 Thank you very much for joining us today. We are going to talk about restoring forests with digital tools To my side here is a saga. I am he's part of the fund initiative planned for the planet and he will tell us how he did this amazing work with digital tools The stage is yours. Thank you. I'm Sagar. I have been working as CTO of plant for the planet for three years and currently I'm in the supervisory board of plant for the planet Foundation and Yeah, so first let me start with the history of plant for the planet And then we will go into what we are doing today to restore forests with digital tools Plan for the planet was inspired by Vangari Matai sees a noble Peace Prize laureate who planted 30 million trees in 30 years in Africa and When Vangari Matai started the Greenbelt movement This was a huge movement in Africa to restore forest and our founder Felix Finkbeiner He had a goal to plant 1 million trees in every country in the world And and he planted his first tree in 2007 that's how the plant for the planet movement got started Today there are over 80,000 plant for the planet ambassadors who are planting trees around the world So these are actions that's happening on grassroot levels, but this is not only this is not just what we do So we also speak in different events Conferences and share the message of climate justice to the world climate justice for us means that well There are people emitting a lot of carbon in global north people in global south should be Compensated for that people in global south should benefit in some ways because they are living a life in poverty without education without good health care Well, we in this global north or we in Europe and America and China and other countries are emitting more emissents And in four events our ambassadors have even spoken at the United Nations We have organized 1500 Academies these are a day-long workshops for young children 9 to 14 years old where they learn about what greenhouse gases are what climate crisis is what they can do from their place where as a student or Speaking with their parents or involving their friends and take take small accents to fight the climate crisis And we have over 90 2000 ambassadors so far So in this process of planting trees and educating children about climate crisis We called For a trillion trees in 2011. This was a time when we did not know how many trees there were in the world It was estimated that there were around 400 billion trees In the planet and we wanted we just got a number that says let's plant a trillion trees We wanted the number to be a symbol But today we know that there are three trillion trees on on our planet So they have been research done and we know that there is a room for additional 1.2 trillion more and this Space has been calculated taking into account the places for people livestock and other other farming and When this news came in 2019 a lot of newspapers got into the Name and you might have heard of different campaigns to restore forests around the world and It's true that three are the only machines that captures you to In the most efficient way today We know that there are different other technologies being built which are expensive and which are something that we need to invest But trees are one of the most effective ways to capture and it's natural solution to capture carbon dioxide and You might have also heard that the former US president Donald Trump also wanted to plant a trillion trees and he actually launched a campaign in 2020 and Worked together with the World Economic Forum to launch an initiative in the US to invest in this So there is a lot of political interest. It's becoming not only as a movement where we want to restore forest But trees are also being politicized recently So this is a very interesting graph So in this three blocks you see very equal almost the same amount of forest and the one is the first 9,000 years between 8,000 BC and 1900 where we lost about 0.9 billion hectares of forest and this almost the same amount of forest we lost in the last hundred years Right and the other number is what we can restore back So what we are trying to do with the trillion trees is just trying to restore The trees that we lost in the last hundred years and every year we are losing about 10 billion trees So that is a quite used number. So We have to do something right. So where do we begin? So this is again the forest restoration potential So the question is where do we begin? And when restoring forests, we also have to think of biodiversity We have to think of how we minimize the cost effects And how do we take into account the climate crisis and its impact on people living in different parts of the world So the red that you see is where the impact The effect of biodiversity loss or climate crisis is the highest So we have to keep into Mind that we have to think of the people living in these areas. We have to think of the biodiversity We have to think of the nature. We have to think of the social cost, etc. in this in this reason and Also with the restoration priorities, we have to think why we need to invest in restoration in these areas So you see most of the places where we need to have the highest priorities in global south. Of course, there are places Germany is also losing forests. There are countries in global not losing forests but majority of the places where we need to restore are in global south and Trees all Restoring these forests also brings us to think how can we uplift the economic standards of people living in these areas, right? because most of the people living in these places make less than a dollar a day and I think this is where our solutions really have An impact and as we have been an organization where we started planting trees ourselves and educating children We started a project in Mexico where we tried To understand how we could restore forest ourselves at a larger scale And this is the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico where we started a project in 2015 We are restoring we have restored almost over 9 million trees in this reason This is this is one of the lands picture from 2021 where we before we planted some trees and This is our workers who plant trees in the planting