* Rainforests once covered 14% of earth's land surface; now they cover a mere 6% and still are home to 50% of the Earth's plants and animals.
* One-fifth of the world’s fresh water is found in the Amazon Basin. Rainforests are critical in maintaining the Earth's limited supply of drinking and fresh water.
* Tropical rainforests act as a global air conditioner - by storing and absorbing carbon dioxide from the air, storing the carbon, and releasing fresh, clean oxygen.
* An astounding number of fruits (bananas, citrus), vegetables (peppers, okra), nuts (cashews, peanuts), drinks (coffee, tea, cola), oils (palm, coconut), flavourings (cocoa, vanilla, sugar, spices), and other foods (beans, grains, fish) come from rainforests.
* Rainforests worldwide are home to an estimated 50 million indigenous forest peoples.
* Before 1500 A.D., there were approximately 6 million indigenous people living in the Brazilian Amazon. But as the forests disappeared, so too did the people. In the early 1900s, there were less than 250,000 indigenous people living in the Amazon.
* Close to 1.6 billion people depend on forest resources for their survival. Forest resources directly contribute to the livelihoods of 90% of the 1.2 billion people living in extreme poverty (WWF, 2011)
* Every second, a slice of rainforest the size of a football field is destroyed. That's 86,400 football fields of rainforest per day, or over 30 million football fields of rainforest each year (around 150,000 square kilometers, equivalent to the size of England and Wales).
* Currently, 121 prescription drugs sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources. And while 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less than 1% of tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists.
* Over 2000 tropical forest plants have been identified as having anti-cancer properties. However, scientists have only tested 1 in 10 tropical forest plants for these properties and have only intensively screened 1 in 100.