- Good evening, I'm Jenny Snow reporting live from Lima. If you have just tuned in tonight, we're taking a journey into the world's lungs, the biggest rainforest of all - the Amazon Jungle. I'm here with Richard Anderson from the Amazon Conservation Team. Richard, the 2006 Geographic Literacy Study assessed the geographic knowledge of American adults. According to their research, only six out of ten know that the Amazon Jungle is in South America, one in five think that it is in Africa. It's a rather dismal picture, isn't it Richard?

- Yes, indeed. Worse still, the vast majority believe it to be a huge forest untouched by human hand, when in fact it is home to more than twenty million inhabitants.

- So people don't realize that the Amazon Rainforest is under enormous environmental pressure.

- Yes, dreadful things are happening here: large swaths of the jungle are vanishing, animals are being captured and killed, and an unknown number of species are under threat. One fifth of the jungle has already been destroyed - which means that before we know it, it will become too small to effectively reduce greenhouse gases. We need to act, if not, we will face dire consequences.

- Oh my goodness, I didn't realize it was that bad. Is there really a threat to our survival?

- There really is a threat. Plants absorb greenhouse gases. Without the jungle, the greenhouse effect would be more pronounced and changes in climate patterns may even get worse in the future. Eventually Earth would end up like Venus, with the temperature of 400°C. Protecting the Amazon jungle is in everyone's best interest.

- I read somewhere that an area equivalent to sixty football pitches is lost every minute.

- Well, to be honest with you, that is an exaggeration. Yet the jungle really is disappearing very rapidly. A rate of 52,000 square kilometres per year is alarming. Especially seeing as how it is very unlikely to be replaced.