season and This was the last America 7.1 after restoration. So In the last years we have planted over 9 million trees And we are still learning from how we could scale up restoration Because we need additional 10,000 projects with a goal of each hundred One million planting hundred million trees each to reach the goal of trillian trees, right? so it's not a simple goal, so we need to scale up whatever we are trying to do and and Equally for restoration. It's also important to source Native seeds because of course anyone can plant a tree I can get a tree and plant it somewhere But the most important thing is sourcing the right Species for the right place if we plant invasive species I'm sure you've heard of stories where invasive species have affected the biodiversity it has affected forest One of the things is when we plant trees that are not native to the place Biodiversity does not come back and this is very very crucial if we want to see a forest where birds come back where animals come back We want to bring back the native species and this is why in our restoration project this year We are sourcing more than 30 different species native species So that we could restore the forest back to what it was like 30 years ago And We also started our own nursery and this is also very important because when you are Planting trees at a very very large scale You need to be able to build the infrastructure to be able to support that reforestation in many parts of the world This is very difficult When you are especially planting trees, maybe a tree in your garden or something like that you can go to a nursery Next to your village or next to your city and get some trees but if you're restoring trees at a scale of millions of trees every year you need to be able to build that infrastructure and I'll get back to why I'm getting to all this in a bit and As we're trying to learn from all these processes how we build nurseries how we restore forest We've also learned from things for example This is a picture where one of the areas we reforested got flooded and there are risks for The work that we are doing and we need to be able to learn from them Right, so there are forest fires happening in different parts of the world Hurricanes and we need to be able to understand how climate crisis is going to affect the places that we are going to restore Because some places and this is according to the research from 2020 It's better to not restore some places because the impact of climate crisis is Higher if certain places are restored. So we really have to look into the science behind where is The right place to restore forest And in the 2021 we planted about 1.7 million trees in just under six months This was between yeah in between the COVID pandemic in the previous years We did a little more than 2 million trees, but still amongst the pandemic we managed to ourselves restore 1.7 million trees and we have about 89 reforesters and all together 128 team members working in Mexico restoring the Yucatan restoration project But forest restoration is not the only thing that plan for the planet is doing We are also trying to protect existing forests and this is equally important that when if we want to stop Deforestation we need to be able to protect these areas because the dam is to the Environment and biodiversity is even more when these forests are cut down because the animals then would not have a place The birds would not be coming back, right? so it's equally important that we think of forest conservation and Some of the impacts that you can see here is these are the animals that we managed to capture In the forest that we've been protecting with the local local government and these are all very rare Species in the region that we've been able to see in the forest But we know that now it's important to restore forests. It's important to build nurseries It's important to conserve forests. The goal is how do we scale it up? So plan for the planet in the last eight nine years has has been learning how we Restore forests in one single single place and we've been building infrastructure to support ourselves because as we learn new things how we can Better manage the nursery how we can better scale the reforestation how we can better track trees We have come with a solution and that is the plan for the planet platform And the plan for the planet platform is a free-to-use open-source Commission free tool where there are 120 plus projects And this is a platform where plan for the planet takes no single Commissions for donations that you give to all these different restoration projects And I'm going to explain you how these projects can come here and how we make this available To the world and why we do it So the green bubbles that you see are a list of projects around the world You can see projects in almost every continent where humanity leaves and the blue projects Conservation projects where organizations are working together to conserve existing forests When you come on the platform you have options to see and this is something We're trying to make it easy for people to understand because scientific data usually research is it's really difficult to understand it So we try to make it simple where you can see what's the deforestation like in the last 20 years Where in the world can we restore forest? so this data is publicly available and very easily available on the platform and As users come on the platform, we also make it Easier for them to track the trees to track the donations to track the tax deduction receipts Right and to be able to invite people engage community and plant more trees But that's not where we end we want to make sure that when if you're supporting certain projects You also want to see the impact of what's happening Right and for restoration projects one of the key challenges is they are doing the hard work on the ground and most of this Restoration organizations don't have the IT infrastructure They don't have the right people to share their work and to share where they're working And this is from our experience before we started our own project in Mexico We were supporting different projects with the donations that we received from people who said hey, you're planned