The campaign aims to stop deforestation while helping to replenish the world’s dwindling stock of trees and forests through community-based protection and reforestation programs. It also empowers individuals to plant and care for their own tree or trees in their backyards, rooftops, or with local community groups.
“Trees are the foundation of our ecosystem, our planet,” Goodall says. “Protecting, restoring, and planting trees is a very tangible way to save our climate while creating a better world for all living creatures.”
There’s no time to waste. Every six seconds, our planet loses a football pitch worth of tropical rainforest to deforestation through human-driven deforestation for economic development, cattle ranching, mining, and climate-worsened droughts and wildfires. Three hundred million people worldwide live in forests and 1.6 billion depend directly on them for their livelihoods, according to WWF. One mature tree can capture an average of 0.62 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) over its lifetime. Forests and forest products currently capture and store 15% of US carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion each year, equivalent to the annual emissions from 163 million cars.