The focus of this case study is the Brazilian Amazon region and specifically western Pará state, a major region of smallholder settlement that is representative of conditions throughout the Amazon (Figure 6). The predominant vegetation type is evergreen tropical forest, which covers approximately 63 per cent of the region (Pereira et al., 2010). There are also significant areas of savannah, especially in the state of Roraima in the far north. The Brazilian Amazon region is under increasingly intense pressure for land clearing; as of 2009, an estimated 18 per cent of the Amazon forest biome had been cleared and a comparable area had been degraded by a combination of extensive logging and forest fires associated with agricultural clearing (Pereira et al., 2010).