The largest contiguous tropical rainforest in the world, the Amazon rainforest, is located in South America. It spreads across much of South America into Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Venezuela, Guyana, Surinam, and French Guiana. The land mass of the forest is approximately two-thirds of the United States, and it contains one-fifth of all the fresh water in the world as well as the greatest biological diversity. Nearly 30% of all known animal and plant species are found in the Amazon, including one fifth of all bird species, eighty thousand plant species, and some thirty million insects. Animal species in the Amazon include harpy eagles, red howler monkeys, silky anteaters, two-toed sloths, toucans, emerald tree boas, scarlet macaws, giant otters, ocelots, and jaguars.

Hundreds of thousands of indigenous peoples also make their home in the rainforest. For example, there are 60 tribal groups in Colombia. Many groups had been forced into extinction because of the mass destruction of the rainforest. There were an estimated 6 to 9 million people in 1500, and fewer than 200,000 people today.

The destruction of the Amazon rainforest in 1998 was an estimated seven thousand square miles of forest, a significant increase from the estimated five thousand square miles destroyed just two years before.

The causes of destruction include logging, oil and gas projects, energy infrastructure projects, mining, cattle ranching, resettlement, clearing for agriculture. The local governments also failed to enforce legislations to protect the region's forests and thus allowed the exploitation to continue.