Let’s celebrate our birthday!

Ten years ago, a nine-year-old boy planted a tree at his school. That was the beginning of a worldwide children's and youth's initiative. As of now, with the help of many adults, governments, and businesses, the children and youth have planted more than 14 billion trees around the world.

Our initiative was launched on January 2007. At that time, nine-year-old Felix Finkbeiner gave a presentation about the climate crisis. He outlined a vision in which children could plant one million trees in every country on earth in order to balance the CO₂ on their own. In the years that followed, Plant-for-the-Planet evolved into a worldwide movement: approximately 100,000 children in 193 countries are currently pursuing this goal. They consider themselves a world citizen initiative that promotes climate justice. The goal is to reduce CO₂ emissions to zero by 2050 and, until then, equally distribute responsibility of the emissions among all people.

To accomplish this, we children and youth want mankind to plant 1 trillion, or 1,000 billion, trees worldwide by the year 2020. In 2011, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) handed over the long-established Billion Tree Campaign, and thereby the official world tree counter, to us. This has been a special moment for two reasons. First, Wangari Maathai had established the campaign. She had been our inspiration to start planting trees. 

Second, it was a sign for us: The adults understood that planting trees is important. Businesses, governments and citizens now report how many trees they pledge to plant and have planted to us. To celebrate our 10th birthday, we would like all people to join our treecounter!

Furthermore, all schools can join our International Tree Planting Competition. This instruction tells you how to take part and how to win the competition!

Plant a tree for our future to celebrate 10 years of Plant-for-the-Planet!