Updates

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Ecologi Impact Report 2020

In 2020, the coronavirus pandemic brought about a seismic shift across all industries, as well as in individuals’ personal, professional and social lives.
Aided by the global shutdown in response to COVID-19, we saw a reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, of <a href="https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/12/3269/2020/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">around 7% globally</a>. For the first time, humanity has been able to reduce emissions year-on-year, and if that trend were to continue, we could write down in the history books that 2019 was the year that global emissions peaked. We also now have a clear idea of what exactly is required to solve the climate emergency &#8211; the kinds of large scale collective action that will help us to mitigate the crisis.
On the other hand, considering the psychological and economic damage the global shutdown has caused, the pandemic has also produced a huge amount of climate anxiety &#8211; all this, for just a 7% drop in emissions?
As well as the pandemic shutdown, 2020 also saw other important developments in climate &#8211; from the <a href="https://www.unglobalcompact.org/take-action/20th-anniversary-campaign" target="_blank" rel="noopener">20th anniversary of the UN Global Compact</a>, to the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cop26-postponement" target="_blank" rel="noopener">postponement of COP26</a> here in the UK. Within climate, as within all industries, 2020 was a strange and challenging year.
At Ecologi, we are taking all of this to heart, and have been working tirelessly to develop our climate positive subscription products to have more impact. Luckily, we were able to adapt to online working: our in-house operations are fully remote at the present time, and thankfully our <a href="https://ecologi.com/">tree-planting and offset</a> projects have been able to continue operating throughout the pandemic.
Our Impact Report for 2020 shows a breakdown of the ways we have used our subscriber and B2B income to fund climate solutions, and how we have contributed to solving this most challenging of problems, in our first full-year of operation.
Despite the challenges of 2020, we are extremely proud of the massive impact we have had so far, and are optimistic and excited for 2021 to be a year of impactful and effective climate action.
If you have any questions about our impact, please contact <a href="mailto:hq@ecologi.com">hq@ecologi.com</a>.

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Over 6 million trees now funded by our subscribers

On 22nd December 2020, we funded our 6 millionth tree, ready to be planted in our planting sites around the world.
We had noted toward the end of the year that our tree count was accelerating, reaching a pace of approximately one million trees per month funded by our customers, in the run up to the festive period. The graph in Figure 1 shows the rate of growth in this regard, which we hope will continue into 2021.

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Figure 1

To put this in perspective, funding our first million trees took 9 months (surpassing the one million trees mark on 2nd March 2020). By the end of the year, it took our community of climate positive people 36 days to go from 4 million to 5 million trees, and it took only 19 days to go from 5 million to 6 million.
At the beginning of 1st January 2021, we had funded the planting of 6,419,515 trees.
Some of the end-of-year increase might be attributable to a festive bump, especially with the introduction of <a href="https://ecologi.com/gifting">our new gifting product</a>, which we launched in November. We don’t have the data on this yet, as we haven’t been through enough Christmases(!) but we anticipate that it’s likely we will see a slight slowdown in the early weeks of 2021 as the festive excitement quietens down.

Due to operational constraints, there is a time lag between trees being funded and trees being purchased; we operate on a grace period of around 60 days between trees being funded by our subscribers and being purchased from our partners.
Toward the end of 2020 this time lag extended slightly, as we are making some internal banking changes to allow us to move more quickly from funding to purchasing. We anticipate catching up with our trees due for purchasing in early January 2021, ready to start a more streamlined process in the year ahead.
By the end of 2020, we had purchased (and recorded on our <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dACvzjE5nBE1cKZBAhYzsUa7rIiLJqCWXVgY4bNS8_Q/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Public Impact and Operations Ledger</a>) 3,471,589 trees from our partners, accounting for trees funded by subscribers up to the end of September 2020.
The graph in Figure 1 shows our accelerating rate of growth: we are currently near the bottom of an exponential curve, with our tree-funding pace approximately doubling each month. Factoring in the anticipated slowdown at the start of 2021, we can expect to reach 10 million trees funded in around March or early April 2021, with our 10 millionth tree purchased and planted well before the Summer.
Looking to the future, we are really excited for our subscriber base to continue growing, so that we can fund more and more trees around the world. With our tree count remaining on an exponential growth curve, we would expect to see around 46 million trees funded by 31st December 2021. A flatter curve would see around 17 million trees funded by then, and the reality is likely to fall somewhere in between these two.
As we are still only a young company, forecasts and projections for trees funded will become easier over time as we have more data points to look back on.

