Press Conference: One Trillion Trees | DAVOS 2020

so now the people have understood that saving the forest is also saving their own future my name is Dominic wory I am a member of the managing board here at the World Economic Forum and it's my delight and privilege to welcome you to this discussion which is a briefing about a major initiative that has been launched here at Davos called the trillion trees platform or one T dot org one seed org exists to serve the global community of actors committed to contributing to the goal of growing restoring and conserving one trillion trees worldwide by 2030 it's a very very important initiative in the broader issue of tackling climate change the climate emergency that we face we know we have to deal with the industry transition the energy and urban transition transforming our financial system but we also know that nature based solutions particularly the restoration of nature is a key part of this jigsaw and that is exactly what 1t org is going to tackle we have a fabulous panel lined up to provide some thoughts and inspiration from it we don't think we could have brought together such a spectacular group of people and so it's my absolute delight to first of all introduce you to Ivan Duque who is the president of Colombia mr. president and the importance of the restoration conservation agenda in the battle to tackle climate change one seed org and your view points from a Colombian perspective Oh first of all thank you so much it is a great pleasure for me to be here again in the World Economic Forum I want to express my gratitude to all the distinguished members of this panel to participate and to lead this important initiative on one trillion trees let me just first say that the biggest challenge of our time is climate change and we will not be successful facing climate change until we do not defeat deforestation around the globe and Colombia sees initiative as a very important milestone we consider that if we make the whole world conscient about reforestation and about planting and protecting the ecosystems we can really make a big a big change Colombia has 50% of the world paramos Colombia has 35% of its territory as a Masonic land and we have 50% of our territory in tropical jungle but we have seen deforestation taking place a long time and we want to make a difference with a big goal we want to plant 180 million trees by August 2022 since we began our administration we've gotten to plant something close to twenty four point seven million trees this year respect to get 60 million more and reach this target by 2022 we want to call local governments and the whole environmental agencies at the local level to lead this initiative so we consider that our contribution to the one trillion trees initiative is based on this goal and we want the whole Colombian society to embrace this goal and last but not least we have decided to build better institutions to fight deforestation we created the National Council against afforestation last year and we also launched the Artemis campaign a campaign that is aimed to fight the criminals who are destroying the a Masonic land or who are having an illegal trade of wood and we believe that if we combine the efforts of planting and generating a social conscience for for reforestation and if we fight the criminality that is surrounding many different ecosystems in the world we will be more effective so I see this initiative as a very important one I am very glad that the World Economic Forum has taking a lid and I also want to express that having private sector leaders such as you Mart having a lot of leadership and promoting public-private partnerships is very important so we embrace our cause to participate in the initiative and yes we believe that by 2022 with 180 million trees planted in Colombia will be a substantial leader regionally speaking so that this initiative can accomplish its goal by 2030 thank you so much Thank You mr. president and that's a very very compelling case has been made out for the restoration conservation and growing of the tree target towards one seed org you mentioned the private sector not many of co-chairmen salesforce.com why would companies be interested and involved in this it sounds like this would be something for NGOs and and and and and governments not companies well we are certainly at a time of planetary emergency we realize that our planet is getting warmer and we need to find ways and solutions that we are going to all become number one carbon Net Zero and reduce emissions and number two we have to sequester or eliminate the carbon that has been emitted into the atmosphere human beings are very good and moving carbon around and we can see what we've done we've moved it from the ground and into the atmosphere from the ocean of the atmosphere and it from the trees into the atmosphere and we need to get a big eye on our forests so that we can use them to sequester this carbon I want to just start by telling you a story which is we were in the San Francisco climate conference and Jane Goodall was there and we're telling her all the good work that the World Economic Forum and Dominic and Doug Macaulay's here at the University California Santa Barbara are doing with the oceans and she said well it's very nice what you're doing for the oceans but what are you doing for the forests and I didn't have an answer I didn't know what to say and it had it in my mind though that it was a loop that I was needed to have something to say and then I want to give thanks to Al Gore who's not here but is a critical part of this because at our World Economic Forum trustee meeting in August and Geneva he was there talking about the incredible research done at ETH University right here in Zurich by Tom Crowther Tom would you just stand up and be recognized Tom did the incredible work for the trillion tree vision his team is doing extraordinary things and took artificial intelligence and low-hanging satellites and other fourth Industrial Revolution technologies and is showing us where these trillion trees are going and also the amount of carbon that they can sequester and the mathematical models of environmental models and the research was then published in many scientific journals including Scientific American science and others and Al Gore said have you seen this