The Amazon rainforest is home to billions of trees, animals and people. It’s spread across nine countries in South America - Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Suriname and Venezuela - but the majority of it, almost 60%, is in Brazil. As well as being rich in biodiversity, the Amazon is also very important in the world's fight against climate change; as it absorbs carbon dioxide and produces oxygen.
But the Amazon has been declining. In fact, in 2022 Brazil set a new deforestation record for the amount of trees cut down in the rainforest in one month. This impact is being felt directly by the indigenous groups who have been living there for thousands of years, but also the world as a whole. In this episode we’re joined by Graihagh Jackson, from the BBC’s The Climate Question podcast, and Dr Erika Berenguer, who’s a Senior Research Associate at the University of Oxford and Lancaster. We chat about why the Amazon is so important, and what’s being done to protect it. This year’s climate summit Cop30 is being held in Belem, in the Amazon, for the first time. So we also discuss what impact this could have on the world’s largest rainforest.
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Presenter: Hannah Gelbart
Producer: Mora Morrison and Chelsea Coates
Video producer: Baldeep Chahal
Editor: Verity Wilde