To accommodate the rapidly growing number of trees funded by our subscribers, we’ve also expanded our portfolio of planting sites. At the start of 2020, we were very small, primarily planting trees <a href="https://ecologi.com/projects/mangrove-planting-in-madagascar">in one plot of land at Marotaola, Madagascar</a>, and also as part of a fledgling project <a href="https://ecologi.com/projects/reforesting-kijabe-kenya">in partnership with the Intrepid Foundation in Kijabe, Kenya</a>.
That first Marotaola plot has a dedicated capacity for 3 million trees, which toward the end of September 2020 was getting full, meaning we needed to expand our planting locations. That particular plot is currently 95.3% full, with 2,858,345 of our subscribers’ mangroves being planted there. 
At the end of 2020, we now fund 9 tree planting projects based in 7 countries. Our original plot (which is now known as Marotaola 1) was joined in October by neighbouring Marotaola 2, and plots in <a href="https://ecologi.com/projects/reforestation-in-bosawas-nicaragua" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bosawas Biosphere Reserve, Nicaragua</a> and <a href="https://ecologi.com/projects/reforesting-changalane-mozambique" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Changalane, Mozambique</a>.
Our main tree-planting partner for these projects is <a href="https://edenprojects.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Eden Reforestation Projects</a> (‘Eden’), who we work with closely to plant the trees in our dedicated planting sites. The team at Eden provide the expert care, ecological knowledge and local support to make the planting happen in-country. Through our current planting sites, Eden offers steady employment and income to over 80 local people, providing sustainable and fulfilling job roles as planters, forest guards and site managers.  This is really important to us, as (as we will see in the following section), part of Ecologi’s ethos is to ensure that the effective climate solutions that we fund also generate co-benefits in other spheres &#8211; helping to establish self-sufficient sustainable local economies, and provide fulfilling and stable jobs to those that we and our partners employ.
Whilst the vast majority of our tree-planting takes place in locations in the Global South, in May 2020 we took on new tree-planting partners and began offering the opportunity for subscribers from the UK, USA and Australia to fund our much smaller tree-planting projects local to them.

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Figure 2

Since we started planting in our additional sites in October, we have already made a significant start on filling those plots too &#8211; with around 18% of each of Marotaola 2 and Changalane already planted, and 25% of the Bosawas plot also on its way. As above, these figures only take into account those trees already purchased from our partners, and therefore not those trees funded by our subscribers but not yet purchased.

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Figure 3

In 2021, we are looking forward to taking some more time to visit some of our planting sites, bringing back stories and progress reports that we can share with our supporters. We’re also looking forward to working with new tree-planting partners, opening up new planting sites in the UK and around the world, and planting many more millions of trees in more locations across the world.

This year, our UK team were sadly unable to visit our overseas planting sites as planned, due to the coronavirus pandemic. However, we were able to receive photographs and progress updates from some of our sites around the world, and our company founders were able to scope out some of our new UK sites.
Receiving our first full-year update report from our Marotaola 1 planting site in Madagascar, documenting the period up to September 2020, our partners Eden Reforestation Projects update that: “with generous support from Ecologi, Eden Reforestation Projects planted 1,888,483 mangrove trees and employed 35 full-time staff resulting in a tremendous impact on local livelihoods and the environment.”
Over the past year, the team at Marotaola 1 have been filling our plot with multiple species of mangrove trees, including avicennia marina, rhizophora mucronata, ceriops tagal and bruguiera gymnorrhiza. In the photos below, you can see how our little trees are thriving. This amazing progress in our original planting site was boosted further by the millions of trees funded by our subscribers in October through December, and by the addition of our new planting sites at Marotaola 2 and elsewhere around the world.

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Marotaola 1

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Our mangrove trees are growing majestically in <a href="https://ecologi.com/articles/updates/update-our-offset-earth-members-forest-is-growing-%F0%9F%8C%B1">Marataola, Madagascar</a>.

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Changalane

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First trees going in <a href="https://ecologi.com/projects/reforesting-changalane-mozambique">Changalane, Mozambique</a>.

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Dyrham

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Our latest site in Dyrham, England is prepared for this planting season.

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Over 10,000 trees are now in the ground at our site in <a href="https://ecologi.com/projects/reforesting-dalry-scotland">Dalry, Scotland</a>.

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Carbon reductions through our tree-planting projects

At Ecologi, we believe that trees are a little bit magic.
Their carbon-sucking powers are quietly phenomenal &#8211; not to mention the enormous benefits of tree-planting and forest protection to global biodiversity and wildlife habitats. However, unlike with our offset projects &#8211; which are operated with a global system of verified units of carbon reduction which can be ‘retired’ at any time &#8211; it can be a challenge to calculate an exact, quantified measure of the carbon emissions that our trees will reduce over their lifetime.
This is because different species of trees remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at different rates, and within species, individual trees store carbon at different rates over their lifetime. In addition, factors such as success rates (the percentage of the trees which survive and grow to reach the designated lifespan) are also at play and have an effect on the amount of carbon reduced.
If we were to assume that all of our trees planted were species of mangrove (which 89.8% of them are), we could get at an approximate figure, however. Since we know that individual mangrove trees <a href="https://ecologi.com/articles/in-depth/growing-trees-responsible-reforestation" target="_blank" rel="noopener">remove ~0.3083 tonnes of CO2e over a 25-year lifespan</a>, we can calculate that (if the remaining 10.2% of our trees planted to date were also mangroves) our trees would remove ~1,849,800 tCO2e from the atmosphere over those 25 years.
According to <a href="https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the US Environmental Protection Agency</a>, this is equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions from 4,590,074,442 miles driven in an average passenger vehicle, or the amount of carbon dioxide released from the consumption of 4,282,678 barrels of oil. Whilst only an estimate, this gives us a benchmark for the sort of impact we have had so far, and illustrates the immense scope of our potential for what we can achieve in the future. In 2021, we are hoping to collect and report more sophisticated data from our planting sites about the amount of carbon reductions our trees are making over their lifetime, and we will share this with our supporters in due course.