research from Tom Crowther and I was like no I haven't he's like about the forests and I said well I'm actually thinking about the forests because I was just with Jane and then basically that same day Doug McAuley emailed me and said we'll have you seen Tom Crothers research and I said no I haven't but how gorgeous mentioned it and when I said it I said what one trillion trees will sequester more than 200 Giga tons of carbon we have to get on this right now who's working on this and I was very fortunate to have a great relationship with dominic and I said Dominic what about the World Economic Forum and I just want to thank Klaus Schwab who then fully embraced this idea and we really have this now underway with a full team that's going to be staffed in Geneva working this MIT working with governments Thank You president Duque for your outstanding leadership also I would like to thank President Trump who's also committed to participate in the one trillion tree camp and I expect the United States to commit to between 50 and 100 billion trees so that research is being done by the Department of the Interior right now and I expect that to get finalized hopefully in the next few months and moving ahead there I I really want to thank the World Economic Forum because I don't think there is another organization on the planet that actually could take this Reacher research that's you know the coincidentally was done just a couple miles from here and start to execute this and to be able to convene the world leaders it's this is such an important time we are at a moment in history where all of us need to think about what does the future look like and I know that planning a trillion trees sounds daunting but there used to be six trillion trees on earth now there is three trillion so we should be able to get another trillion back well I'd like to try and I guess I want them all back Tom how about all six trillion that would have a huge impact on on our environment and we've already seen interests from two to three hundred companies just in 24 hours to join our one T org program and Tom and I can talk about that you can get more research it and understand what we're doing at 110 org and you know who's against the trees I mean the tree everyone's for the trees the trees are a bipartisan issue everybody's Pro tree I haven't met any anti tree people yet so that's very good so Jane you've done a great job and and every one of us can join this movement and every one of us can make a commitment to plant trees whether it's individually or organizationally whether it's a government whether it's a non-profit an NGO whether it is a business Salesforce is committing to planting 100 million trees over the next 10 years that's our opening entree into this I hope it will be much much larger and I think it's also a great example of stakeholder capital which is something that we're promoting here at the World Economic Forum's 50th anniversary the idea that businesses have to be more than just their shareholders they must be about all stakeholders including their employees their customers partners their local communities their schools and certainly the planet and our forests and our environment is a key stakeholder for every business so we all have to be thinking about this so thank you for having me and I'm so excited for this initiative thank you very much Marc Benioff now the other interesting thing about of this of course is people have been mobilizing communities and indigenous groups and local societies engage in these sorts of areas so there's an enormous potential to draw together into the one t-dog platform an enormous amount of experience at indigenous peoples in a community level and if I'd like to I could turn to Hindu umano Ibrahim who's the president of the Association for indigenous women and the report of People's Republic of Chad so almost from the other side of the the coin here we've heard from major government leaders and major international corporations this effort to restore conserve and grow a trillion trees by the end of a decade is that something that is impactful and interesting from the communities and indigenous peoples that you work with and how is that thank you very much for indigenous peoples forest trees is not only like a ton of tree or lift it's our harm it's our food it's our medicine it's our life it is our knowledge it is our school so when we hear about the initiative of restoring the forest ecosystem planting a Trillium of trees we are the first one who are very excited about it because we think finally the solution is coming in to the tables and that what we are expecting we cannot wait for that for 2050 it's a starting noun and that's what we want but the initiative must include several things one of them it's how indigenous peoples and people who are living forests can be the partners and the first stakeholders who can restore this forest for us is not just a planting a tree as I said it's all the ecosystem who live with it it's the best who can sit in it three is the flowers of the trees that can be eaten by the insect and it's not the shell only but it is the value of these trees as ecological and spiritual where to give us back our identity that we are losing because of the climate change so respecting the right of indigenous peoples recognizing the land rights who can help the indigenous communities to rebuild the forest that they have in a different landscape Africa Asia Latin America but all the world spaces and also using not only the technology we know that technology is very important is confessed in the solutions but we do have the most of faster solution who make the proof for the centuries the indigenous peoples traditional knowledge and I saw an example in Colombia mr. president who was very excellent last year in the tropical forest Alliance 2020 I went to visit indigenous communities from my colleague who are here in the room Carol so they have the primary forests where they create a corridor today planting forests where the species can navigate between the primary and the secondary who can restore the ecosystem with all the way that we want they have them on nursery where they know the indigenous species to get a plant so that's the project we want and if we go it in the way of indigenous peoples and we involve them we are going to have