By SIMON ROMERO

          MAUÉS, Brazil -- For decades, this remote town overlooking the
          chocolate-colored waters of the Amazon River has been the main source of
          guaraná, a bright-red, highly caffeinated berry that is believed by many Brazilians
          to be an aphrodisiac.

          Inspired by a Romeo-and-Juliet-esque legend that guaraná had originated from a
          tempestuous affair between two teenagers from rival Indian tribes,
          Brazilians have consumed guaraná in a variety of forms: teas, tablets --
          even soft drinks.

          These days, guaraná provides a clear example of the way many of the 20
          million Brazilians living in the Amazon River Basin are seeking to harness
          the region's exotic flora and fauna to promote economic development.

          "What better product to represent the Amazon than a natural stimulant
          that is harvested without harming the environment?" said Valmir Ferrari,
          an agronomist with Companhia de Bebidas das Américas, a Brazilian
          beverage company planning to export a guaraná soft drink to rich
          industrialized nations in a venture with PepsiCo. "This could be bigger
          than Viagra."

          While the libido-enhancing effects of guaraná may have more to do with
          fiction than fact, it is no small wonder that products from the Amazon, a
          region that has long gripped popular imagination as the world's largest
          rain forest, are being viewed as a way for the region to develop without
          harming the environment at a time when other forces are threatening to
          speed its depletion.

          Several huge road projects are under way to link the Amazon with other
          parts of Brazil and are apt to increase migration to the region. The
          expected increase in commerce resulting from better integration with the
          rest of the country is expected to increase pressure on an already
          precarious infrastructure, according to a report recently released by
          groups including the World Wildlife Fund.

          And traditional threats to the Amazon, like cattle ranching, timber cutting
          and wide-scale soybean farming, continue to loom large. According to a
          separate report issued by Brazil's environment ministry, an area of 6,347
          square miles of rain forest, roughly the size of the state of Hawaii, was
          destroyed last year as a result of such activities.

          So it is no surprise that some of the Amazon's business and political
          interests have begun to carry the flag of environmentally friendly
          economic development projects. According to João Capiberibe, the
          governor of Amapá, one of the nine states making up the Brazilian
          Amazon, it is a question of economic survival.

          "The global economy we are becoming part of is one in which diversity
          produces riches," said Mr. Capiberibe, whose government is viewed as a
          pioneer after prohibiting wood cutting and soybean farming. To replace
          these activities, Amapá is supporting the production of organically
          harvested hearts-of-palm and oil from cashew nuts.

          There are similar efforts taking place in other Amazonian states. One of
          the most commercially promising sustainable development projects is
          under way on tracts of land where the rain forest was already razed to
          make way for activities like ranching in Pará, a state neighboring Amapá.

          There, a company called AgroPalma is using the region's ample humidity
          and sunlight to grow African oil palm trees to produce palm oil, which is
          used as a cooking oil in the cuisine of northeastern Brazil and by food
          processors to make products like margarine and shortening.

          AgroPalma hopes to make Brazil a contender in the palm oil industry,
          allowing the country to compete with Malaysia, the leading producer, and
          other Asian nations. One of the company's main selling points is the view
          that the palm oil business is an agricultural activity that does not harm the
          rain forest.

          "We defend the rational exploitation of the environment," said Harald
          Brunckhorst, executive director of AgroPalma, which is backed by
          Aloizio Faria, one of Brazil's most prominent financiers. "Palm trees take
          so well on land that has been degraded by other types of farming or
          ranching so we don't have to clear new lands to cultivate."

          Additionally, the company is eyeing the potential of the organic food
          market by seeking to increase ecologically certified production. For
          instance, AgroPalma is reducing the use of pesticides by using natural
          biocontrol agents from the rain forest to combat plant diseases
          transmitted by insects, like spear rot.

          "Our organic production is 10 percent and growing," Mr. Brunckhorst
          said. "It is the best way to gain market share in the first world."

          Because the palm oil business is labor-intensive, its advocates also claim
          that it is a viable alternative to economic activities like gold mining, which
          pollutes water sources in the Amazon through miners' use of mercury.
          And jobs on palm oil plantations operated by AgroPalma and other
          companies could alleviate migration to large Amazonian cities like
          Manaus and Belém.

          "Any economic project in the Amazon is useless if it does not take into
          account people's livelihood in addition to the environmental impact," said
          Eduardo Morales, director for the eastern Amazon region at Embrapa,
          the government's agricultural research institute. "The rain forest cannot be
          preserved if the people living in it cannot feed and school their children."

          While palm oil is one of the few environmentally sound products from the
          Amazon that have large-scale corporate potential -- AgroPalma's clients
          include companies like Frito-Lay -- there are several companies and
          small cooperatives that are selling exotic products with tongue-twisting
          names like cupuaçu, a fruit used to make juices and chocolate, or
          pirarucu, a freshwater fish that can grow to be nearly nine feet long.

          "The quickest way for an Amazonian to get some control over his
          economic destiny is to get involved in small-scale sustainable-
          development projects," said Moacyr Bittencourt, the program officer for
          marketing natural products in Brazil for the World Wildlife Fund.

          That group is involved in projects to sell sandals made from rubber
          collected by rubber tappers in the western state of Acre, which was
          home to the rain forest advocate Chico Mendes before his murder in
          1988, in addition to a reforestation project in the state of Amapá to help
          people there break into the market for aromatic timber like rosewood.

          For any of these projects to succeed, their directors might benefit from
          studying previous efforts to develop businesses in the Amazon. The
          region, larger than Western Europe, has a spectacular history of failures
          to establish viable enterprises.

          In the center of Manaus, the region's largest city and one that is 16-hour
          boat ride from Maués, an ornate turn-of-the-century opera house and a
          few European-style buildings are all that remain of the Amazon boom of
          a century ago from rubber production. Competition from Asian rubber
          producers eventually wiped out the wealth of Manaus, leaving behind
          these symbols.

          Or there is Fordlandia, a far-flung American-style outpost in the state of
          Pará established by Henry Ford in the 1920's to produce carnaúba wax,
          used in the production of rubber. All that remains of Fordlandia, which
          halted production at the end of World War II, are a few buildings and a
          church. Cattle graze on what was once a golf course.

          More recently, Daniel Ludwig, an American shipping magnate, invested
          nearly $1 billion in a project to produce cellulose and other products on a
          Connecticut-sized property near the border of the states of Pará and
          Amapá, only to have the debt-ridden enterprise fall into disarray.

          If there is any company that is intent on avoiding the fate of these
          ventures it is AmBev, the company planning to export a guaraná drink
          with Pepsi. It already has Pepsi's experience to learn from, since Pepsi,
          based in Purchase, N.Y., stopped making a guaraná drink called Josta
          shortly after introducing it in 1996.

          In five years, AmBev hopes to capture 1 percent of the $70 billion global
          soft drink market with its Antarctica Guaraná brand, labeled a "Rain
          Forest Original" on bright green cans and bottles.

          Although AmBev's installations in Maués are impressive, including a
          well-kept guaraná plantation on the town's outskirts and a research
          center in the town, it is clear that the guaraná used to produce AmBev's
          soft drinks is only a minuscule part of the process.

          While AmBev does not disclose the secret formula of its guaraná drink, it
          acknowledges that the percentage of the berry in the mixture is kept to a
          minute level so children can consume it without getting too much
          stimulation. After all, guaraná has three times as much caffeine as coffee.

          "Our aim is to capitalize on the allure the Amazonian rain forest has in the
          imagination of the entire world," said Victorio de Marchi, co-president of
          AmBev. "How to convey this is probably more a job for our marketing
          people than it is for our researchers."