for the planet We want to give you money Please give it to people who plant trees and we did do that and one of the difficult things that we found out is People usually say we planted trees in this hill in this place And it was just that so it was really difficult for us to identify and track how the Forest there is progressing how the restoration work is progressing without us actually going and visiting there which incurs a lot of cost So this is available for all projects free of cost projects can upload their polygons They can actually use tree mapper app Which I'll get back to to collect additional data and on the right-hand side you see what we call a time travel feature So we are trying to use Publicly available on data set on high-resolution emissory. We also use Landsat and Sentinel data to so how the forest was Before the restoration work happened and how it is today. So you can go to the application change the dates change the Satellite providers and see how the forest is changing. So we're trying to make it really accessible for anyone to see How the restoration work is evolving on the ground and also to be able to analyze all these different sites So that restoration organizations don't have to set up complex tools pay hundreds of Thousands of euros to set up tools like this and this is available for free of cost and This is also a way for them to share their story in a standard format where they can say this is where we are restoring And this is the main reason we are restoring So since we have a way for the organizations to share Their work. We also built a donation gateway and this is actually how we started we wanted to build a tool so that we could fundraise to to plan the truly entries and Today we have built a tool that companies individuals influencers can use to engage their community You can go to the platform You can build your own forest you can invite your family if it's your birthday you can create a donation link That's custom to you which says dedicated to this person and you can share that link to everybody So when people go and donate your forest grows together, right? So here you can see Blenicloom see join together and planted 40,000 trees with us and she has her own forest So we build technology so that this can be multiplied if there's somebody who wants to engage these tools are available for free for individuals and influencers and The way we're able to finance this platform is by asking companies to invest in us Basically to support us so that we can build these open source tools and make it available for free of cost for restoration organizations and individuals and on the second you can see Jane Goodall we organized the campaign trees for Jane In the last year and the other is just a normal version of the donation platform where you can donate with different different methods and along with Donations we also offer leaderboard and trackings So here you can see this is a Salesforce forest You might have heard of the company Salesforce, which is one of the leaders in CRM companies Salesforce users plan for the planet platform to empower their employee engagement tool And on the right hands on the left hand side, you can see a forest from sat irons the TV channel We organized to gather a vault record vocal we're planned for the planner provided the digital tools to collect donations and to count the forest and 1.4 million trees were planted in five days and one million tree was just planted in one day during the entire week But now when people are giving money the question comes transparency, right? How do we account? How do we make sure the trees are planted? How do we make sure the forest is protected and this is this was one of the biggest Questions that we've been trying to solve since we started working on digital tools This is something in in our restoration project. We had a Seat where people fill out. This is the number of trees. We planted today Different species different counts and those used to be filed And we know that many organizations have this filing tools But when those records are just filed and not shared the donors have no idea what's going on So we wanted to change that and we built a very simple tool called tree mapper Basically what tree mapper allows is tree mapper allows restoration organizations To walk around the area they planted take pictures of the place where they're planting trees and after they're done collecting the polygon They can walk into the area where they planted trees and take sample pictures So if you plan if an organization planted about 5,000 trees They can take a sample of maybe 1% or 10 trees or 20 trees every single day So it's they're not counting 5,000 trees because that would be insane lot of a lot of work and that would cost a lot So we want to reduce that but at the same time if we are collecting a sample data For example information about 10 trees every day and the information contains height Breath the species and a full size picture That information can be Managed over large sample size So if you're planting for six months straight if we just Create a sample of let's say 1,000 trees We would be able to identify what percentage of trees in that planting season survived so we're able to We're able to gather information about mass plantings without actually collecting the data And this is how a lot of scientific research works and I think this is something you are aware with you always work a sample size and Along with the sample collecting we also want to allow restoration organizations to create monitoring plots And our goal is we don't know yet if planting trees actually makes a dent in climate crisis And this is a this is a question because of course we know trees capture carbon But we don't know if the place where we are restoring is actually something we should have restored So what monitoring plots allows us to do is understand how certain areas behave so Why we have different methods of creating monitoring plots and one plot We just live it around to see if new trees grow up there automatically and on the other hand We plan certain trees in some plots. So we analyze those plots over the course of years to identify Whether the restoration work we did even made a dent