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A visual encyclopedia of our partnership with Tree-Nation
Trees play a pivotal role in the book publishing industry. They are the principal material to produce paper and they are also essential in fighting climate change and preserve ecosystems. Trees are vital to humanity, which is why we have partnered with Tree-Nation, a non-profit organization supporting tree planting projects around the world. With every book purchased on our website, we plant a tree and contribute to a new era of foresting.
As a publisher seeking to inspire creativity in the lives of our readers, gestalten is committed to high-value, low-impact products. Partnering with Tree-Nation is the next step in our commitment to a more sustainable future. Since launching earlier this month, we have planted over 1000 trees. To understand what this collaboration will look like, we spoke to Nicolas Branellec, the Head of Corporate Partnership at Tree-Nation.
How did Tree-Nation begin and what does it offer to humans and the environment?
Tree-Nation was founded in 2006 by Maxime Renaudin and became an NGO in 2019. We are a community comprised of planters, companies, and citizens around the globe who team-up to fight climate change, deforestation, and help local economies. Since our beginning, more than 180,000 users and over 3,800 companies have planted more than 6 million trees using our platform. We are currently working on more than 30 reforestation projects.
Trees benefit us by purifying water, air, and creating better social conditions. They benefit the environment by providing homes for various forms of life, cooling our climate, and improving our soil. Today we are losing trees every year due to deforestation. Because of this, approximately 17% of climate change derives from our loss of trees. An impact on global greenhouse gas emissions greater than the entire transport sector. We cannot pretend to fight climate change without solving deforestation. Trees absorb CO2, and although other carbon capture solutions are being developed, reforestation is by far the most efficient and affordable solution. It is probably more than 100 times cheaper than the next best solution. Trees serve as habitats to millions of species, bring revenue to local populations, help us get food, fodder, medicine, and water resources, and much more.
How does the partnership between gestalten and Tree-Nation work? What forests or part of the world do you expect to experience the most change?
gestalten are planting a tree for every book purchased from the webshop. Thanks to our plugin, gestalten is linked to the Tree-Nation platform, which automatically plant's a tree for every book purchase on their website. Two different projects are connected, one in Tanzania and the other in Madagascar. In Tanzania, they are helping to preserve biodiversity in the rainforest of the Eastern Arc Mountains. This also helps to relieve poverty by introducing food security and incomes to planters that provide learning opportunities for students and village communities. The community learns how sustainable environmental conservation leads to an increase in the availability of forest products and helps to reduce dependency behavior on the nature reserve for forest resources. The outcome will be a new generation of people who understand how environmental conservation works to their benefit.
In Madagascar, gestalten is helping fight deforestation. This is a major issue because of its high concentration of endemic species and alarming rates of habitat loss. Recreating Madagascar's ecosystem is a priority to preserve rare fauna and flora, but also fighting climate change by protecting mangroves. Last but not least, this project gives planters a decent income so they can maintain their families again. As the reforestation effort goes on, healthy forests begin to emerge, and the effects of deforestation begin to disappear.
How does the Tree-Nation team decide on its projects?
We look for projects with a significant impact to fight climate change, restore biodiversity, and help local communities. We have three ways to combat climate change:
Direct: Projects directly fighting climate change with a strong focus on capturing CO2 emissions. Those projects are often situated in tropical areas (for ideal conditions) and include fast-growing species.
Causes: Projects limiting the causes of climate change like deforestation and modern agriculture.
Consequences: Projects alleviating the impact of climate change like desertification, land erosion, malnutrition, poverty, and species extinction (loss of species habitat).
Another essential criterion we specifically care about when selecting a project is the local team. We want to make sure everyone is professional, experienced, using solid practices (like gender equality), and aligned with our mission. Usually, several months are necessary to validate a project in its entirety without counting the control visits that we carry out.
What do you hope Tree-Nation will look like in ten years’ time?
Our goal is clear: We want to act against climate change. Our goals for 2030 are aligned with those of the United Nations and the agenda adopted by the UN in September 2015. We want to increase the impact of Tree-Nation because we are convinced that our NGO has a big role to play. We dream of Tree-Nation as the main reforestation platform in the world. We are already the platform with the largest variety of projects and locations and our goal is to increase the number of projects we support. We want to use our platform to convert every citizen and every business into a tree planter so that this practice becomes natural, a habit. All this will require knowledge of the problem and the means to act. We are building Tree-Nation every day to bring awareness to the issue of climate change and improving our technology to make tree planting as easy as possible.