Almost 250,000 tonnes of verified emissions reductions

Parallel to our tree-planting projects, our subscribers have funded the reduction of 249,464 tonnes of CO2e emissions through our verified carbon offset projects, up to the end of 2020. Each and every tonne is certified by an industry-leading formal standard (usually <a href="https://www.goldstandard.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gold Standard</a> or <a href="https://verra.org/project/vcs-program/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Verified Carbon Standard</a>).
Only purchasing carbon offsets which meet these rigorous standards is crucial to our aim of funding the most effective climate solutions, as they provide security in the measurement, additionality, permanence and (lack of) leakage of the projects that we fund. Research carried out on behalf of WWF Germany by the Stockholm Environment Institute <a href="https://www.sei.org/publications/making-sense-voluntary-carbon-market-comparison-carbon-offset-standards/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">goes into great detail</a> on how different carbon standards track these criteria, and supports the notion that Gold Standard and VCS (alongside the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism) are the most effective, successful and appropriate standards available for carbon offset projects.

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Figure 4

We recognise Gold Standard and VCS as the top international standards for the voluntary carbon market in terms of carbon reductions, but another key reason that we select projects that meet these standards is due to their verified and documented co-benefits relating to the <a href="https://sdgs.un.org/goals" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sustainable Development Goals</a> (SDGs). As well as this, we use the expert knowledge of our Climate Committee and resources such as <a href="https://drawdown.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Project Drawdown</a> to carefully select which offset projects to fund, to ensure that our subscribers’ money is being used to support the most effective climate solutions there are.
As standard, we only fund offset projects that provide a verified benefit to SDG 13 &#8211; Climate Action. In 2020, on average, our carbon offset projects this year had 3.67 SDG co-benefits, meaning that, of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, our projects provided a verified and documented benefit to an average of 2.67 other SDGs (in addition to SDG 13). Our most prolific project in terms of verified SDG co-benefits was our <a href="https://ecologi.com/projects/biomass-power-project-raipur-india" target="_blank" rel="noopener">biopower project in India</a>, which had a whopping eight SDG co-benefits! Going forward, by tracking additional SDG co-benefits, we can target those projects which provide much more than just their tonnage of carbon reductions, and meet verified standards in other important areas.
The breakdown of each SDG co-benefit as a proportion of all SDG co-benefits is shown in Figure 5.

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Figure 5

Aside from SDG 13 (Climate Action), the most common SDG co-benefit among our projects this year was <a href="https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal7" target="_blank" rel="noopener">SDG 7 &#8211; Affordable &amp; Clean Energy</a> (verified in 14.9% of our projects), followed by <a href="https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal8" target="_blank" rel="noopener">SDG 8 &#8211; Decent Work &amp; Economic Growth</a> (13.2%) and <a href="https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal3" target="_blank" rel="noopener">SDG 3 &#8211; Good Health &amp; Wellbeing</a> (11.6%). 
Going into 2021, as well as selecting projects with a higher average number of co-benefits, we aim to seek out and select projects which will balance out the relevant co-benefits to ensure that as well as the climate impact that we have through the carbon standards and SDG 13, our impact will also be felt in other vital areas within the remit of the Sustainable Development Goals.

As of 31st December 2020, our supporters have funded 33 offset projects in 20 countries around the world.
Subscriber funding was spread out among projects in a broad geographical range. Predominantly, the countries where we funded offset projects in 2020 were in South and Central America, East Africa and Southeast Asia. This said, the countries which featured the most of our projects this year were India (7 projects), followed by Turkey (6 projects), followed by Brazil (3 projects).
This phenomenon occurred in 2020 because projects were selected based on individual merit (per the criteria and standards described above), which meant that in some regions (such as South America) we were funding a few projects in many countries, whereas in other regions (such as Western Asia) we were funding many projects in just one country.

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Figure 6

In terms of scale, our offset projects tend to fall into one of two categories at either end of the spectrum: either small-to-micro scale community-based projects (such as cookstoves, or local water distribution projects) or large-scale wind or solar energy projects.
As before, the selection of projects was broadly based on the individual merit of the project itself, according to the measures in our criteria (above), which meant that any trends to do with the scale of projects funded were mostly byproducts.
The mixture does however reflect our strategic aims to fund the most effective climate solutions and projects which will promote meaningful change for the climate and for local communities, and is guided by how the projects individually map onto the most effective solutions as ranked by <a href="https://drawdown.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Project Drawdown</a>.
In terms of the types of projects we funded in 2020, this varied, and the full breakdown is displayed in Figure 9. What this chart shows is that our most frequently funded project types pertain to higher ranked solutions on the Project Drawdown table of solutions.
For example, wind energy (<a href="https://drawdown.org/solutions/onshore-wind-turbines" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Drawdown solution #2</a>) made up 24% of projects funded, and fuel-efficient cookstoves (<a href="https://drawdown.org/solutions/improved-clean-cookstoves" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Drawdown solution #21</a>) made up 12%. Other popular project types this year included avoided deforestation (15% of projects; <a href="https://drawdown.org/solutions/forest-protection" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Drawdown solution #38</a>) and landfill gas capture (15% of projects; <a href="https://drawdown.org/solutions/landfill-methane-capture" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Drawdown solution #58</a>).