to something what we wanted to do or if trees grew naturally in the other part of The plot so this is something we're making accessible for all restoration organization This is a feature that's going to come out later this year we've been working with monitoring plots for last few years and I think this is going to help us understand how forest restoration work of different organizations in different projects help Help the climate or help the Ecosystem or the bring back the forest in different areas and again tree mapper is free of cost no cost associated for anybody So once the tree mapper collects data Of course a lot of these projects are working in places where Wi-Fi does not exist and trees don't give Wi-Fi so once they come back to They're a base. It's sometimes this happens once a month. Sometimes this happens every day The phone uploads the data automatically. So here on the on this side, you can see a Little boxer. So these are daily plantings Sometimes we plant on top of each other. So this really depends on planting goals Because sometimes you're planting one species and you leave the space for other species So you come back and plant another species in between And you can see the sample trees which are small dots And this is a feature that you can go to plan for the planner website and check it real time What and I only took this screen shot yesterday So the plot that's a six days ago was just planted six days ago and all these pictures that you see and on the Left-hand side. That's a sample tree where we have a picture. It's from August 14 It's tagged. So if you happen to go to that location Any day you can check whether that tree still lives or not and our employees who have the tree mapper App can go there and re-measure this tree at any time So we actually plan to re-measure 50% of the sample trees that we have registered And we the software is basically going to randomly ask the users to say go back and re-measure 50% of the trees in this region So it will basically give them a list and this feature is coming out next month So we want to really make sure that we collect the data about what the survival rate is And especially in this area where we are restoring it's a really difficult soil to restore it's called lepto soil and lepto soil and Sometimes we're planting two or three Saplings to see if one of them survives, right? So we are kind of trying to experiment with how we can increase The survival rate of trees in different different soil environments, but what dream mapper really helps us get is It helps us to get the analytics on how we can succeed What's the right kind of species for right kind of soil type and So well tree mapper helps us collect data from the ground Sent by the restoration organization We also want to make sure the projects are actually not only planting trees with the right standards but also contributing and Two different sustainable development goals and making sure that there's a fair ways pay to employees and it's whatever they're trying to do It's not just monoculture or something like that. So this year We we managed to review over 40 projects by visiting this project So this was something we try to avoid in the early days because we wanted to reduce the cost of somebody traveling in the Areas we wanted to work on the trust system and we wanted to build tools But at the same time we want to ensure that when people come to the plan for the planet platform Make a donation and support or for companies who want to make this decision to invest or to contribute to these projects We want to make sure that the projects are receiving the best support to become the best restoration projects in the world So we are we have Ecologists who are visiting these different projects Rating these projects and different criterias We have also published our standards for the minimum standards to be in the plan for the plan platform And the top standards of what an ideal restoration project should be like how should that project? Think of biodiversity think of a community think of society and things like that So we are we're planning to scale this up so that every single project we have on the platform will be Yeah, we'll be reviewed on site by somebody from the plan for the planet or other ecologists Who are part of our review team? And along with the monitoring we also want to help Developers and app builders to scale with our technology So we have a technology where people can come donate where we have where restoration organizers come collect Donations, but at the same time there are hundreds of applications Who are planting trees or we're looking for a way to engage the audience and we've we've been working on a product called Planet Cast API's so One of the challenges that we found is whenever you pay for something on the Internet and I think you also notice like Booking a ticket for this conference. There was a two euros fee Extra right so in every transaction there is a fee like one of the famous Merchant for example paypal takes about 40 cents if you make one euro donation and This is really expensive. So if people want to plant one tree 40 cent of that goes to paypal And we want to stop that and especially when companies are trying to do that on large scale and they want to engage their Employees that they want to engage the customers every transaction counts because every 40 cent counts So we try to build an API for micro transactions where people can automate if there is an order on a swap You can automate with our APIs and plant a tree So a code is going to be sent a personalized email or personalized certificate The company can decide or we send an email saying hey here's your code This is where your tree will be planted and this is something. We're trying to Make it work this year or early next year. We call status of the tree So since we have the tree mapper data from the projects working on the ground and we have the donation and the individualized We will be able to offer you updates on where your tree is approximately planted So we will be able to pinpoint your tree and one single area and we'll be able to share with you What's the survival rate? How what percentage of tree are living there and over the course of