The value of an intact, healthy Amazon rainforest to humankind is now indisputable. Forests act as carbon sinks, globally storing billions of tons of carbon that is released into the air when the forests are destroyed. Deforestation, principally in the tropics, accounts for approximately 20% of all greenhouse gas emissions - more than automobile use - and there is now a scientific consensus that deforestation must be stopped if global warming is to be adequately addressed. Equally, rainclouds generated in the Amazon irrigate agriculture from the Argentine Pampas to the Midwest United States.
But the floral diversity of the Amazon may itself be the rainforest's least appreciated resource. Increasingly, western biomedicine has come to study the vast, barely tapped source of alkaloids contained in many Amazonian plants, active chemical compounds which many indigenous peoples have traditionally used for a host of medicinal and ceremonial purposes. Drugs based on Amazonian compounds include the anti-malarial quinine while AIDS and cancer researchers are among the many now testing Amazonian plants in the search for possible treatments.
Red and Green Macaw (close-up) 5
Red-brocket Deer 2009-04-09
