On a mission to plant 1 trillion trees by 2050

Our Master Plan to tackle climate change revealed

By Maxime Renaudin, Tree-Nation CEO and Founder 

I created Tree-Nation in 2006 and have directed it since. Back then, my friends thought I was crazy. It has indeed been a tough journey and I literally spent 10 years without a salary, unable to give up on what became my personal mission. During all this time a lot of things have changed around us. Unfortunately climate change has only gotten worse and more preoccupying. Also, perception on the need to plant trees and capturing carbon changed radically, now widely being recognised as essential to winning the war on climate. So here we are 15 years later, ready to announce a new phase for Tree-Nation that will span over the next 30 years. Is that a long time? Not really when you think in trees.

Part 1 - Why?

Tree-Nation's mission is to reforest the world. We seek to plant trees and engage in conservation projects everywhere trees are needed and will have a positive impact on the local environment, the local populations, and the climate.

Tree-Nation's goal is to plant 1 trillion trees by 2050. We consider the 1 trillion trees milestone to be sufficient to put a full stop to the continuous worldwide loss of trees, basically solving deforestation, while also allowing the capture of at least 250 billion tons of already emitted CO2 particles from the atmosphere.

The purpose is to provide an essential solution in the fight against climate change. As the cheapest, easiest, and best-understood mechanism for carbon storage, planting trees has been recognized by the scientific community as a vital pillar in tackling climate change. Deforestation is also one of the largest contributors to climate change. There is no solving climate change without solving deforestation.

Without carbon storage, it is not possible to limit the increase of temperature to 1,5ºC above pre-industrial levels. Following the Paris Agreement report, without carbon storage, the temperature would increase by between 3 to 4ºC which, by any standard, is considered cataclysmic. Therefore, this is no longer a choice between carbon storage or carbon reduction. We are in full war against climate disruption and we need to tackle this threat with ALL solutions at the same time. Planting trees will not only play a big part in this endeavor but without it, there is no future for humanity as we know it.

Climate change has a few tipping points after which it will be too late: even if humans would stop all polluting activities the climate will keep getting worse and worse obeying its own feedback loop. Some of the best-understood tipping points (yet not sufficiently discussed, monitored, and studied) are the permafrost thawing, the polar ice caps melting and the gulf-stream current reversing its direction. To those, we need to add many social factors that are born from climate change and will only add up to more emissions, like climate refugee migrations and global climate adaptation.

Waiting for our governments to take the lead is a way too risky bet. Our opportunity window to solve climate change only spans one generation, this one. Almost always in History governments were not leaders but followers. Only during wartime can a government lead a change in technology (like the Manhattan project). But most of the time progress starts from a bottom-up approach (industrial revolution, cars, airplanes, smart phones, electric cars…) and government regulation comes afterward. A government carbon tax would be so helpful but it will not happen before a Voluntary Carbon Tax becomes an overwhelming norm.

It takes citizens and companies to solve climate change. This has been our vision since day one, and no matter how big and daunting the challenge is, no matter how unprepared and insignificantly small we may feel, we recognize that this is our duty to put all our energy into tackling it and try by every means.

At Tree-Nation we refuse to give up on solving climate change. Some may already embrace climate mitigation and adaptation. Some of it will be needed for sure but we also want to believe we can solve this all together and provide a future for our children without a mass species extinction, without billions of climate refugees, and without new viruses. Destroying millions of years of evolution in the course of a few generations is not acceptable.

Planting trees is far less invasive and safer than any geoengineering solution out there. Geoengineering is the deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth's natural systems to counteract climate change, like releasing ashes from a volcano in the upper atmosphere in order to reduce the amount of sunlight (and trapped heat) reaching the surface. Planting trees should not be considered geoengineering when it merely serves a restoration purpose from already degraded land. Nonetheless, it is our belief that various temporary geo-engineering solutions should be studied seriously as their negative impact may be extremely small compared to doing nothing.

Planting trees has also enormous benefits beyond carbon. This is also a mechanism to transfer financial aid to developing countries while providing jobs, creating food security, securing medicinal supply, and protecting the endangered fauna. Each tree species brings multiple benefits to both the environment and local communities. In fact, one could argue there is nothing as positive as planting trees.

Conservation and fire prevention are part of the mix. Planting trees without conservation would not provide a full solution. Preventing megafires is also part of our global mission.

We have a solution. Planting trees alone would not work. Reducing emissions alone would have been sufficient 30 years ago, but are not sufficient on its own now. Combining all climate solutions IS the solution. The path wasn’t always clear but it is now. The biggest threat now is dragging our feet and not starting immediately with the solutions at hand.

