Amazon: The lungs of our planet by BBC

[dramatic piano music]

(narrator)
The Amazon:

the green heart of South America.

The largest rainforest in the world,

these verdant riches hold the key
to humanity itself

by breathing life
into the entire planet.

In this film, we visit one of
our planet's great wildernesses,

and discover the invisible contribution

it makes to our world.

(Dr. Trista Patterson)
When I'm in the Amazon rainforest,

I feel like I'm in the middle
of the heart of everything.

There's like a pulsing

and a thriving around

that is just deep

and really powerful.

-For me, it's almost like being
in the Sistine Chapel,

because you look up
and you're just blown away

by the magnificence of life,
it's like a cathedral of life.

(narrator)
Home to 1 in 10 species on Earth,

the Amazon is the richest forest
in the world.

It stretches for almost
7 million square kilometers,

covering an area larger than Europe.

(Dr. Sanjayan) What strikes you
is the endless nature of it,

that spreads out like a green,
rolling carpet in front of you,

and you realize that
that carpet is doing something

incredibly valuable.

-It's far more than simply
a collection of trees

and amazing wildlife;
it's doing jobs for the whole world,

not least in terms of
how it's helping to regulate

the entire planet's atmosphere.

(Dr. Patterson) One thing
that people find really surprising

about trees in general
is that most of their physical structure

isn't made from things
that they've gotten from the soil;

it's made from the air.

Literally,
they are breathing organisms.

As these trees are breathing,

and they're bringing in
all the carbon dioxide

from the surrounding atmosphere,
they're storing it in carbon.

(narrator)
It's this extraordinary ability of trees

to absorb atmospheric carbon
and release oxygen

that makes them so valuable to us.

-Rainforests around the world capture
something like

5 billion tons of carbon dioxide.

Every plane, ship, car,
train, bus...

All that emissions is being captured
basically by rainforests.

(Juniper)
Whilst the world is spending

hundreds of millions of dollars

trying to make carbon capture
and storage work,

the trees are doing it
effectively for nothing.

(narrator)
But this wondrous service

that the Amazon provides
is under immense pressure.

(Sukhdev)
Deforestation has been a big problem

in the Amazon rainforest.

There was a time it was as high as

25,000 square kilometers every year.

Now, with a lot of effort,
that has been reduced,

and it must, because these rainforests
are natural capital.

They are valuable for the entire planet.

(Dr. Patterson)
We think about rainforests

being very far away from us,
something very exotic,

but actually it's an integral part
of life on the planet.

(narrator)
Dense, wild, diverse,

and crucial to our modern world.

The Amazon;
a wilderness endowed

with the power of nature.

[dramatic piano music]