Take a breath, thank a rainforest. This World Rainforest Day, take a moment to think about the many ways in which rainforests positively affect our lives. They provide us with food, medicine, climate regulation, and so much more. The benefits of rainforests are innumerable.
Essential to our survival, rainforests are responsible for more than 25% of all Western medicine and house more than 50% of the world’s plant and animal species. Only covering 2 percent of the planet’s surface area, rainforests are dense and concentrated; however, they directly provide for indigenous populations who live off the land and work to protect this precious resource.