Now that we've explained why we believe we have a solution to climate change, it’s time to explain our master plan on how we trust we can achieve it.

Part 2 - How?

Our aim is wild but not crazy. In fact, we foresee that aiming lower will be seen by future generations as mad and irresponsible. At this point, we believe this is simply our duty. The question is not if we should put ourselves on such an overwhelming mission, but how we will make sure to reach success.

We are 15 years in the making of building the perfect tool. You may have discovered Tree-Nation today but we started in 2006. Our initial years were not focused on creating awareness but on slowly building the perfect platform solution for our mission. To be fair, there was not much interest when we started so we had time to tinker and iterate our solution. Tree-Nation is created as an ecosystem, assessing all the parts of our mission in unison. Building this solid base was very important and took time to do just right. There is still much more to do but we feel very confident with what we have.

Tree-Nation is creating the Internet Of Trees, a way to link any action to planting a tree. We invented the Digital tree and the Forest profile among many other innovative tools, like our API. Our objective is to link any action to a tree, which will allow the beginning of new behaviors for individuals and companies, eventually transforming into long-term traditions. For example, we have a no-coding solution for e-commerces to do a 1 product 1 tree commitment, a solution that has been seen to improve their sales and increase their customer loyalty. Creating such solutions allows us to generate a steady and long-lasting stream of tree funding.

A platform built for all. We built Tree-Nation as a platform where any project can join and any sponsor can participate. We designed it to be adaptable to all sizes and kinds of projects, no matter if they are just starting or with many years of experience. Also, we want to be the platform for all companies and all citizens too. To be able to serve such a massive amount of sponsors we built Tree-Nation to be self-service, automated, and multi-language. But no politics in here, this is a collaborative platform for all people.

A SAAS for companies, a social network for citizens. Tree-Nation is built as an efficient and business-friendly SAAS platform for companies, allowing any corporate sponsor to plug and play our services into their existing architecture. Our model for citizens is that of a social network. This dual vision allows us to foster the best participation of each sponsor type.

With controlled growth, we can achieve 1 trillion trees. We made our calculations and we roughly need to grow by 50% per year to reach the 1 trillion trees mark by 2050. In fact, we mapped out our yearly growth to be at +80% /year this decade, then 45% in the 30s, and finally 15% in the 40s up to 2050. It’s obviously a really long time and all sorts of things could happen in such a timeframe. Likewise, all sorts of things could and will happen to our climate during this period. But when you plant trees, it’s ok to think long-term. More plans should be thought of on such time scales for the sake of future generations. But this doesn’t mean we are not in a hurry. Every day will count and we cannot rest. But if we lay down our roadmap and look at our short-term objectives this outlandish plan seems mundanely achievable. It is a difficult plan, but it is feasible.

Execution will be key. Like in any company, execution is essential. Having the idea is not even 1% of the work. This is a big challenge and we prepare ourselves by gearing all our activities towards our mission. For any decision we need to make, we’ll need to ask ourselves if it brings us one step closer to planting 1 trillion trees.

Our team will grow. We will not achieve our goal with our current team, current structure, and current sponsor base. Everything will need to grow. In particular, we are putting a high priority on growing our team for the challenge. We will hire only extremely motivated and focused people. This also makes us proud that we will be able to offer plenty of well-paid and very fulfilling jobs. But let’s not forget we are on a mission. We will ask for outstanding results from our team too.

It will be easier over time. Over the years we have witnessed how our climate deteriorated, and our activity went from weird to mainstream to top trend. Unfortunately, climate disruption will continue to worsen. But each new wave will create more and more climate-conscious people. We will have plenty of support. Also right now a few pioneers are creating an entirely new industry. Plenty of new actors are appearing every day, each bringing their particular help to this giant puzzle. When we started the price of a tree was around 50 €, now the average tree price is closer to 1 €. We foresee the price of planting trees will keep going down while our sponsor base will keep increasing exponentially.

Gamification is our secret weapon, please don't tell anyone. Our final word will be for our gamification strategy. Climate change is a sad story, a story that should shake our beliefs in what we call progress and make us think more of our role in nature. It’s also a story of hope and a fight to preserve the future of our children. In a word, it’s epic. No doubt it will way too often be dramatic. But for us, who dedicate our lives to this mission, we also believe it doesn’t have to be a sad job. We want to make sure using our platform will be fun and bring joy to everyone who uses it. In fact, we believe this is essential to reach our objective. It will be a great journey and we invite you to hop on board!