Trillion Trees 2023 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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Pledges to Action: High quality restoration action

Global pledges to restore the world’s forests have been fast and numerous. Yet, many of these pledges include promoting planting of monoculture commodity crops (e.g. timber) which store less carbon than natural forests and lack many of their biodiversity benefits.

Restoring forests properly means enabling the recovery of a diverse forest which can deliver benefits beyond carbon: human health, livelihoods of the people who live in and around them, and the protection of the natural world forests harbour.

Trillion Trees works with conservation partnerships to restore natural forest landscapes, while at the same time incorporating and supporting activities that bring benefits back to the landscape. This means addressing how the land and natural resources are used sustainably, preventing the causes of deforestation and degradation and, above all, putting people and nature at the centre of restoration efforts.

The Trillion Trees ReForest Fund

The Trillion Trees ReForest Fund is restoring forests all over the world to benefit people, nature, and the climate. We support projects with immediate restoration opportunities, which are nested within larger conservation programmes – landscapes where our conservation partnerships are delivering a shared vision of restoring nature and improving human wellbeing while tackling the climate crisis. Our projects focus on recovering and regrowing natural forests and bringing back the right trees in the right places.

Not all our projects involve tree planting. Some apply techniques to enhance the natural recovery of forest, called assisted natural regeneration. However, all projects include the management, monitoring, and protection of trees as they thrive, creating jobs and other opportunities for often remote rural communities. Through this approach, we can be confident the forest landscapes we support will survive in the long-term, bringing back biodiversity and building climate resilience for all.

In 2023, the Reforest Fund supported restoration in five landscapes – the Usambara Mountains in Tanzania; Kaptagat forest in Kenya; the Atlantic Forest in Brazil; the Bismarck Mountains in Papua New Guinea and a new project in the Nam Et Phou Louey National Park in Laos, where restoration work will begin in early 2024. Combined, these projects restored over 142,000 trees and 154 hectares during 2023, benefitting over 2,200 people.

Read our most recent ReForest Fund report

1

Restoring Guatemala’s largest remaining wildland: the Maya Biosphere Reserve

453 ha

under active restoration
3,115 ha

under assisted natural regeneration
5

local communities engaged

Maya Biosphere Reserve, Guatemala

2

Enhancing community capacity for climate resilience in Lake Kivu/Rusizi River Basin

500 ha

degraded land restored
419

new green jobs
300,000

agroforestry trees grown

Lake Kivu/Rusizi River, Rwanda

3

Harnessing the natural and spiritual values of the forest

£65,000

mobilised for faith-based restoration
31,931

seedlings raised and planted by schools
5

new schools environmental clubs established

Ruvuma, Tanzania

4

Restoring a UN Flagship Landscape: the Atlantic Forest

20

endemic and endangered bird species
1.65m ha

legally need to be restored in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay
360

organisations working together

The Atlantic Forest, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay

5

Forest Landscape Restoration in Africa: An ambitious initiative restoring forests across nine countries

13.5 million

hectares to be restored by 2027
1.8 million

hectares already under restoration
9

countries dedicated to bring back forests

9 countries, Africa

6

Sustaining life through forest conservation in the Mbeliling Landscape, Flores, Indonesia

8.7 ha

planted around springs
967 ha

forest monitored and managed by the community
879

people participating in forest management

Mbeliling, Indonesia

3.5 bn

football fans

Trillion Trees is working with Football for Forests, an initiative which aims to mobilise the world’s 3.5 billion football fans to engage in climate action through the restoration of forests. The football pitch is often used as the measure of deforestation, but Football for Forests reverses this narrative, giving fans the chance to restore tropical forests, pitch by pitch. Trillion Trees is delivering forest restoration for the initiative in the Colombian Andes, restoring habitat for the Andean bear and critically endangered brown spider monkey.

Meeting the climate change challenge with forest restoration at scale

Trillion Trees has developed a Forest Restoration Catalyst to help promising conservation partnerships to co-design just transition plans for restoring and regenerating forests, at a landscape scale. These are underpinned by a tailored business model to create long term financial sustainability, building from the nature-positive values generated through forest restoration.

Pilot landscape – The Upper Parana, Atlantic Forest

Our first Forest Restoration Catalyst pilot is working with the Trinational Alliance in the Atlantic Forest in Brazil, a UN World Restoration Flagship Landscape which covers 142 million hectares across Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay.

As part of our pilot, we are exploring methods to create finance frameworks that outline potential investment models for nature-based investment. These will cover the upfront costs of incentive payments, and the potential with revenues/repayments based on the value of the environmental services the restoration can provide (e.g. improved water quality) and/ or sustainable production of agricultural commodities (e.g. yerba mate tea). All of which increase flows of appropriate finance to support strategic restoration efforts and an integrated landscape approach that protects remaining natural forests, and restores the right trees to the right places.

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We understand 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 is done well and lasts for generations.

At the same time, we need to support organisations and communities to have the capacity to meet high quality forest landscape restoration standards and provide targeted support to 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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