This study of the Grande Carajas programme, the largest project in the Amazon rainforest, is central to the debate on its future and fate. The social and environmental costs of the programme are examined here. The programme is the result of official policies which, over the past 20 years, have favoured large-scale mining, forestry and agribusiness at the expense of peasant farmers. They have seen their land steadily appropriated in a violent process of landgrabbing, leading to social polarization, growing poverty, landlessness, forced population displacement, invasions of Indian lands and environmental degradation. The author examines these frequently ignored side-effects and draws lessons for development throughout Amazonia and throughout the world's tropical rainforests. Planners, he argues, have to learn the lessons of existing policies if they are to devise constructive future initiatives.