This gives me the impression I haven't done much before this last active phase, which is not true because I spent a lot of time researching. Here are tracks I first thought of following:
Towards a plan ... my first ideas

big principles:
*We can't devise a plan of development for Brazil aiming to preserve the rainforest without rethinking the role of Northern countries. Big corporations eating up the
forest and chasing peasants from the south are often multinationals whose profits come into our national GPDs. We are worried by the emission of greenhouse gases
due to deforestation; but do we realize our countries are the main cause of global warming? How can we expect Brazil to consider our plan if we continue to be so
hypocrite. We need to assume our responsibilities so that we become credible and so that a real co-operation between the North and the South takes place.
* The more we strengthen and diversify the economy of Brazil, the less pressure there will be on the rainforest. We could help the primary sector to grow on the part of
Brazil where there is good arable land and no forest.

small ideas:
* encourage consumption of sustainably produced products from the tropical forest and discourage production of damaging production. For example, develop market
for tropical juice.
* merge efforts of Northern and Southern governments and of the different green groups so as to unite forces. Let's become allies!
* there are growing alternative parties in Brazil (I don't know yet if the new left-wing president is part of one) which offer progressive view of development considering
environmental impacts. We can help them become more influent. They have a better chance of raising awareness around the country than foreigners.
* Japan is the world's largest importer of wood. The use made of it (chopsticks and hardwood plywood for concrete, often discarded after a couple of years) generates a
lot of waste.  There are probably alternatives: organise recycling of chopsticks in Japan and of the plywood or use other materials.
* to strengthen the primary sector:
generate a social growth scenario (see  agribusiness in Brazil ). In other words, promote
technological change, more equal income distribution, elimination of indirect taxes on food.
provoke investment in export infrastructure by giving concessions to private companies who invest more easily than the government
render more effective the processing methods
* promote use of alcohol fuel: less polluting than petroleum fuel, generates electrical energy, and will bring money to Brazil who produces a lot of cane. a 3% mixture of
hydrated alcohol in diesel fuel can be done with no risk for engine, no loss in efficiency and much less pollution.
* reduce production of coffee because there is waste (too much production) and many markets are blocked.
* distribution of land: there seems to be enough land in the southern regions for big corporations and small farmer. We can devise a policy to slow down the migration
towards the forest. A report from the Washington-based World Resources Institute concludes that "one of the primary forces pushing landless migrants into the forests
is the inequitable distribution of agricultural land... land reform policies, therefore, are one of themost potent tools governement possess to stabilize forest use". The
access to the land in the south has to be more equal. Agrarian reform is needed
* find ways to make sure the indigenous people are paid back whenever their resources are used (knowledge, cultures...) Why not imagine master classes held by
shamans for geneticists or pharmacians?
* to reduce illegal local power of landholders it would be good to consider a reform of the administration. More decentralized government power would allow a closer
control of the way the land is administered in the different regions. Since most of the arable land owned by this reach landlords is not cultivated (so more or less
useless), we could imagine a new law controlling the use of big patches of land. There should be legal reasons for the land not to be cultivated and big taxes taken on
land which is only used for speculative means. The taxes should be high enough to make it more profitable to the landlord who doesn't want to cultivate the land to sell
the land to small farmers or sell it to the government than keeping it to speculate. A few days later... I've just found out that such a tax already exists but it's original
version being unefective, it has recently been reformed and the results are not already observable.
* to reduce the peasant problem: promote staple food market so that they have a business. Important role of World Bank and IMF in this. Opening more local markets
to small farmers and give them the possibility to farm efficiently staple crops would be beneficial to the country as it would need to import less
examples of staple crops include manioc, rice, bean
* reduction of taxes set by World Bank on processed products so that it becomes viable for Brazil to process its products and then export them. Processing more instead
of producing more raw products means less land used!
* reinforce the defense of the peasants against landlords by helping NGO fighting for this and by more extensive media coverage of these invents in foreign countries to
embarass Brazilian government into action. The highest murder rates are within the Amazon Basin.
 

Here is a list of things I felt needed to be looked into or tracks which were worth following (comments in italic):
* for more detailed background information check IBGE (Brazilian Statistics Institute)
* to explore the concept of ethnobotany and economic botany this is what I have done during a third of the semester. I read a lot about agroforestry and the economic potential of growing alternative plants.
* Thousands of species of plants known to be edible, only about 150 in world commerce.
acai, amaranth, babassu palm,camu-camu, guanabana, lulo, peach palm
Study by Charles Peters pf the Institute of Economic of Botany at theNew-York Botanical Garden on potential economic value of such foods. general result: twice as much revenue can be made out of this harvesting than out of timber or cattle on same land. To be checked and looked at in more depth. critics of study possible. I e-mailed this guy to get hold of the study. It wasn't that interesting.
* we'll have to work with land and flora to determine what are the principles of agroforestry and with socioeconomic how they can be applied to Amazon forest . partnership with these groups has been very good to get feedback on my farm model.
*find out how the Kayapo master the use of fire as a sustainable way to regenerate the land. I read a lot about the Kayapo's practices because they are one of the most sustainable communities of the forest and seem willing to collaborate. A lot of their practices are used on the farm, including regeneration by fire.
* find out the proportion of illegal practices in the Amazon Forest. This I haven't done except for the illegal means of acquiring land (grileiros) and evicting small farmers from the land.
* learn more about the reserves. They don't seem to have such a positive effect on the forest and its inhabitants.  I have to understand what kind of reserve is beneficial and see how much land can be used for this purpose. This would have been an interesting topic which I have not had the time to go into.
* the debate on transgenics in Brazil : check www.mcc.org/us/globalization/hough/brazil.html
* to be checked: US Agency for International Development (USAID)
* learn more about different farming practices for culture of coffee at rainforest.web.org . Coffee is a saturated market: I dropped the idea.
* how flexible are the different sectors? In other words,  I need to estimate the difficulty of reforming the different sectors so that they adopt more sustainable practices. Even though I did not research this specifically, over time we all got a feeling for this and our plans take it into account (economic incentive for the beef, management of the land for the farmers...)
* Brazilian Enterprise for Research in Agriculture
* Mercosul. Never did it.
* find out more about the inequality of income distribution: what causes it  and how could it be reduced.
* check out Brazilian Agency for Export Promotion
* find out whether the retailers are mainly domestic or multinationals they're domestic
* find out about alcohol fuel. energy group has done it. It turns out it is already very much used in Brazil for personnal energy consumption (cars...) but it is not efficient enough to be used on an industrial scale.
* website of FUNAI , UNEP, UNI I used these a lot.
* has an agrarian court been created as was suggested by the Minister of Justice? If so, has it been efficient? It has been created and has been corrupted.
* how can we deal with the lack of phosphate in farming in Amazonia? (alternatives through growth of certain species like for nitrogen?) Haha! That's the question. Nutrient cycling by cultivation of native perennials.
* crops to be considered in farming part of our plan (non-comprehensive list, I'm still looking for these crops): rice, black beans, maize, peanuts, soyabeans, sunflower seeds, carnauba wax, guarana. The list is way more extensive now!