On February 1, 2023, a leading climate action company, Aspiration, announced a major milestone of over 101 million trees planted to date across its portfolio of reforestation projects.
In partnership with Eden Reforestation Projects, along with Aspiration’s community of enterprise, business, and consumer customers, these reforestation projects will help restore over 83,000 hectares (210,000 acres) of degraded forest habitat in Kenya, Mozambique, Madagascar, Honduras, and the Philippines.
Restoring ecosystems and revitalizing communities
Aspiration has partnered with Eden to reforest thousands of hectares of degraded landscapes and restore ecosystem function, all while supporting local communities through employment and natural resource restoration.
On average, Eden employs over 1,400 local community members each month at Aspiration-funded sites, providing a verified, equitable source of income in areas where employment opportunities can be limited.
“Eden is not just planting trees, but growing trees,” said Andrew Kinzer, Africa Area Director at Eden. “People always think of tree planting as a one-time event, but in fact, we are restoring an entire ecosystem, which takes time, dedication, and resources to do well.”
To ensure each project is delivering tangible, positive impacts for local communities, Aspiration conducts annual site visits to evaluate restoration progress and provides continued support in project design and implementation.
In addition to the monitoring Eden conducts, Aspiration also monitors all restoration sites remotely with a suite of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tools and satellite imagery to track forest growth, health, carbon biomass, and detect any threats to the habitat.
Why this matters
“Working with high-quality partners like Eden not only helps Aspiration deliver on our commitment to plant 1 billion trees by 2030,” said Olivia Albrecht, Chief Executive Officer at Aspiration.
“These partnerships ensure that our restoration projects are designed and implemented with the utmost care and consideration for the land and the communities we work within. As of December 2022, Aspiration has already funded the future planting of over 140 million trees. We are thrilled to celebrate the milestone of having planted 101 million of those trees with Eden,” she added.
Across the globe, over 420 million hectares of forested land has been lost since 1990 due to increased timber logging, mining, and urban or agricultural expansion.
Deforestation directly contributes to climate change and has a negative impact on the human condition and wildlife habitats. Planting trees and restoring forests are some of the best ways to mitigate the impacts of climate change and contribute to healthy, stable ecosystems that support people and wildlife.
Aspiration is a high-impact climate finance company working at scale to help enterprises, consumers, and investors achieve their climate goals. Founded in 2013, the company sources, monitors and invests in carbon removal projects across the globe to generate high-quality carbon credits. Aspiration is a Certified B Corp, a member of Project Drawdown, 1t.org, Climate Pledge and many other critical industry groups dedicated to accelerating climate action.
Photo of young people in Madagascar is by Agnieszka from Pixabay.