not only tree planting but life in live root of the peoples these socials and then the living in harmony with the nature who can be restored it's from the woman from the children's but from the next seven generation that we are looking on it so this project we want we really welcome it and we look it forward to work with the private sectors with the companies with the government's who are engaged as Colombia here but all African government or Latin American even Siberia who is also burning so don't forget the other forest we have the three tropical forests but we have also the secondary forest in Savannah in Sahel where we can mitigate the conflict between communities that fighting just to get access to the resources so it will be a big movement of this decade and we are really can't wait to see the impact that is contained in our life thank you thank you so much so the the implications of this is far more than planting a tree if you think about the kind of spiritual the cultural identity and relationship between people in the land and our changing climate that movement issue is a very very interesting one that was just mentioned there the movements that will be required to mobilize so many people from so many different parts of the world to take this on and that's why we're delighted to have Sadhguru with us who's the founder of the Isha Foundation and you sir have been able to establish mass movements and perhaps by referring to trees as as as always the lungs of how you've managed to create such movements from your perspective good morning everyone well it's exciting to see that the world is beginning to think in terms of trees because without putting soil under shade at least fifty to sixty percent of the planet's soil should go under shade without that there is no ecosystem recovery it will not happen so trillion trees is not going to do that but definitely it's an inspiring number to go for but we also need to understand we never plant trees we the plant seeds or saplings before we call it a tree it'll take six to ten years that's when it becomes a tree so this six to ten years has the president pointed out and battling the criminals well well in a certain country you can call them criminals but in the rest of the world they're successful businesses so the timber that sold around the planet is largely illegal but many nations buy it and things are happening about it so timber is a lucrative item so when it is so it is very important that it becomes an economic process for the people so this is what we have done in southern India where right now there's a project to involve five million farmers to grow timber in their lands as part of agroforestry which includes other crops in between it is tree cultivation with crops and crops come out much better the nutritional values are better the soil recovers the water tables come up and above all there is a long term crop on the land one of the major challenges right now in India for us is it is estimated in the next 10 years 220 million people will migrate to cities no city in the country is geared to handle that kind of population in the rest of the world it is estimated 1.6 billion people will migrate but one simple way to stop this before we do many other things which need to be done is when farmers have long term crops on that land they are not going to go away anywhere because there is investment standing there and growing by the day money is growing on the land they are not going to go away so it's extremely important that as you're doing it in waste lands and lands that need to be recovered it's very important agricultural lands must get back trees and this will make a huge difference because in the last 25 years in many parts of the world the nutritional value of the foods that we eat has come down by 40 percent if this has to be recovered trees have to come back on the form and only if there are long-term crops there is an assurance people who are living on the land will continue to live on the land and not end up in a city slum somewhere so we like how we got people into this well when I saw that people had no connection with the tree and trees had gone long time ago and trees just a word in people's minds so I got I trained a few thousand people to demonstrate these to millions of people across South India we made people sit with us closed and made them breathe and set up a certain process where your exhalation histories inhalation trees exhalation is your inhalation once they felt this you can't stop them planting trees because one half of your breathing apparatus is hanging out there on the tree once people felt this you just can't stop it so this connect is very needed because it will take 15-20 years to get a tree to a reasonable size but in one afternoon it can be cut and taken away and don't be assured that you you are going to stop it with police or security or this or that because it's too lucrative you're not going to stop it like you're not able to stop drugs on the planet you will not be able to stop timber trade because anyway they will go so people need timber timber needs to become an agricultural produce we should stop looking at timber as forest produce forests on the planet have reached a point where it cannot take anymore exploitation we have used it sufficiently but it cannot take anymore exploitation timber has to become an agricultural produce do we have land to do this we definitely have 51 million square kilometers of land is under agricultural tilling right now and out of this 40 million square feet square kilometers are used for raising animals or their food if we push right now super athletes on the planet you're Tom Brady Lionel Messi we're at Kohli all people who have a hundred million following they are all turned vegetarian this is a good time if we push back meat consumption by 50% you will have 20 million square kilometers of agricultural land why agricultural land is important ease the rate of survival will be much better when it's on the private land our rate of survival is over 90 percent simply because it's on private land individual farmer is taking care of it and it is his commerce he is not seeing it as saving the planet we never talk to the farmer about saving the planet it is just that to enhance his economic condition this is being done and that's the best