The global, women-led reforestation charity TreeSisters is launching its ‘Grow Your Own Forest’ campaign as over 11,000 scientists warn that ‘planet Earth is facing a climate emergency’ and that an ‘immense increase’ in efforts is needed to combat the climate crisis.

The critical steps recommended by the collective of scientists to prevent climate meltdown – as published in the journal Bioscience on 5 November – include increasing reforestation “at enormous scales”. Their statement echoes a widely endorsed report published in the journal Science in July, affirming wide-scale global reforestation as the most effective way to tackle the climate crisis.  

The digital Grow Your Own Forest campaign, launched by TreeSisters this week, is a powerful call to the general public to recognise their capacity and responsibility to help restore the tropical forest belt that is so crucial for planetary cooling. This is a simple way for people all around the world to take direct action to mitigate climate change. 

Powerful choice

Clare Dubois, Founding CEO of TreeSisters, said: “We are all warming our world and watching climate chaos unfold as if we are helpless, and we’re not.

“If we stop waiting for governments to act appropriately and take matters into our own hands, we can collectively reforest our planet fast enough to make a significant difference.”

When you Grow Your Own Forest with TreeSisters, you’re making a powerful choice to restore groundwater, protect endangered species, reduce poverty, and sequester carbon to help cool our world.

You’ll be restoring forest in Kenya, Cameroon, Brazil, Mozambique, Madagascar, India and Nepal. Making this choice values the children of every species and the climate they will inherit. It says ‘I care’.

When you donate to TreeSisters, their system converts your donations into numbers of trees planted, so that you can track the scale of your impact whilst discovering fascinating facts about the projects you’re supporting. When you share your forest on social media, your friends can donate too and help grow your forest, extending your impact. Just set up your account and watch your forest grow.  

Climate emergency 

In a world finally waking up to climate emergency, TreeSisters wants to help create a transformation within human culture, where ecological restoration becomes as fundamental to every human life as consumption currently is.

Dubois said: “When you join Grow Your Own Forest, you are helping to create a new normal. Whether you’re a family, a community, an organisation or a business, you can give back to Nature and create a living legacy, starting right now.

“We should be looking back 10 years from now, astonished at what we achieved together and marvelling at the fact that it was ever normal to take from Nature without giving back!” 

In response to devastating fires and forest destruction, TreeSisters is now funding a food forest project in the Amazon, supporting the Ashaninka tribe to maintain their economy and traditional way of life.

Another project in Mozambique, assisting the restoration of decimated mangrove forests, will also sustain indigenous fishing communities and protect threatened ecosystems. 

Restores and regenerates

Instead of looking to technology to sequester excess atmospheric carbon, TreeSisters restores and regenerates the mechanisms Nature herself created to do the job perfectly: forests.

Empowering a global network of women, the UK-based charity has to date funded over 6.5 million trees through its projects. TreeSisters is aiming for a million trees a month by the end of 2020 as the next step on their path to plant 1 billion trees annually through monthly, one-time and partnership donations.

Paul Hawken, author of Blessed Unrest and Project Drawdown, said: “The work of TreeSisters is one of, if not the most, significant initiatives that can be undertaken by humankind to address the future of civilization.

“The world’s greatest land-based stores of carbon reside between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn in the form of forests. Their restoration is critical to reverse climate change and create a humane and livable future.

“Can women accomplish something that has failed governments and agencies for decades? I not only think so – I believe it may be the only way it can be accomplished.”

This Article 

This article is based on a press release from TreeSisters.