The challenges of monitoring the effects of deforestation on the Amazon are immense. The vast areas which need to be covered means it's difficult to keep tabs on what's happening on the remote fringes of the rainforest and news of illegal logging and other environmental damage can take a long time to reach the authorities, if they find out at all.
To help solve this problem, the Greenpeace team in Brazil has been training local people to map the impacts of the soya industry in the Santarém region of the forest, the heart of soya production in the Amazon. It's a collaborative project with Brazilian organisations Projeto Saude e Alegria (Health and Happiness Project) and the Rural Workers Unions of Santarém and nearby Belterra, training people to use GPS technology to pinpoint the damage caused by intensive agriculture, empowering them to help defend their land and the rainforest.
The resulting map (pdf) has been launched at an event on our ship the Arctic Sunrise which is currently in the Amazon to demand action from the Brazilian Government to end deforestation and help prevent climate change. Even though there's currently a moratorium on forest being cleared for new soya plantations, existing areas being farmed are still damaging both the environment and the communities who live in the region.
The research was conducted between May 2007 and June 2008 and the map shows how this damage has spread along the highways carved through the forest. Soya farming has affected rivers as well: herbicides used on the crops have leeched into them while others have either been dammed by farmers affecting water supplies for those downstream, or they've silted up when wetland forest cover has been removed.
The area near Santarem covered in the community mapping project View Larger Map
So as their environment deteriorates, the future of these local communities is at stake. Traditional routes through the forest are blocked by expansive soya plantations and some people have been forced to sell their land thanks to pollution from agrochemicals. The maps even document the fact that some communities have disappeared entirely.
Those that do remain have also been placed on the map. Many rural communities in the region are not shown on existing maps, and thanks to this project 121 have been formally identified.
By giving people the tools to document what's happening to the forest and rivers around them, this project is helping to put control back into their hands. Not least because since agribusiness giant Cargill announced plans to build its controversial soya processing and port facility in Santarem - without the legally-required environmental impact assessment - local people have fought to show the detrimental effects Cargill has had on the region by encouraging the growth of the soya industry. Cargill finally submitted the assessment to the authorities at the end of last year and we're currently awaiting the announcement of the public hearing.
And finally, this project could also provide a model for how the money from global funding mechanisms could be spent to ensure local people are the guardians of their own forest, which will be essential if we are to protect forests in the Amazon and around the world in the long term.