way to do it if we do not marry economy and ecology equal economy will win hands down agar if that's an excellent waiter than that we want to marry the ecology and the economy so this is again the complexity the interest in the space and dr. Jane Goodall who absolutely needs no introduction you've been listening to this and why to close us out as the one seeded org initiative which is a fundamental piece of the jigsaw to tackle climate change alongside the industry transition the energy transition the financial transition and tell us why this is an important and interesting initiative for you and the things that you would like to see it do over the course of its lifetime how many minutes do I have you've got a couple of minutes to close okay so it's obviously very fascinating for me to be here to listen to all the speakers on this panel and thank you mark for acknowledging that I helped to bring you around to my beloved trees so I've always loved trees the reason I left the chimpanzee research at Gumby was when I realized that right across Africa forests for disappearing and chimp numbers were dropping and when I flew over my tiny Gumby National Park it had been part of the great equatorial forest belt but when I looked down in 1992 sub tiny island surrounded by completely bare hills and this is when it hit me if we don't work with the people who are cutting down the trees even on the steep slopes because they're desperate to grow food for their families then we'll we'll never be able to even try and save the chimp zees so my involvement has been through a program called take care or takari and it's been so successful that we work with a hundred and four villages throughout the whole chimpanzee range in Tanzania and it's a very holistic program working with with water water management programs and women and girls education and all of this so now the people have understood that saving the forest is also saving their own future so right at the beginning as I was working on all of this and trying to raise money for it I realized that all of this is absolutely wasted unless new generations grow up understanding some of the problems that we have brought about upon ourselves with the climate crisis so I began a program called Roots & Shoots which began with 12 high school students in Tanzania it's now in about 60 countries including India and including Colombia and it's got members in kindergarten University everything in between one of the very first projects we did was tree nurseries was planting trees and the reason I think that this trillion tree project is so exciting people say to me all the time what can I do what's one thing I can do you can plant a tree and whether you plant the tree in your own backyard or whether you pay to have trees planted in Tanzania or you if it's urban or rural you know it's something you can do and now I find with all of this amazing technology that's out there which I don't begin to understand but you can actually identify individual trees so I changed the way that animal behavior science was conducted by giving chimpanzees names I was absolutely castigated by the scientific community I shouldn't given them numbers well what about naming trees if you have a tree named for you so our roots insurance program last year planted about 5 million trees around the world and that's with very little support if we had more money coming in we could plant many more five and a half million of you know roots and shoots has guaranteed that this year alone so yeah the the trillion tree project is exciting because everybody can get involved and whether it's communities on the ground that are so important businesses politicians political leaders children everybody and if we have a tree in our name we want that tree to live and so yes I think the trillion tree project is absolutely fantastic and I congratulate everybody working on it and yeah thank you so much dr. Jane Goodall now one t-dog is the platform the mobilization will begin you go there and you can express your interest I'm sure there are a few questions here we are quite pressed for time so we're going to do is going to begin to take the room next door where most of the panelists can stay for a few minutes and take some questions some of the panelists have to stay here obviously for and and some people who got very pressed reg rules but if you want to ask some questions and the parents will go there because we're going to have to move this one out to get another very important press briefing in but to close in terms of the platform of is one Sea Org to plant restore and conserve those 1 trillion trees and thank you so much everyone from this panel 30 seconds for 20 seconds as a part of Carberry calling right now with family and farmers we are committed to plant four point I mean two point four two billion trees in one River Basin sequestering about 12 trillion liters of water this could be done in various river basins to revive rivers also in India alone with in collaboration with trillion trees very easily we can scale this up to 50 to 60 billion trees across the country in river basins all on private lands this is important that it's on private lands because the survival rate is over 90 percent I think we encourage more of that so thank you very much just give us a round of applause for our panelists you

Channel: World Economic Forum

Views: 247,770

Keywords: World Economic Forum, Davos, politics, finance, economy, news, leadership, democracy, education, 4IR, technology, tech, AI, automation, work, future, world news, economist, world, forum, economic, world news today, worldeconomicforum, Switzerland, external affairs minister, recommended for you, globalization, robotics, bloomberg, documentary, one trillion trees, jane goodall, climate justice, wildfires, progress, climate progress, davos 2020, environment, wefstp

Id: 8kPMtDiiXxk

Length: 29min 6sec (1746 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 22 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/harten]

https://www.gotreequotes.com/how-many-trees-in-world

[u/trail_carrot]

Dumb question but does anyone know how do non-profits sign up for tree donations. I have land, labor, and willing higher ups but getting the trees to me is kinda unknown. Granted I'm in the USA so maybe its not directed at me in particular.