Innumerable studies of the devastating action of man upon the Amazon forest have already been published. Since the end of the 1960s, when the destruction began in earnest, the vegetational cover that has already vanished in the Brazilian Amazon through the action of fires and chain saws is larger than the size of France. The latest figures show that the destructive impetus of the 1980s has been resumed.

The luxuriance of the forest and the fantastic amount of water that flows through it, a fifth of the fresh water of the planet, have encouraged the erroneous belief that the Amazon is an inexhaustible granary. The truth, however, is quite another story. The soil of the Amazon, mostly clayey or sandy, is extremely fragile. In several regions the forest survives above a soil with a fertility as low as that of a desert. If the forest in these regions is destroyed, there'll be a vast stretch of sand.