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Figure 7

We also focused a lot this year on protecting the Amazon (including through avoided deforestation), which is why South America was our most popular region for offset projects, with projects funded in 5 countries there this year &#8211; in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Uruguay. Afforestation tends not to be very prominent in the count in Figure 7 (3% of projects), because the vast majority of our afforestation work takes place as part of our tree-planting projects portfolio, and the offsets projects are instead focused on other areas, such as renewables (or in the case of forestry, avoided deforestation). 
This year, we also updated the way that we calculate subscriber carbon footprints to a more robust methodology, and using the latest data available from the UNFCCC and CAIT. The new calculations will contribute to a slight change in the cost of subscriptions for some of our users, but will give us a much more accurate and robust mechanism for tracking carbon footprints offset going forward. You can read all about this update <a href="https://ecologi.com/articles/product/carbon-footprinting-at-ecologi">on the blog</a>.

Virtual climate festival reaches 24,000 views

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the UK government announced its intention to cancel the 2020 iteration of the Conference of the Parties (COP 26) which was due to take place in Glasgow, in November.
We were disappointed by the cancellation of the COP for two main reasons: because much of global governance and business had gone online without issue (including other intergovernmental summits) and often, even when the UN climate conferences do go ahead, tangible outcomes from the COPs are so bureaucratically dense as to be indecipherable for many people.
Motivated by these frustrations and the knowledge that the climate clock <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">would remain ticking</a>, we decided to run our own global virtual festival of climate action. We called it <a href="https://itstime.earth">It’s Time</a>, and it took place on 17-18th November 2020.

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It's Time

With just three months to plan and organise the event from start to finish, we put together a small team and brought together <a href="https://itstime.earth/speakers" target="_blank" rel="noopener">162 speakers from all over the world</a> to inspire our virtual attendees to climate action, through both pre-recorded and live talks, activities, performances, panel discussions, documentary screenings and more.
The event was broadcast over two days from a television studio, with hosts Cel Spellman and Basma Khalifa, with content segregated into five virtual stages, streamed via Vimeo. Broadcasting over 65 hours of content, our It’s Time line-up included speakers and representatives of WWF UK, Project Drawdown, Project Everyone, Rainforest Trust UK, OLIO, Green Is The New Black, Extinction Rebellion, Intrepid Travel and many more.
The event was opened by His Royal Highness, The Prince of Wales, received a video endorsement from Sir Keir Starmer, received 205 pieces of press coverage, and reached 24,481 views from attendees in 80 countries.
As part of our commitment to plant a tree for every email sign-up to It’s Time, we funded the planting of 9,011 trees for the event. Feedback from the event was sparkling, and we were extremely proud of the positive, upbeat impact that the event had managed to deliver for so many people around the world, in an extremely challenging year for all.

Factoring in the anticipated slowdown at the start of 2021 (our Christmas gifts were a big hit), we are expecting to reach an incredible 10 million trees funded by April 2021. 
At the end of 2021, on our current trajectory we’re expecting to have planted between 17 and 46 million trees. Where our year-end total will fall, between these two figures, will become clearer as the first few months of the year take shape.
Quite frankly, whether we plant 17 million trees by the end of 2021, or 46 (or more!), we hope you’ll join us in relishing the prospect of these incredible numbers. 
On top of this, we are aiming for an anticipated 1.5 million verified tonnes of carbon dioxide prevented from entering the atmosphere from funding our other climate action projects, such as from <a href="https://ecologi.com/projects/supporting-new-hydropower-plant-uganda">micro scale hydropower</a>, <a href="https://ecologi.com/projects/landfill-gas-in-brazil">landfill gas capture</a>, and <a href="https://ecologi.com/projects/preserving-the-mesoamerican-biological-corridor-in-guatemala">preventing deforestation</a>.
This is epic climate action funded principally by small amounts of disposable cash from individuals, families and businesses. And excitingly, there’s so much further to go. This amount of impact will be achieved by around 30,000 subscribers, nowhere near 150 million subscribers that the likes of Spotify and Netflix enjoy.
Thank you to our subscribers, partners and to all who have supported Ecologi in 2020. We cannot wait to see what 2021 brings.

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At Ecologi we believe that bringing nature back to our planet is really important, and is one of the best things that we can do to help tackle the climate crisis. Restoring forests can help reverse species’ extinction, tackle climate change and also improve our <a href="https://www.forestryengland.uk/wellbeing" target="_blank" rel="noopener">health and wellbeing</a>.  There are many different ways in which forests and ecosystem restoration can be done. Two examples are reforestation and rewilding. 
Often the terms reforestation and rewilding are used interchangeably, however there are some key differences between the two.

