USAID envisions a healthy and resilient Amazon Basin that is valued by society, ensures human well-being, and safeguards our global climate. The Amazon Region hosts a third of the world’s known species of plants and animals –many of which do not occur anywhere else– and is home to the largest river system in the world, representing 15 percent of the freshwater feeding the world’s oceans. Unsustainable economic development and illegal extraction of resources is causing contamination and degradation that threaten the entire Amazon ecosystem.