Back when I was nine years old,
my teacher decided to create a special unit
about the climate crisis.
She then asked me to give a little presentation in my class.
I found out about Wangari Maathai, a woman from Kenya
who had started a movement
that ended up planting 30 million trees
over the course of 30 years, and that's what inspired me
that we kids should also be planting trees.
The few weeks after that first presentation,
we all went outside and planted our first tree
at the entrance of my school,
and I started traveling to some other schools
giving presentations to spread the message,
and that's how Plant-for-the-Planet spread.
We, children, understood we cannot trust
that adults alone will save our future.
We have to take our future in our own hands.
(audience clapping)
I think the climate crisis
is the biggest challenge of our time,
and it's on future generations,
it's our generation that's going to suffer the consequences
if we don't address this right now.
The world used to have about 6 trillion trees.
Only 3 trillion exist on earth today.
At the same time, our carbon emissions have skyrocketed
One of the crucial things that we need to do
to fight climate crisis is to stop using fossil fuels.
But we also need to plant trees
to suck up the carbon emissions
that are already in the planet.
Reforestation generally means growing forests.
Restoration means restoring and bringing back the forest
as it used to exist in the past.
(Oscar speaking in foreign language)
Trees are incredibly important to our ecosystems
'cause they're not only incredible machines
that can actually buy us time to be able
to implement the changes that we need
for a sustainable future,
but they're also about providing life again.
So when we talk about planting trees,
we talk about restoring life, ecosystems.
I think a lot of young people are really worried
about the climate crisis,
and we want to give them a chance to do something
At Plant-for-the-Planet, we empower young people
all around the world to get involved
in fighting the climate crisis,
to learn about forests, to plant trees, to restore forests.
Our mission is to protect the world's 3 trillion trees
and regrow another 1 trillion trees
so that we will soon again have a world of 4 trillion trees.
Being an ecopreneur means moving beyond discussing problems
and finding specific things we can do right now
to fight these biggest challenges of our time.
There are really three parts to what we do.
The first part is our children youth empowerment.
We organize Plant-for-the-Planet academies
These are one-day workshops at which kids
at the age of 10 to 12 learn what the climate crisis is,
and especially why forests are important
to fight the climate crisis.
The second part of what we do is directly regrowing forests.
Like in Ghana, Spain, Ethiopia, and here in Mexico,
we've got about 150 people working across these projects.
And the third part of what we do
is supporting other restoration projects
in regrowing forests in their communities.
We do that by providing software tools for providing advice.
We know that a trillion trees won't be possible
if we don't get all of the hands together.
As a corporate partnerships agent,
one of my jobs is not to only find the companies,
but empower them and help them understand
how big is the impact that they're actually doing
We've developed the tech tools
to be as transparent as possible.
So companies are actually able to communicate transparently
how many trees they've planted, where, which species,
and what kind of proper monitoring
and maintenance they're actually receiving.
but restoring entire forest ecosystems is incredibly hard.
And to do that at a global scale,
we really need to be able to manage
and properly monitor all of these restoration efforts.
Technology is really important for Plant-for-the-Planet.
My role is to be sure that projects in the platform
are biologically and socially beneficial to the communities.
We review super high quality projects
so that we are sure that money is going where it should be.
(gentle music)
(drone rotors roaring)
(Oscar speaking in foreign language)
Our app is built on Salesforce technology.
It allows us to customize everything we do.
to make forest restoration the most successful.
It's not only a tool that was created
for monitoring restoration areas, but it also allows us
and allows our technical team to provide new suggestions
to make your projects more successful.
Climate change is a global issue.
When we are talking about fixing a global issue like this,
it is only by implementing projects that can scale up
This is why we are providing the tools that we do
in an open source so everyone can have access to them.
Some of the key threats in Mexico
in terms of forest and climate change
are of course, deforestation.
Mexico was one of the five biggest deforesters
in Latin America about five years ago.
(Sandra speaking in foreign language)
(Oscar speaking in foreign language)
We're here in the state of Campecha
on the Yucatan Peninsula.
because this is one of the world's biodiversity hotspots.
When forest restoration is done well,
it doesn't just regrow forests,
but it can also bring a lot of wealth
and lot of other benefits to the local community.
Success is when we have socially
and economically beneficial projects in the platform.
We can see whole families and communities come together
and work in the projects.
When the communities are involved,
usually they can have a better future, a better livelihood.
I really love walking through areas
that we planted in a couple of years ago
and see how wildlife is coming back to these forests.
That's what inspires us. That's what makes us motivated.
It's been 15 years since we planted
that first tree back at my school in Germany.
We have had over 90,000 kids participate in our academies
and become climate justice ambassadors.
Paulina, for instance, is a wonderful example.
She participated at a Plant-for-the-Planet's academy
back in 2010, and over the years, she's built a big network
of other children youth in Cancun and nearby cities.
When children come to the academies,
We get to find the seed that there's in their heart
for their activism, for them to become amazing trees
that are this beautiful forest of climate activists,
of climate justice ambassadors.
Sometimes it feels like the little actions
that we are taking may not have the biggest impact,
but it really ends up to that one phrase,
one mosquito cannot do anything against a rhino,
but a thousand mosquitoes can change a rhino's path.
Today, kids are going to live knowing
that they can do everything
to make the world they imagine a reality.
I remember what it felt like
to plant trees when I was nine years old,
and I really love seeing young kids enjoy it
I really love to see that incredible enthusiasm.
That enthusiasm is just infectious.
That's what gives me hope about the future.
