#GenerationRestoration – Working together for global solutions to the climate crisis

Uffing, 12. August 2021

Dear Supporters and

Friends of Plant-for-the-Planet,

We, the young people of Plant-for-the-Planet, have made it our mission to help children and young people take charge of their own future and to advocate for global solutions to the global challenges posed by the climate crisis.
We want to motivate as many people as possible to plant trees as an intergenerational, peace-building activity that gives hope and valuable time to reduce our CO₂ emissions.

Since 2011, we have been calling for the goal of one trillion trees, promoting science and creating digital platforms. Trees give us valuable time to reduce our CO₂ emissions to zero. All we have to do is increase the current tree population of three trillion trees by a third.

Each year, we lose 10 billion trees – an area about the size of the United Kingdom. The man-made global warming is destroying our forests through fires, storms, droughts and floods. The joint effort of all sectors – citizens, media, business and politics – is needed to contain the climate crisis and prevent further dramatic consequences.

Through our open source platform www.plant-for-the-planet.org, which we make available to renaturation projects free of charge, donations are made to more than 100 renaturation projects worldwide. With just a few clicks, visitors can select a project and finance a tree for €0.10 to €10 . In the first 200 days of 2021, people donated 14 million trees, ten percent of them in a single week, the “SAT.1 Forest Record Week”. In order to ensure that all projects meet the expected standards, we are continuously working on quality improvement.

For an area the size of Liechtenstein, Plant-for-the-Planet took over responsibility through our Mexican sister organisation in 2015. More than 100 employees, led by nine scientists, are reforesting completely deforested areas on the Mexican Yucatán Peninsula, restoring damaged forest areas through enrichment planting and protecting forests from illegal looting. Our young professionals translate planting progress into digital technology: With our self-developed monitoring app “TreeMapper”, we show transparently when and on which areas (geodata) which tree species are planted. In this way, donors can track how their donation is being used, and interested scientists have the opportunity to contribute to improving quality. We share our knowledge for free on our platform and our TreeMapper.App with restoration projects around the world. The code is open source, and we invite everyone to join the trillion-tree movement with the help of these smart tools.

The restoration of our global ecosystems – processes that have proven themselves for millions of years – is becoming the question of humankind’s survival. That is why the UN is dedicating this decade to restoring our ecosystems. Transparency is very important in the area of renaturation. Transparency is very crucial in the area of renaturation. We have experienced it for ourselves, how easily honest work can be called into question and doubts spread if it is not transparent. That motivates us to strive for even better and more transparent work, and our TreeMapper is an important step towards that goal. On a structural level, our family-oriented start-up structure was unable to keep pace with our rapid growth. To make our organisation more transparent, we have gratefully implemented the proposals of the law firms Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and White & Case regarding structure, articles of association and compliance. We appoint an experienced organizational and risk management expert to the full-time Executive Board, who will provide a solid foundation for our global growth.

Soon we will present our first transparency report, which will be published annually. In addition to the financial and tree figures for the year 2020, it also includes the graphic preparation of our work. On our website, under “Annual Reports”, you will find the unrestricted audit reports for our non-profit Plant-for-the-Planet organizations in Germany and Mexico: For the years 2013-2020 for the German foundation, for the years 2015-2020 for the Mexican association; both for the finances and for the “tree accounting”. We, the children and young adults of Plant-for-the-Planet, would like to thank all parents, teachers, entrepreneurs and supporters who gave us courage and hope as children, as representatives Karolin and Frithjof Finkbeiner, who are committed in many ways to the global young climate movement.

We don’t have much time to reduce further climate damage. Become a changemaker, too. Become part of the #GenerationRestoration. Take control of your future and that of your children. “Stop talking. Start planting”.! Let us work together to reduce CO₂ emissions to zero as quickly as possible, to decommission as many CO₂ certificates as possible and at the same time to bind CO₂ from the atmosphere via ecological renaturation. We don’t consider voluntary compensation as a way of buying one’s way out, sale of indulgences or greenwashing, because decommissioned CO₂ certificates promote new and clean technologies around the world. Plant-for-the-Planet preferably shuts down Gold-standard CO₂ certificates, which promote renewable energies such as wind and sun, and explicitly does not create its own CO₂ certificates for trees or forests. We see the global ecological renaturation as an additional time joker with many additional benefits for our fellow human beings in the countries of the Global South.

You can plant now – with just one click on www.plant-for-the-planet.org – in a restoration project of your choice and follow the growth of your donated trees on www.TreeMapper.App. Help us children and young people in our mission to plant 1000 billion trees and motivate others to join in.

Let’s become #Generation Restoration together!

Sincerely,

Plant-for-the-Planet Foundation

Sagar Aryal Felix Finkbeiner Caroline Gusinda