemed like a dream come true. Especially when Marina Silva, the daughter of rubber tappers, became the Minister of the Environment and Chico's closest associate, became the Secretary for the Amazon.

In the forest of the Western Amazon, in May, 2003, the town of Xapuri, once the home of Chico Mendes, was visited by the new President. Then, in front of Chico's house, the President launched a new policy for Amazonia.

It seemed there was new hope - until it was announced that the deforestation rate for 2002 had increased 40%. During that year, Earth Report had been flying with the environmental police - known as IBAMA - as they tried to enforce the law against illegal burning.

A Burning Jungle

Helicopters, paid for by the World Bank, are used to confirm the fire's position by satellite. Those responsible are then searched out. Over a thousand chainsaws were seized from the area south of Para. But the deforestation continues.

So Earth Report asked the scientist who developed the satellite technology for locating the fires, whether the environmental police, equipped with only five helicopters, had any realistic chance of stopping the damage.

He said over 3,000 fires may be detected in a day but, after all the forms and paperwork are completed and explanations given to the farmers, only about three or four may be checked. That means, even with all five helicopters working, only a maximum of 20 fires can be inspected every day. Thousands go unchecked.

Improving enforcement of illegal forest burning is the big challenge for the new government. Its Amazon policy was started by requesting that many ministries work together. But after a number of meetings, it appeared that their priorities varied. Some did not want to subordinate their plans for roads and dams to restrictions from the Ministry of the Environment.

And other meetings in Amazonia, with the state governors, revealed that some were more interested in development than in protecting the forest. For instance, the Governor of Amazonas generally favours protecting the forest.

But the Governor of Para, together with the Governor of Mato Grosso, are in favour of a joint development which is currently the greatest threat to the Amazon forest. They want to tarmac a road to the River Amazon from the vast soya bean area of Mato Grosso round the town of Sorriso. Dozens of silos indicate that it is Brazil's biggest producer of soya.

Whilst Maggi, the biggest individual producer in the world, is the family company of the State of Mato Grosso's Governor, Blairo Maggi. He made his position clear while visiting the annual gathering of Brazilians from the south, who brought soya agriculture to Mato Grosso.

"Amazonia is a continent. Brazilian Amazonia is big enough to contain Europe, plus 3.4 additional Englands. Five hundred million people live in Europe. In Amazonia there are only 20 million people. What cries out for attention today is that Amazonia is only 1.48% occupied."

And Soya It Goes

Meanwhile, the heaviest deforestation in 2002 had been precisely in the north of Mato Grosso. And along the soya export road from Cuiaba to Santarem - soya for livestock in China and Europe.

The first part of the road from Cuiaba to Santarem is already paved because it serves the Brazilian grain belt. Twenty years ago these huge fields were still a forest.

Half of Brazil's soya goes to feed livestock in Europe. So it is one of the reasons why the juggernaut of the grain belt has ground its way onto the southern slope of the Amazon basin. Vast areas of upland forest are now turned over to industrial soya and other crops.

Soya beans don't do well in the higher rainfall of Central Amazonia. And so, the northern part of the road had previously been left unpaved. But the development of a new strain of soya specially adapted to the tropics is one of the main reasons why the road is now about to be finished.

The asphalted road will cut a thousand kilometres from the journey by land and four thousand by sea, reducing transport costs by 30%. An obvious benefit for anyone seeking their fortune through Amazonian grown crops.

Road To Ruin

In Amazonia the rainy season means thousands of trucks stuck, their produce rotting in the mud. So paving the road launches economic expansion and attracts migrants. The settlers burn and clear to plant crops to sell, and the region's economy booms.

But the seemingly positive economy spells longer term disaster. Daniel Nepstad of the Institute for Amazon Environmental Research explains the pitfalls: "We estimate from what's happening in other frontiers after asphalt has gone in that over the next twenty to twenty-five years about forty percent of the forest will be completely replaced by agriculture and another forty percent or so will be lost to logging."

His estimate is based on satellite photos of existing highways which show 75% of all deforestation is within 50 kilometres of a paved road in Amazonia.

While the roads themselves aren't the major destructive force, it is the access they provide that allows more fires and chainsaws into precious rainforests.

Exporting The Woods Of Brazil

The road passes through Novo Progresso, which means New Progress. A typical frontier settlement, its mayor hopes that after the asphalt is laid the town will boom. The road will link Novo Progresso with the port of Santarem which can handle large seagoing ships from Europe and China.

At the docks in Santarem, they are loading timber. And when the world's greatest tropical forest has been finally exported as planks, what seems destined to replace it will be the soya bean.

A terminal for bulk carriers has just been built by the grain multi-national, Cargill, the world's biggest trader of soya. The company is preparing to process millions of tonnes of grain. A notice proclaims Santarem as the world's new agricultural frontier.

Earth Report asked the owner of the mill whether he was investing heavily in soya and mechanised agriculture. He replied: "We're investing. Last year in Santarem only seven thousand hectares were planted. This year it's eighteen thousand. Next year it will probably be thirty-five thousand. I think this is one of the last agricultural frontiers with a great potential for cereals, principally soya bean."

And the soya producers are hoping to expand from their circular area in Mato Grosso into a huge corridor around the road.

Resistance Persists

But is this the end of the Amazonian rainforests? Is anyone standing against the unchecked destruction of natural resources?

In the path of this juggernaut are the forest dwellers, and their abandoned houses stand like tombstones in the fields. Some, like Silvino Viera, are trying to hold their ground as long as they can. But it may only be a matter of time before he too, must sell his piece of land.

Seven million hectares of untouched forest still lie in the area known as the 'Land in the Middle'. And this is rapidly being invaded by illegal land grabbers and loggers.

A survey team from the Ministry of the Environment is registering the wishes of the people who live in the forest, in order to turn it into a reserve for the extraction of forest products. Local accounts tell of armed invaders trying to empty the area of anyone standing in their way. Can the situation be turned around for the forest dwellers?

Reserves provide the legal framework to protect these people and their forest from the road. Environment Minister Silva is all too aware of the need for effective protection. She says: "Whatever road, built in an area strategically so important to the preservation of Amazonia as the Cuiaba-Santarem highway, has to be accompanied by a series of measures to avoid the uncontrolled expansion of the agricultural frontier and the exploitation of the forest at any cost."

Will Chico's Dream Be Realised?

At present, few of the governments infrastructure plans appear to protect the forest in this way, and are estimated to produce massive deforestation - mainly for soya. For instance, the backers of the Rio Madeira dam and waterway claim it will turn the beautiful forests of the Guapore valley into the granary of the world.

There, the aim is to produce 25 million tons of soya, from 80,000 square kilometres of deforestation. At present, a number of reserves for forest products are being set up in the Guapore valley. But what's still to be proved is whether one hectare of forest can earn as much as one hectare of soya.

In July 2003, the fires in the State of Mato Grosso increased 100% from July 2002. Around the huge fields of mechanized agriculture, they had cut down some of the remaining forest to burn. Amazonian forest is usually too damp to catch fire, but this forest has been so thinned out by loggers that it's like dry tinder.

From July 15 to September 15, it was illegal to burn, but, as usual, it was hard to find the perpetrators. Inspectors get few answers from the people they question. Ranch workers do not even admit to knowing the identity of their employers.

What will happen to the Brazilian forests? Our global economy is hungry for timber and soya. So, though some of the friends of Chico Mendes may be in government, the juggernaut consuming the Amazon forest is still ravenous and insatiable.