The Amazon rainforest is home to billions of trees, animals and people. Click here to subscribe to our channel 👉🏽 It’s spread across nine countries in South America - Brazil, Peru, Columbia, 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. 00:00 Coming up 00:21 Intro 01:20 How big is the Amazon? 01:40 How many people live in the Amazon? 02:12 How many trees does it have? 02:50 What’s it like there? 03:20 Species of trees 03:50 The global importance of the Amazon 04:40 Importance for local regions 05:35 The Amazon absorbing carbon dioxide 06:26 Amazon resources 07:25 Worries that the Amazon is disappearing 08:28 Increased wildfires 09:07 What’s being done to protect it? 10:52 COP30 expectations Watch more episodes from What in the World here 👉🏽 Instagram: @bbcwhatintheworld Email: whatintheworld@ WhatsApp: +44 330 12 33 22 6 Presenter: Hannah Gelbart Producer: Mora Morrison Video producer: Baldeep Chalal Editor: Verity Wilde ---------------- This is the official BBC World Service YouTube channel. If you like what we do, you can also find us here: Instagram 👉🏽 Twitter 👉🏽 Facebook 👉🏽 BBC World Service website 👉🏽 Thanks for watching and subscribing! #BBCWorldService #WorldService #amazonrainforest #cop30 #climatechange