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Definition
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<li>Reforestation is the planting of trees in areas where there has historically been tree cover. </li>
<li>Rewilding is the large-scale restoration of ecosystems (wetlands, peatlands, forests etc) to the point where nature is allowed to take care of itself. </li>
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Ecosystems
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<li>Reforestation focuses on trees. These trees then grow and provide wildlife habitats, clean air and shade. </li>
<li>Rewilding works across the whole ecosystem level, restoring natural function in all trophic levels. It can involve the reintroduction of species such as beavers or wolves.</li>
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Method
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<li>Reforestation involves the manual planting of trees by humans.</li>
<li>Rewilding leaves an area alone for natural regeneration where possible e.g. seed dispersal leading to regeneration of trees.  </li>
</ul>

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Location
<ul>
<li>Reforestation can happen anywhere where there has historically been a forest.</li>
<li>Rewilding works best on lightly degraded sites, or those close to existing forests that can serve as sources of seed. </li>
</ul>

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Reforestation Vs Rewilding_Blog_Banner_SPECIES MIX

Species mix
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<li>Reforestation chooses which species to plant. It should be done using a mixture of native species, including rare and endangered ones where possible.</li>
<li>Rewilding can be difficult to predict in advance, in terms of the exact trajectory of revegetation (i.e. species mix, location and density).</li>
</ul>

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Community involvement
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<li>Reforestation can work alongside initiatives to boost local economies &#8211; e.g. agroforestry, sustainable generation of wood products, or ecotourism.  </li>
<li>Rewilding involves leaving nature to its own devices, without human intervention. </li>
</ul>

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Reforestation Vs Rewilding_Blog_Banner_BIODIVERSITY IMPACT

Biodiversity impact
<ul>
<li>Reforestation can benefit biodiversity if native, diverse tree species are planted (responsible reforestation), rather than monocultures of cultivated trees. </li>
<li>Rewilding always works to restore the native biodiversity of the area. </li>
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Reforestation Vs Rewilding_Blog_Banner_CLIMATE IMPACT

Climate impact
<ul>
<li>Reforestation creates planted forests which take in CO2 from the atmosphere if sufficient protection measures are put in place. </li>
<li>Rewilding creates restored ecosystems which take in CO2 from the atmosphere if sufficient protection measures are put in place. </li>
</ul>

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<h2>Reforestation </h2>
Reforestation is a key tool in helping to tackle the climate crisis, particularly the reforestation of tropical forests. Tropical forests have suffered extensive destruction, fragmentation, degradation and depletion of biodiversity. Once covering <a href="https://drawdown.org/solutions/tropical-forest-restoration" target="_blank" rel="noopener">12% of the world&#8217;s landmass, they now cover just 5%.</a> Reforestation works to restore previous forest cover, by cultivating and planting seedlings. 
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In order to have benefits, both for biodiversity and for carbon sequestration, this reforestation needs to be done responsibly. Forest researchers recently found that within the <a href="https://www.bonnchallenge.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bonn Challenge</a>, a global goal to restore 350 million hectares of degraded ecosystems by 2030,<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01026-8?utm_medium=affiliate&amp;utm_source=commission_junction&amp;utm_campaign=3_nsn6445_deeplink_PID100062364&amp;utm_content=deeplink" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> 45% of forest restoration commitments </a>involved monoculture plantations of fast growing trees. These are usually intended for harvest, and are ecologically poor and store little carbon. Reforestation needs to be done with a native and diverse mix of species in order to boost the biodiversity of the area, and efficient protection measures must be put in place to ensure that the forest persists for long periods of time, instead of being cut down to produce timber. 
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At Ecologi, our key tree-planting sites are tree-planting projects in Madagascar, Mozambique and Nicaragua. The trees planted are a wide mixture of native species, and our tree-planting partners <a href="https://edenprojects.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Eden Reforestation</a> work carefully with all levels of government to protect the forests. They also employ forest guards to monitor the area, and engage the local community with the forest by employing local villagers to plant and care for the trees. You can read more about our tree planting projects <a href="https://ecologi.com/articles/updates/year-2-of-the-ecologi-forests" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here. </a>
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The UK has recently made commitments to increase its forest cover, pledging to plant 30,000 new hectares of trees each year as part of the<a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-outlines-his-ten-point-plan-for-a-green-industrial-revolution-for-250000-jobs" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> 10- point plan for a green industrial revolution</a> published in December 2020. Increasing tree cover is especially important in Britain, of which only <a href="https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/support-rewilding/our-campaigns-and-issues/natural-regeneration" target="_blank" rel="noopener">13% is forested</a>. This is compared to<a href="https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/support-rewilding/our-campaigns-and-issues/natural-regeneration" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> 40% for the EU and 46% of Europe</a> as a whole. So we need more trees and woodland, but we must ensure these are planted in a responsible way. This is why we also now have two UK specific tree-planting projects, planting trees in Scotland, and in the South-West of England. You can read more about our UK reforestation projects <a href="https://ecologi.com/projects/reforestation-projects-in-the-uk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.

