1.  Curbing the timber trade:  The most destructive problem in the Amazon right now is undoubtedly logging, i.e. the extraction of timber and subsequent unnecessary destruction that results from it.  To preserve the rainforest, it is necessary to end the practices of uncaring loggers.  

• The first step towards achieving this would be to end the illegal practices of loggers and forcing them to recognise and use environmentally sound procedures to extract timber from the Amazon rainforest.  Some major steps have been taken by Brazil in the past year to stop illegal mahogany logging, but this enforcement needs to go further and seek out all the other illegal operations.  Forcing the logging industry to use environmentally sound procedures to extract timber has already been proven possible by a certification program introduced by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)  in 1993 (11).  Made up of timber users and timber traders from 25 different countries, as well as human rights and environmental groups, it appointed four international organisations to certify the timber practices of operators that applied to the FSC as being environmentally sound.  These logs were then marked with FSC-certified seals, and if consumers can be made aware of the work of the FSC, then it would undoubtedly put enormous pressure on the other logging operations whose methods are environmentally unsound to change their ways.  The FSC members all agree upon its principles and certification criteria, but the FSC itself still does not have the total support of the South American governments and the international community, so its operations are still restricted.  

• The second step, and probably one that should be worked upon in conjunction with the first step, is to work to curb the wastage and overconsumption of timber products.  The most important use of timber is in the furniture and building industry and in the production of paper.  We must work to make people aware of the harm timber extraction is causing and find better and more efficient extraction methods where only mature timber trees are cut and transported from the forest without destroying other trees in the process, such as RIL, or Reduced-Impact Logging (4).  At the same time, we must try to find alternatives to timber in the furniture industry through the use of synthetic products made artificially, using other material to build houses, like brick, and more and better recycling campaigns of paper (conservative estimates show that wood logging could be reduced by at least 40% if paper was efficiently recycled).

• Once these are made possible, thus reducing the world market's dependence upon the timber industry in the process, the third step can be taken once and for all to end the import of tropical timber and tropical wood products from natural rainforests.