London (CNN) -- Brazil stands at a crossroads in its efforts to preserve the Amazon rainforest as the government considers controversial legislation governing land use. For most of the past decade, it has made a dramatic reduction in the rate of deforestation, providing a model of how it could be tackled in other rainforest areas such as Indonesia and Congo. The Amazon rainforest covers a huge area, roughly half as large as the United States, with about 60% of it in Brazil. It is estimated that nearly a fifth of the Brazilian forest has been lost since 1970; figures from Brazil's space research institute, INPE, show that 4.1 million square kilometers (1.58 million square miles) of Brazilian forest were still standing in 1970, compared with 3.35 million square kilometers (1.29 million square miles) today.
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Brazil has made a dramatic reduction in the rate of deforestation
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Environmentalists worry that its progress could be put at risk by changes to forest law
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Greenpeace is also concerned that Indonesia's measures to halt deforestation are not working
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The World Resources Institute says the world needs consistent, real-time deforestation data
At present, @placeholder government statistics show that about 30% of the country's land is given over to agriculture.
The power of the rural lobby is acknowledged by those close to the @placeholder government, but the environmental fears are also rejected.