<h2>Rewilding </h2>
Rewilding involves leaving nature alone as much as possible to recover by itself without human intervention. It is defined as the large-scale restoration of ecosystems to the point in which nature is allowed to take care of itself, and seeks to reinstate natural processes, and where possible missing species, allowing them to influence the ecosystems and shape the habitats within them. Rewilding is not designed to reach a specific end point or final ecosystem, but goes wherever nature takes it. 
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All degraded ecosystems can be rewilded and rewilding can involve interactions at all levels. <a href="https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Rewilding Britain</a> calculates that restoring native woodland, peat bogs, heaths and species-rich grasslands over a total of six million hectares could sequester <a href="https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/blog/new-report-how-restoring-nature-can-help-decarbonise-the-uk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">47 million tonnes of CO2 per year</a>. This is more than 1/10th of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions. 
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Rewilding can often involve the reintroduction of a species into an area. A classic example of rewilding is the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/25/yellowstone-wolf-project-25th-anniversary" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park in the US.</a> When westerners first arrived at this park in the 1920s, they very quickly hunted wolves to extinction. In the 1990s wolves started to be reintroduced into Yellowstone in order to control the elk populations. The elk and deer populations started responding immediately. Within about 10 years, willows rebounded. Within 20 years, the aspen began flourishing. Riverbanks stabilized and songbirds returned, as did beavers, eagles, foxes and badgers. They have restored the natural function of the ecosystem and biodiversity has flourished. 25 years later, this is heralded as one of the world’s most successful rewilding stories. 
 
In the case of forest ecosystems, rewilding typically involves releasing land from non-forest use, such as growing crops or damming a valley, and letting a young forest rise up on its own. As the forest ecosystem recovers, trees, soil, leaf litter and other vegetation absorb and hold carbon. As functions are restored, the forest regains its multidimensional roles, supporting the water cycle, conserving soil, protecting habitat and pollinators and providing food, medicine and fibres. 
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An example of where elements of rewilding have been incorporated into our tree-planting projects is the woolly pigs that are used to help restore ecosystem functions to our forest sites in <a href="https://ecologi.com/projects/reforesting-dalry-scotland" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dalry, Scotland</a>. These pigs churn up the soil, allowing the seed bank to come to the surface and improving the species diversity of the forests. The pigs also trample and clear bracken, creating space for new life to push through it.

<h2>Both are needed… </h2>
<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01026-8?utm_medium=affiliate&amp;utm_source=commission_junction&amp;utm_campaign=3_nsn6445_deeplink_PID100062364&amp;utm_content=deeplink" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Some scientists</a> argue that rewilding should be the default approach, and that we shouldn’t be planting trees at all, but instead let woodlands grow back through the process of natural regeneration. However whilst rewilding is extremely important and provides many benefits to the natural areas, there are places where rewilding simply isn’t likely to occur; such as in land far away from seed sources, or in urban parks. 
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Additionally there are large areas where natural regeneration would take a long time, even many decades, due to limited access to seed sources. We know that as we face both the climate and biodiversity crisis, time is of the essence. We therefore need both reforestation and rewilding in order to help protect the climate and to help biodiversity thrive.

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Investment_Blog_Header

At Ecologi we’re often reaching for the celebration klaxon for our community’s impact milestones, but it’s a little different this time around.
Today, we’re pleased to announce that we’ve taken on £4m ($5.7m) of investment led by <a href="https://www.generalcatalyst.com/">General Catalyst</a> to follow our dreams and grow Ecologi to the scale needed to take on climate change in a significant way.
General Catalyst has a knack for turning their investments into household names: AirBnB, Deliveroo, Snapchat, Stripe, and Monzo to name just a few.
We know there’s room for the Spotify of Sustainability, and it’s with the resources of a leading investor that we can make this a reality, in a timeframe suitable for turning the proverbial Titanic around and reversing climate change over the critical decade ahead.
Before we started Ecologi, the idea was that we’d be set up as a non-profit organisation. Our mission is altruistic and that non-profit model aligned with our vision. As half of the world’s emissions have happened within the <a href="https://ieep.eu/news/more-than-half-of-all-co2-emissions-since-1751-emitted-in-the-last-30-years">lifetime of a 30-year-old</a>, there isn’t the luxury of time to grow traditionally through donations and slower ‘organic growth’. But, it didn’t take long to understand that to achieve Spotify-level scale, then you need Spotify-level capital to fulfil our potential impact.
It’s not just a sum of money that we were looking for, but a partner who wholly understands the delicate conditions which Ecologi needs to thrive: putting the planet first; complete transparency; keeping operational costs minimal; and staying ethical (see our decision to <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/withdrawing-tech-nations-net-zero-elliot-coad/">withdraw from TechNation</a>).
Amongst 50 or so investors we spoke to, it was General Catalyst who fully understood this ethical tightrope with our long term plans to raise the bar on what it means to be a social enterprise. They gave examples of supporting one of their investments to donate over <a href="https://www.warbyparker.com/buy-a-pair-give-a-pair">eight million prescription glasses</a>; they set up a non-profit fund with excess profits from an ethical investment; also they understood that the future of Ecologi should be part-owned by our community via crowdfunding &#8211; an exciting development to own a stake in Ecologi and our planet too (more details at the end of this post).

