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NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 8 South America — LET’S EXPLORE

Book page 24 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.
The Amazon Rainforest has been called the ‘Lungs of the Earth’. Why do you think this might be so?
Answer

Because it does, on an enormous scale, exactly what lungs do — it exchanges gases with the air around it.

  • It is a forest of tall, mostly evergreen trees fed by a very high amount of rainfall, so its leaves are green and working all year, never dropping into a leafless season. Hour after hour those leaves take in carbon dioxide and give out oxygen.
  • It is the largest such forest on Earth, supported by the basin of the Amazon — the world’s largest river by volume — and all its tributaries. Scale is the whole point of the name: no other single forest handles so much of the air.
  • The carbon it takes in is not simply released again; it is locked up in enormous trunks, roots and soil. A forest that is cut or burnt gives all of that back to the air at once.
Why it happens: the phrase is a comparison, and like all comparisons it is worth testing. Scientists point out that a mature rainforest also consumes much of the oxygen it makes, as fallen leaves and wood rot; so it is not literally topping up the world’s oxygen the way a pair of lungs supplies a body. What it genuinely does is just as important: it stores a vast amount of carbon, and it recycles moisture — water drawn up by roots is breathed out by the leaves, forms cloud, and falls again as rain over the basin and far beyond it. Calling it the lungs of the Earth is a fair way of saying that this one forest helps regulate the air and the rainfall of the whole planet.
Did you know? The Amazon does not stand alone. Dust blown across the ocean from the Sahara reaches the rainforest carrying phosphorus, a nutrient its plants need. The world’s greatest desert helps feed the world’s greatest forest.
Q2.
The countries in this region need land for development but risk losing the Amazon Rainforest. Discuss in groups: What are the short and long-term effects of deforestation, and how can we protect the Amazon for the planet?
Answer

This is a group discussion, so plan it before you argue it. A good discussion here needs three things: an honest statement of why the land is wanted, a separation of short-term from long-term effects, and solutions that answer the need rather than ignore it.

Method for the group. Split into two halves. One half argues the case of a farming family or a state government that needs land, roads and jobs now; the other argues the case of the forest and the people in it. Then come together and try to find a solution both halves can live with. Note down the points on which you could not agree — those are the real problem.

Effects of clearing the forest
Short term (a few years)Land is gained for farms, cattle, mines and roads, and money and jobs come in. But the forest’s own people — almost 400 indigenous communities live there — lose their homes and their livelihood; wildlife loses its habitat; the exposed soil, which is thin under a rainforest, is washed away by heavy rain; and burning the felled trees releases smoke and carbon dioxide at once.
Long term (decades)The cleared soil loses its fertility within a few years, so the same farmers must clear more forest — the gain does not last. With fewer trees breathing out moisture, less rain falls, and the surviving forest dries and burns more easily. Species found nowhere else are lost for good. The carbon released adds to global warming, which harms the very countries that cleared the land.

How the Amazon can be protected — ideas the group can defend:

  • Secure the rights of the forest communities. The chapter notes that these almost 400 communities play an important role in conserving the forest. Land in their legal control is far less likely to be cleared.
  • Develop without clearing. Fruit, nuts, rubber, fish, medicine and carefully managed tourism earn money from a standing forest; cattle pasture earns money only from a felled one.
  • Enforce protected areas and monitor from satellites, exactly as the change on the Tibetan Plateau in Fig. 1.12 was spotted — illegal clearing can now be seen within days.
  • Share the cost internationally. If the forest benefits the whole planet, the whole planet should help pay for keeping it, so that the burden does not fall only on the poorer countries that happen to own it.
  • Restore what is already lost. Yellowstone (p. 28) shows that a damaged ecosystem can recover when the right action is taken.
Sample answer: ‘Clearing the Amazon looks like development, but it is development that eats itself. The soil under a rainforest is thin, so a cleared field is fertile for only a few seasons and the farmer must clear again. Within a generation the country has lost its forest and still has poor farmland. We would argue instead for development that needs the forest alive — Brazil nuts, rubber, fish, medicines and tourism — together with legal land rights for the almost 400 indigenous communities who already protect it, satellite monitoring of illegal clearing, and international funding, since the rest of the world benefits from the carbon this forest stores.’
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