Geography of Brazil clearing. Public policies intended to promote sustainable management of timber extraction, as well as sustainable use of nontimber forest products (such as rubber, Brazil nuts, fruits, seeds, oils, and vines), were being discussed intensely in the mid-1990s. However, implementing the principles of sustainable development, without irreversible damage to the environment, proved to be more challenging than establishing international agreements about them. Although 90% of the country is within the tropical zone, the climate of Brazil varies considerably from the mostly tropical North (the equator traverses the mouth of the Amazon) to temperate zones below the Tropic of Capricorn (23°27' S
Regio Patalis the habitability of lands under the Torrid Zone and Tropic of Capricorn, D'Ailly drew on the "Opus Majus", written around the year 1267 English monk and scholar Roger Bacon. With regard to the "Regio Patalis," Bacon said: “the southern frontier of India reaches the Tropic of Capricorn near the Region of Patale and the neighbouring lands which are washed by a great arm of the sea flowing from the Ocean”. Patala was on or just south of the Tropic of Cancer, not south of the Equator, but somehow Roger Bacon had confused the Tropic of Capricorn with the Tropic of