Yet for the thousands fighting to save the home of up to half the world's animal and plant life, facts and figures are the key as the 10-year anniversary of the landmark global 1992 Rio Earth Summit hosted by Brazil approaches.

Next week Brazil will host a meeting of Latin American environment ministers intended to coordinate regional positions ahead of what has been dubbed here as "Rio+10" - a summit in South Africa next year to follow up on the global environmental agenda agreed to in 1992.

Environmentalists say the meeting will focus on efforts since 1992 to save what is seen by many as the "lungs of the planet" due to the vast oxygen amounts produced in the Amazon. Many experts fear dire consequences if deforestation endures.

An area larger than Western Europe, 85 percent of the Amazon is in Brazil.

"Land use change is causing an unprecedented imbalance in Amazonia," said Carlos Nobre, general coordinator of temperature and climate studies at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE), in a recent report.

He warned that the logging, fires and farming in the Amazon could create "biodiversity losses of unknown magnitude."

Such fears of the Amazon's destruction extend to possible regional temperature rises, less rainfall and accelerated rates of 'desertification' whereby land becomes parched and useless.

Some environmentalists have pushed for an Amazon sanctuary to ensure its survival - something Brazilian authorities rule out not least because the region's population has grown to 20 million from 3.5 million in 1970.

Others say strides were made in conserving the Amazon in the 1990s, especially thanks to the so-called Pilot Program to Conserve the Brazilian Rain Forests, known as the PPG7.

The PPG7 includes Brazil's government, donors from the G7 industrial countries, the Netherlands and the European Union. It has channeled $350 million to conserving the Amazon.

AMAZON COULD HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT

"Some of the conservation efforts would have happened without the PPG7 anyway," said David Cleary, Amazon program manager at the Nature Conservancy in Brazil. "Certainly the Amazon would have looked different without it."

The most concrete success pointed to by the government is that the rate of the Amazon's destruction fell in the 1990s to average levels around 4.5 million acres (1.8 million hectares) from more than 5 million acres (2 million hectares) in the 1980s.

That is equivalent to about the size of Rhode Island. But 86 percent of original Amazon still stands.

A challenge identified by environmentalists is that Brazilian authorities face pressures to develop the Amazon, which represents more than half the country's territory.

A recent study found that a $40 billion government economic development plan could destroy or heavily damage up to 42 percent of the Amazon if it goes ahead. Some say projections like this are not conclusive.

"The argument that the Amazonian forest is going to disappear in the next 50 years is fanciful," Cleary said, adding that would require much faster deforestation rates.

Joe Weiss, president of the Brazilian Institute of Economic and Social Development, says destruction could be reduced.