time? You can see with satellite imagery that we have how the how your forest is actually growing and These are two companies who have worked with us in the past the PCM Academy they've been using our systems for the last six months and For every person who buys something on their website. They send out an email saying hey Here's your tree. So all these individuals will be able to see where their forest is down the road And the end of the company we work with is dig a may during the sat-eins Val Richard Bocher, so there was an option where people texted bomb irons bomb 5 or Bomb 10 and that as a mess that you sent was connected to our APIs So we were able to get back to you and hey, this is a code to track your individual tree So the good thing is you don't the company does not have to share personal information to us they just have to say we're planting one tree for this person and If the user who received that code wants to come back to plan for the planet platform view the tree create a profile They're welcome to do so, but you don't have to share any private information with us So it's very very data data secure in that in that case and this API is available for In beta right now for individuals free of cost for companies there might be some cost associated with it But we're trying to make sure that we create an opportunity where we can continue to invest on the platform and grow well Companies can help us scale that But that's not all so in the beginning I also told you that we are collecting seeds so As we build a platform to engage Restoration we also thinking yeah We're building a app called seed manager and it's for us we realize that it's really important to identify where we can source seeds from and Usually the process that we found out was some of our employees in Mexico. They go looking for forest called Where we call mother trees a tree where we can source seed from so we track if some seeds have already been taken from that Tree if there are seeds in that tree So this helps us not only this helps not only us but a global network of reforesters and organizations to identify Different trees and where they can source seeds from so this is basically going to be a global seed database where restoration organizations can Or anyone who has knowledge about ecology can say hey There's a tree somebody can come and collect and they can use the seed manager app We are still working on the app. So this might not be ready by next year Or this will be ready by mid next year or so So in addition to all these tools that we're building we also Started our work on empowerment and restoration research park It's important that when we think of restoration It's not like if a project does not meet the criteria as we kick them off and say goodbye Right because we know that all these organizations are working hard to be the best in restoration work because we do a wedding and a lot of these are people who are motivated to work in climate crisis and Most of the time the reason why they don't have the right tools is because they don't have access to the right Resources they don't have access to the right people who can help them get better So this is something we're starting in Mexico But we also expanding with our team who is visiting a different projects around the world Where if we find that certain project does not meet certain criteria Yes, we help them we say okay. You're not good at this, but let's help you get better So we're building a rest empowerment restoration research park where we work on science We we research and research and identify what's the best way. How do we reduce the life? How do we make sure that some seeds are grown up in six months instead of three years that usually takes right? identifying the right soil type things like that and we want to We want this to be a place where we Provide restoration advice for all these projects for free of cost So to to share in detail our flywheel is we want to use cutting edge science We want to make sure restoration is high quality and we want to do large-scale field experiments because usually in the past large-scale restoration has only been done as campaigns where individuals go and plant trees, but we want to bring Establishment into that in a way that restoration organizations can manage how these things are done The next is we want to ensure a documented transparency So you saw what tree mapper is capable of use you saw what we want to do with seed managers are similarly We want to be able to identify fire alerts, right? So if there's a potential fire threat, we want to be able to inform the organizations immediately because we know where they're planting trees So we want to build tools like this so we can engage the global community and provide Transparency in every step and the next is Yeah, we want to make sure that everybody gets restoration advice Especially people working on the ground because it's important that especially if we are giving the money if we're investing in these projects These projects work the best and we should help them and the next is continuous improvement We want to make sure that we go monitor and we verify this projects We review and we share these reviews again publicly on the platform And this is some statistics. So in 2020 plan for the planet plan for the planet has several projects in Mexico so we received about a 3.8 million trees on the platform and remaining projects the other projects receive a 6.5 million trees and in 2021 we received a share of six Million trees and 45 million trees went to other organization. So that's also we saw 600% increase in the growth And this is just trees. We just a few months ago We started work on conservation projects and we want to bring more ecosystem types We want to look into ocean we want to look into mangroves and different other methods of restoration But we need to get better. We need to understand those concepts ourselves so we can build a restoration Standards we can build a different tools to support those initiatives And again, this is the financial reports from 2020 till 2020 plan for the planets administrative costs is around less than 5% and most of our work as it goes and trees are empowering children across the world and