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Investment_Blog_How_Its_Going

As we approach our 2nd birthday, we enter a new chapter with Ecologi that will be characterised with scale. Up to now, everything has been done on the tightest of budgets with our wonderful but tiny team. We look forward to progressing our climate impact exponentially as we race towards our target to reduce 50% of global emissions by 2040.
There is plenty we have in store. We want to actually show you the impact you’re making through storytelling and technology. We want to support projects that rewild our planet and fund innovative carbon removal technology. We want to show you your carbon footprint in real-time. We want to make good on the opportunity that can come out of rounding up the world’s pocket money and putting it into the world’s most impactful climate solutions.
Now we can, so no excuses! Let’s grow. 🌿
From Elliot, Lucy, Alex and the team here: thank you for your part in supporting this ray of climate hope 💚

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Blog_Divider_mushroom

We showed a draft of this announcement to a few of our Ecologi subscribers and friendly critics and asked them what questions they had:
What will you spend the investment on?
Now’s the time to scale up our teams to enhance the platform, grow our climate projects procurement and reporting team, and expand our marketing and partnership teams. We’ll be a company of 40-60 people over the next 12 months. 
The investment will also allow us to buy larger quantities of certified carbon offsets and tree purchases upfront meaning we can plan better, get access to some projects we’d otherwise not be able to, and sometimes access better prices.
Some of the existing staff will be now paid the going rate for their level of expertise. None of the investment is to go on bonuses or dividends. 
Will we still operate Ecologi as we have done?
Absolutely yes.
If we are to be massively successful in our objectives it’s because we took on board everything that you needed us to be.
Is the source of the investment from profits of fossil fuel or high carbon industries?
No. It’s from a combination of pension funds that make investments in technology, and previous technology company profits. 
What is the investor expecting in return?
They will be looking to make a return on their investment, multiple times the amount they put in. And this is something that we can achieve and be entirely compatible with our journey. 
At some point in our future we’ll expect to come to the end of investment rounds and have a few options to suit us: be acquired and taken under the wing of a major future sustainability company; float on the stock market and be publicly owned; or even Ecologi makes their own investments in early-stage climate projects which yield their own returns. It’s far too early to say which financing route will come into effect but be assured that it’ll be a decision made with our mission in mind.
Investors will be expecting no dividends during this journey as any profits are to be reinvested back into the company.
How is Ecologi going to stay ethical?
As we grow, we will have the resources to upgrade our <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dACvzjE5nBE1cKZBAhYzsUa7rIiLJqCWXVgY4bNS8_Q/edit#gid=1742437033">transparency docs</a> and be a lot more verbose about what we’re up to. A quick run-through of what’s coming up: 
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">In the queue to be B Corp certified, all prep governance work is complete; </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">A bonafide social enterprise with mission locked into our company documents; </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Increased detail on our quarterly financial reports such as director salary info; </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Regular “our door is always open”-style drop-in to chat with Elliot, the CEO, over Zoom;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Lifting the lid on what we’re up to with a “Building Ecologi” blog series.</li>
</ul>
Every person on the team and now investors included knows that we have our hearts fully set on creating a company that reimagines what it is to be a social enterprise. 
It’s going to take some doing, and bear with us as we get there. But please <a href="https://ecologi.com/pages/contact">drop us a line</a> on how we’re doing, as well maybe subscribe to our new <a href="https://medium.com/building-ecologi">Building Ecologi</a> series where we’ll talk about our plans out in the open and welcome your thoughts.

And finally, we’re thinking of running a crowdfunding campaign later this year. We’d love to <a href="https://ecologi.typeform.com/to/DMMimqA9">ask you five questions</a> that should take less than a minute to answer.

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Do you remember, somewhere in the fog of 2020, that period where the pandemic had seeped into every area of our lives but its exact contours and consequences hadn’t yet been established? That point after the initial panic was over, where people had begun to accept this new reality, and had started to consider where we might go from here? Somehow, amidst the horror of news screens filled with ventilated bodies and death counts scrolling ever upward, hope began to spring. Thoughtful, poetic articles began to emerge online about the deeper meaning of this event. Humanity had been given a chance to pause, to reflect, and perhaps &#8211; against all odds &#8211; change course. There was a cautious, quasi-spiritual sense that the planet was sending us a message, as if Mother Nature had realised that humans were not going to bring themselves back from the brink and was now taking the matter into her own hands. These visions of a better society were complemented by a raft of personal resolutions towards self-improvement: goals were set and new habits were inculcated, with the aim of returning after the pandemic a better you in a better world. It was as if we were all given the opportunity to zoom out, from our own lives but also society as a whole, to decide what was really important.
This sense of optimism seemed to be supported by palpable changes in our environment. Global emissions were down 7%; flights had dropped 96%; there were dolphins in Venice! These cracks of light in the gloom sustained us, made us feel as if the pandemic was really for something (beyond, well, surviving a pandemic). That is, there seemed to be a goal we were working towards, by which we could orientate our present reality, giving it some sense. And this was important. Hope sustains us in times of difficulty. It is the voice which reminds us no pain lasts forever, that the sun also rises.

