By moving northwards into the Amazon basin, soya farmers are also driving ranchers deeper into the rainforest.

ECONOMIST: Seeing the wood

Drive just 10km east from Papallacta and you enter the Amazon Basin's cloud forest, which covers the slopes and the valley in green growth.

BBC: Hot springs and hummingbirds in Ecuador

And while most deforestation still occurs on the Amazon basin's southern rim, it is increasingly common in the heart of the forest.

ECONOMIST: Brazil

Benedict Allen, the first explorer to cross the Amazon basin at its widest point, says the "great, glamorous journeys" have mostly been done.

BBC: What adventures are actually left?

The natural setting, on the eastern slopes of the Andes, encompasses the upper Amazon basin with its rich diversity of flora and fauna.

UNESCO: MEDIA SERVICES

Not since a military government quartered the Amazon basin with roads, dams and settlements in the 1970s has Brazil seen such a row over the rainforest.

ECONOMIST: Energy in Brazil

The other two are the Banco do Nordeste and Banco da Amazonia, which provide a similar range of services for the north-east and the Amazon basin.

ECONOMIST: Brazilian banking

The jungle outpost of Lago Agrio is in northeastern Ecuador, where the elevation plummets from the serrated ridge of the Andes to the swampy lowlands of the Amazon Basin.

NEWYORKER: Reversal of Fortune

Mercury poisoning can be found almost anywhere, including places considered remote, like the Amazon River basin in Brazil.

CNN: Tomorrow Today

Language, geography and history have combined to isolate Brazil from its Spanish-speaking neighbours on the far side of the Amazon rainforest and the Parana basin, let alone from the wider world.

ECONOMIST: Brazil��s 500 years of solitude

The Enawene Nawe people live in the basin of the Juruena River in the southern Amazon rainforest.

UNESCO: Intangible Cultural Heritage