As we grow the percentage is becoming it's becoming more and more clear that majority of our Funding is going to trees so that we can help restore forest around the world You can use the platform by visiting pp.co Or going to plan for the plan that work and all these tools are available for free of cost for individuals Thank you, and I would be open for any questions Perfect. Thank you very much. Who has a question? No My actual question is wouldn't it be just enough to like leave grounds where the plant where the where the trees grow themselves I mean how much human help is needed for in Europe usually you have a space and after a while there's wood That's a that's a very very good question And that's also something we are trying to understand with monitoring plots And that's one of the goals because we want to know if there is a reference forest nearby Right depends where you're restoring forest if you're restoring next to a forest chances are the seeds fall and new trees grow But if you're restoring in place where there's been Farmland for 20 years and now it's a barren land Maybe the forest is not anywhere near so you need to create a new forest at least so that the forest can grow But again, it really depends on the place it needs we need to identify these places And that's where monitoring plots really help us understand if it made sense to even plant or restore trees That sounds really good if you guys I have some questions So do you guys plant all the seeds manually or are you also looking into like drone seeding and stuff like this? So in the platform most of the projects work with individuals We do not plant with drones yet One of the reasons is also because the land the land type that we're working in Mexico is really difficult with drones Because we need to be able to really dig something and put the put the seeds But also we're working on a large scale So it could work that we could build drones, but again, it really depends on the cost Did I know it really depends on the cost? So of course we'd love to explore with different technologies We always see that there is potential to scale up But for us if we are putting drones in different countries where people don't have annual income We also think of restoration as a way to Empower the community to give provide jobs, right? and one thing I can think of is let's say we're restoring some forests in a global South country where people don't have good salary if We planted let's say 10 million trees and all of them die Let's say the worst-case scenario. We still created jobs We still provided people with economic livelihood so that they don't have to travel somewhere else They can be with the family and I come from a country in Nepal where majority of the people go to Middle East and In the villages when I go back in the places I was born the only people I see are people above 60 and All the young people are abroad So if we can create certain jobs or some way so that they can stay in the places We can think of how these countries and these places can develop, right? So we really have to think of not only trees as trees But also as how we are thinking of society and socioeconomic Standards in different places. That sounds really lovely. Yep. Otherwise, I also have some questions. I guess we can So sorry also a specific issue is I once heard that there is like a quite big importance for forest and climate change and the water circles, so actually we need forests that Bring the water from the seaside to the inner places of the of the continents more or less And I expect that the regions close to the seasides are more expensive and I'm just wondering how much you are how close you are connected to science and if you would do an effort to Perhaps like pay for more expensive grounds if this would be doing good for climate change or against climate change Again, very good question. One thing. I think it's really important is So when we go and restore forest there's two questions one about the land rights, right? So should somebody buy land to to restore forest in some places? It might make sense because owning some land means you can ensure that nobody else is cutting trees But at some places it might actually give the opposite effect of what we're trying to do So in some places it might actually be better to work with community to restore existing lands because if let's say an European person or European company goes in Global South and buys all the land in the name of restoration What are we creating right? We have to really think of this and I understand that it might look like okay We want to create the European standard or we want to create the American standard We make sure everything is on place, but who is owning the land 50 years from now So we really need to think of this and I think in your case if we work with communities and there are hundreds of projects Who are working in the forest side planting man groups and these are all community-based projects, right? They're not owning the land that they're planting they're working with the community and for community It's like it's their forest and in many parts of the world people look at forest like God So I come from like I was grown up in a culture where I planting two trees as trees that give shade it's something that you do as When you grow up so that it's a legacy of your life, right? So people are embedded with forest in different parts of the world with different cultures And I think it's about engaging the local people so that they understand why it's important And I think the most important thing is if we go and try to help them find what they need that would be the best way to start and I absolutely understand that There are places close to the forest where it's important. They also places where people have cut down trees in the middle of nowhere Far far away from the ocean, but I think when it comes to restoration, it's about finding the right place Where it's possible and where it's absolutely needed I think that it's a really really good end. Thank you very much Sagar It was really a lovely presentation and thank you also for the stream people and everybody here And I think we can give you a round of applause for that. It was really lovely