But it seems that somewhere along the way, this optimism began to give way to something else. Weariness. Disillusionment. As lockdown 2 almost imperceptibly melted into lockdown 3, as the term ‘wave’ began to lose all meaning because the Covid tide had never gone away, darker realities began to set in. Not only did we witness our governments continue to vacillate and send mixed messages, we saw huge opportunities to restructure our economy missed, the same old mistakes from the 2008 financial crisis repeated as ‘too big to fail’ industries such as aviation and steel were bailed out, with no climate-change mitigation requirements built into the rescue packages. Rather than being <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-leveller-trfn-idUSKCN21R30P" target="_blank" rel="noopener">‘The Great Leveller’</a>, we saw this pandemic exacerbate existing inequalities, the wealth of the top 1% rising by $8 trillion during the pandemic whilst many ordinary people were reduced to government handouts. Working from home also removed access to an equal workspace and put increased pressure on those facing challenging circumstances in their home environment. And everywhere we looked we found ourselves adrift in a sea of plastic: the take-out diets triple-plastic wrapped to avoid contamination, the delivery packages ordered to punctuate the boredom of lockdown living, and of course the proliferation of that once unknown acronym: PPE. And perhaps most deflating of all, it turned out those dolphins had never been in Venice, that it was a piece of <a href="https://www.2oceansvibe.com/2020/03/23/sorry-but-the-dolphins-that-appeared-in-venice-is-fake-news/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">fake news</a> exploiting the sense of hope in the air.
What happened here? Were we deluded to dream of a better future? Did we imagine something that never really could have been? 
No. It is never wrong to hope. And it did sustain us in those interminable lockdown months. Our error was in putting our hopes on an external event, in this notion that Covid had come to save us, as if it were some sort of geo-biological defense mechanism, the natural arc of history correcting itself. But an event can only be as significant as the responses which it generates. Which is to say, the significance of the pandemic was in the million daily acts of kindnesses which it elicited: the grocery collections for elderly and infirm neighbours, the selfless bravery of the frontline workers putting themselves and their families at risk for the greater good, the proactiveness of those who organised events and other forms of support for the most vulnerable. Without even realising it, without waiting for a sunny day where we would have the type of society that we wanted, we were building it in front of our very eyes. One based on solidarity, equality and community concern (all of which happen to be the very characteristics needed to pull us out of the climate crisis &#8211; since we are all sharing increasingly limited space and resources on this planet). What we needed wasn’t a deus ex machina to solve the problem. What we needed was to see that the world around us is a result of the values we hold as a society, and it is this we need to change. This means remembering that the same essential ties that bound us through the pandemic persist and it is along these ties that change is effected, not some grand narrative happening out there. After all, the planet doesn’t care &#8211; it is humans that will perish, not nature.

The pandemic certainly has and will create short term change. The US government has just initiated an unprecedented $1.9 trillion stimulus package which stands to halve national poverty for example. But if we forget the lessons that Covid taught us about our own ways of life, such socially-minded policies will quickly fade into memory. No cataclysm will prevent business as usual from returning. As the Cree Indian saying goes, “Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish been caught, and the last stream poisoned, will we realize we cannot eat money.” We cannot wait for further wildfires, droughts and floods to jostle us into wakefulness. It is only through a wave of individuals coming together into communities, into a global movement, encompassing economics, energy, agriculture, and politics, that a truly sustainable way of life will be achieved. Outward events can point us in the direction, but we must walk the path. The steps need not be huge, but we must continue to take them. Reading or sharing this article. <a href="https://ecologi.com/plan">Subscribing to offset the carbon we produce</a>. Reducing meat consumption, <a href="https://ecologi.com/articles/blog/one-small-step-for-you-one-giant-impact-for-humankind">greening our finances</a> or <a href="https://ecologi.com/articles/blog/activism-how-the-drops-inside-the-ocean-are-breaking-down-the-dam">joining a movement</a>. Every step counts. But never question that it is you who must walk those steps. Far from being a lonely journey, the more you do, the more you will find the others who are walking it with you.

Ecologi Impact Report 2020

Over 6 million trees now funded by our subscribers

Total number of trees purchased

Brand new tree-planting sites

Updates from our planting sites

Photos

Take a look at the latest images from some of our planting sites

Marotaola 1

Changalane

Dyrham

Dalry

Carbon reductions through our tree-planting projects

Almost 250,000 tonnes of verified emissions reductions

Offset project types and locations

Virtual climate festival reaches 24,000 views

Targets for 2021

More posts

Reforestation vs. Rewilding

Ecologi, Chapter 2

There is no vaccine for the climate: connecting Covid-19 to climate change

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