Seeking an Amazon solution. Seen from a small boat emerging from Puraquequara lagoon into the full flow of the Amazon River, this is a world reduced to water, trees and sky. It's a full three kilometres to the other side and at that distance even the forest giants that tower over the canopy seem reduced in size. Amazonas state - a territory three times the size of France but with a telephone book just a centimetre thick - is 98% pristine rainforest.
But it is an environment threatened by powerful forces - like the march of economic development. Former Harvard law professor Roberto Mangabeira Unger, the man charged with implementing Brazil's new Plan for a Sustainable Amazon (PAS), is under no illusions about the difficulties he faces. "The Amazon is not simply a collection of trees," Unger, Brazil's minister for strategic affairs told the BBC. "It's a group of people: 25 million Brazilians. 'No Amazon support' The PAS plan is a detailed, yet controversial roadmap. Among the PAS plan's initiatives are: Ambitious scheme. Q&A: The Amazon Paradox. What sort of the place is the Amazon region? More than 30 million people - two-thirds of them Brazilian - live in the Amazon region, a vast area which represents 40% of South America and includes parts of nine countries. The majority of its inhabitants live off the forest in some way.
They are often blamed for the deforestation of the region, but many depend on the forest as their means of earning a living and of escaping poverty. Many observers agree that the main challenge is how to develop the Amazon region economically without destroying it. Why is the region so important to the rest of the world? Three main reasons: it plays a critical role in the global carbon cycle that shapes the world's climate the region will be possible tipping point for pushing the world into much warmer temperatures, many scientists say it contains a rich store of biodiversity with around a quarter of all the earth's terrestrial species found there.
What is the current rate of deforestation of the Amazon? BBC iPlayer - Unnatural Histories: Amazon. Hackers 'aid' Amazon logging scam. Hackers have helped logging firms in Brazil evade limits on tree felling, says a Greenpeace report. The hi-tech criminals penetrated a computer system designed to monitor logging in the Brazilian state of Para.
Once inside the system, hackers issued fake permits so loggers could cut down far more timber than environmental officials were prepared to allow. Greenpeace estimates that 1.7m cubic metres of illegal timber may have been removed with the aid of the hackers. Massive attack Drawing on information released by Brazilian federal prosecutor Daniel Avelino, Greenpeace believes hackers were employed by 107 logging and charcoal companies. "Almost half of the companies involved in this scam have other law suits pending for environmental crimes or the use of slave labour," said Mr Avelino in a statement issued by Greenpeace. Mr Avelino is suing the companies behind the mass hack attack for two billion reals (£564m) - the estimated value of the timber illegally sold. "Lost" Amazon Complex Found; Shapes Seen by Satellite. Hundreds of circles, squares, and other geometric shapes once hidden by forest hint at a previously unknown ancient society that flourished in the Amazon, a new study says.
Satellite images of the upper Amazon Basin taken since 1999 have revealed more than 200 geometric earthworks spanning a distance greater than 155 miles (250 kilometers). (Related: "Huge Pre-Stonehenge Complex Found via 'Crop Circles.'" ) Now researchers estimate that nearly ten times as many such structures—of unknown purpose—may exist undetected under the Amazon's forest cover.
At least one of the sites has been dated to around A.D. 1283, although others may date as far back as A.D. 200 to 300, said study co-author Denise Schaan, an anthropologist at the Federal University of Pará in Belém, Brazil . Since these vanished societies had gone unrecorded, previous research had suggested that soils in the upper Amazon were too poor to support the extensive agriculture needed for such large, permanent settlements.