Trillion Trees 2022 Impact Report

Protecting and restoring forests are some of the best solutions to the climate and biodiversity crises. Here’s what Trillion Trees has been doing to help.

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Hear from our Executive Director, John Lotspeich

High quality restoration action - Our mandate for 2023

Forests store enormous amounts of carbon, harbour over half of biodiversity on land and support complex ecosystems upon which life depends. We must protect what is left and, crucially, we must restore our forests in the right way, with the right trees, in the right places for the long term.

Trillion Trees has committed to bringing 20 million hectares of forest landscapes into high-quality restoration. Focused on restoring degraded land where it’s needed most, Trillion Trees’ restoration portfolio prioritises landscapes where we can deliver positive benefits to the communities in and around forests, protect and restore biodiversity, and secure the greatest potential for future carbon sequestration.

Forest restoration needs to happen at scale if we are to make the impact that’s needed. This requires significant investment. In 2023, we’ll launch our ReForest Catalyst mechanism designed to kick-start the development of extensive restoration initiatives that will support projects to build, test and deliver sustainable financing for forest restoration at scale.

Restoring Forests now, investing in the future: our targets

One of our key imperatives is to scale high quality forest restoration, and we’ve committed to helping restore 20 million hectares of forest. This is more than just getting trees in the ground. We focus on entire landscapes – planting trees, but also addressing how land is used, and the causes of deforestation. It means putting nature at the centre of the effort and working with local people to understand the issues and challenges they face.

Launched in 2020, the Trillion Trees ReForest Fund supports high quality forest restoration through a global portfolio that includes 40 landscapes and over 200,000 hectares in need of restoration. So far, we’ve supported landscapes in Brazil, Kenya, Madagascar, Papua New Guinea and Tanzania and where action is underway right now, growing trees, and restoring forests. With the support of businesses and individuals, we will meet our targets and continue bringing back forests.

To date, much forest restoration is geographically scattered, relatively small-scale, and highly dependent on uncertain donor funding. While philanthropy can help projects initiate activities such as tree-planting, sustaining momentum and longevity to deliver climate impact remains a significant challenge.

Our ReForest Catalyst is designed to kick-start the development of large-scale restoration initiatives. This mechanism will incubate transformational programmes with the potential to shift land use economics and governance to restore millions of hectares of forest, equitably and sustainably.

1

Developing a sustainable business model for forest protection in the mountains of Mexico

790,000

people dependent on the forest
8

Ejidos cooperatively managed

Sierra del Sur de Chiapas, Mexico

2

Restoring forest connectivity in the Colombian Andes

200

hectares restored
300

people involved
13,000

native trees planted

Western Andes, Colombia

3

Naturally regenerating forests and supporting communities in Mabira, Uganda

642

hectares being secured
45,000

trees planted
600

people benefitting

Mabira, Uganda

4

A new partnership to protect critical high integrity forests in the Amazon

1

new agreement to protect high integrity forests
35,000

km2 to be protected
7 million

tonnes of CO2 absorbed annually

Amazonas State, Brazil

5

Chile is leading the way for sustainable forest restoration financing

$2 million

annually for climate action
$25/tonne

a carbon price tag of at least $25/tonne is needed to make projects viable

Nationwide, Chile

6

Working with local communities to help transform lives and bring the forest back in Kaptagat, Kenya

700

hectares restored
800

people with access to clean water
20

domestic biogas units constructed and launched

Kaptagat, Kenya

2,870

trees planted for goals scored in the Women's Euros!

Mobilising consumers and the private sector

Trillion Trees is supported by Starling Bank through their refer-a-friend scheme for existing customers.

Anne Boden, CEO of Starling Bank says: “We know that many of our customers care deeply about the environment. Our partnership with Trillion Trees enables us to make a permanent positive change to the planet which aligns perfectly with our desire to grow sustainably. In 2022, we planted trees for every successful referral and we also supported the Women’s Euros by planting trees for every goal scored. By the end of 2022, we were on track to plant 90,000 trees and we’re going to reach the 100k milestone by the end of March 2023.”

Holding ourselves accountable

To ensure transparency, and directly measure the impacts of the forest restoration funded by our ReForest Fund, all projects use a custom designed phone-based monitoring tool to enter data on project activities. Housed in the Cybertracker app, this includes a map of the project site, restoration activities, land ownership details and socioeconomic data.

Data collected via the application is stored on our digital data platform, called FORMAPP (Forest Monitoring App). Trillion Trees uses the FORMAPP platform to track the performance of restoration efforts over time.

Projects create their own database of restoration sites, allowing projects to tailor their data collection processes to the local context. The Cybertracker app means projects can collect and store geo-data without the need to invest in technical GIS skills or expensive GIS software. We’re also integrating this with Restor.eco, to utilise both on-the-ground and satellite data. All of the FORMAPP tools are free to projects benefiting from ReForest Fund support, and the goal is to make it truly open-source, available for anyone in the world to use.

We know that to fight the climate and biodiversity crises and ensure a liveable future, simply saving the remaining forests we have is no longer enough.

We must also restore forests on a massive scale. Trees take time to grow and complex ecosystems are not created overnight. This will require systemic changes in national policies, initiatives and finance to ensure it’s done well and lasts for generations.

At the same time, we need to support organisations to have the capacity to meet high quality forest landscape restoration standards, and get them to a stage where large-scale restoration can be achieved. Without this support, it will be difficult to meet the challenge and deliver on promises and pledges made.

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