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In the face of pressure from abroad and complaints from environmentalists at home, Brazil has grudgingly begun to respond. In April, only a few months after denouncing the environmental movement as a foreign plot to seize the forests, the Sarney administration announced a hastily patched-together conservation package dubbed Our Nature. Much of the language was ambiguous, but the program contained promising provisions, such as the temporary suspension of tax incentives that spur the most wasteful forest exploitation. Says Celio Valle, director of ecosystems at the government's newly created environmental agency: "Before, we used to consider Brazilian environmental groups as the enemy, but now we consider them allies." Amazonian development may become a significant issue in this fall's presidential campaign. Fernando Collor de Mello, a member of the conservative National Reconstruction Party and a leading candidate to succeed Sarney, has said he believes in preserving the forests, though critics doubt his sincerity.
Many Brazilians still believe the Amazon is indestructible -- a green monster so huge and vital that it could not possibly disappear. Asked about a controversial hydroelectric project that might flood an area as large as Britain, a Brazilian engineering consultant said, "Yes, that's a big area, but in terms of the Amazon it's small." Maintained Sarney recently: "It's not easy to destroy a rain forest. There are recuperative powers at work."
Yet the rain forest is deceptively fragile. Left to itself, it is an almost self-sustaining ecosystem that thrives indefinitely. But it does not adapt well to human invasions and resists being turned into farm- or ranchland. Most settlers find that the lush promise of the Amazon is an illusion that vanishes when grasped.
The forest functions like a delicately balanced organism that recycles most of its nutrients and much of its moisture. Wisps of steam float from the top of the endless palette of green as water evaporates off the upper leaves, cooling the trees as they collect the intense sunlight. Air currents over the forest gather this evaporation into clouds, which return the moisture to the system in torrential rains. Dead animals and vegetation decompose quickly, and the resulting nutrients move rapidly from the soil back to growing plants. The forest is such an efficient recycler that virtually no decaying matter seeps into the region's rivers.
But when stripped of its trees, the land becomes inhospitable. Most of the Amazon's soil is nutrient poor and ill suited to agriculture. The rain forest has an uncanny capacity to flourish in soils that elsewhere would not even support weeds.
Throughout history, would-be pioneers and developers have discovered just how unreceptive the Amazon can be. Henry Ford tried twice to carve rubber empires out of the rain forest in the 1920s and '30s. But when the protective canopy was cut down, the rubber trees withered under the assault of sun, rain and pests. In 1967 Daniel Ludwig, an American billionaire, launched a rashly ambitious project to clear 2.5 million acres of forest and plant Gmelina trees for their timber. He figured that the imported species would not be susceptible to Brazil's pests. Ludwig was wrong, and as his trees died off, he bailed out of the project in 1982.