Climate change has become such an important economic, social and environmental issue that it has been renamed in mainstream discussions as the climate crisis. This crisis stresses urgency, especially as numerous countries are reporting increases in climate-related events such as heatwaves, forest fires, and flooding. Europe has set many goals to address the climate crisis from a top-down approach. On the other end of the spectrum, individuals have the motivation to act, but many are unsure of how and where to act. The results are insufficient, and the UNFCCC has acknowledged that the pace of current action remains too slow and must be accelerated.

LIFE Terra seeks to create a movement that plants 500 million trees in 5 years, harnessing and monitoring nature’s own carbon capture mechanism and empowering citizens to take urgent action against the climate crisis. Its main objectives are to:

• Engage a monumental number of individual citizens and stakeholders to take action on climate change mitigation by facilitating the planting of 500 million trees in Europe by 2025;
• Connect these participants through an innovative and comprehensive web platform and App that organises and streamlines the planting process for scaling up and scaling out;
• Innovate in the latest monitoring and satellite technologies to provide citizens and specialists alike with precise and transparent data on trees planted;
• Inspire the next generation of EU citizens to thrive and face future climate change challenges, through a unique Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)-focused environmental sustainability education programme.

The project is directly relevant to supporting Paris Climate Agreement goals and to helping the EU reach carbon neutrality as part of the 2030 and 2050 climate and energy frameworks. It also contributes to the EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030 and its specific goals to plant 3 billion trees by 2030 and to restore degraded ecosystems. In addition, the project has synergy with the EU Adaptation Strategy to climate change by carrying out risk and vulnerability assessments, reducing soil erosion and managing flooding through large-scale tree planting.


Results



Expected results: A massive climate change mitigation impact due to the capture and storage of carbon through the planting of trees. On average, each ha of land restored can capture approx. 200 tons of CO2e over a 40-year period. The project is expected to: 1. Develop a LIFE TERRA platform and accompanying App that unites stakeholders; 2. Plant, geotag and monitor 498.7 million trees, thereby restoring 498 700 ha of land that captures 3 536 million tons of CO2e by the project’s end; 3. Provide proof-of-concept for various nursery cultivation, planting and monitoring methods to increase efficiency of professional tree planting operations, validated using LCA; 4. Generate external funding to finance replication independently; 5. Train European nurseries staff in sustainable substrate production, and expand use of professional planting technology; 6. Teach STEM-based sustainability lesson plans in at least 14 000 classrooms; 7. Reach 100 million individuals through online dissemination and awareness raising; 8. Engage 50 million people to plant trees, with 22 000 citizens trained as volunteer Terra Leaders; 9. Change behaviour in 25% of all individuals registered on the platform; 10. Create 50 direct FTE jobs in the consortium; 11. Receive 3 000 press mentions; 12. Provide a €500 million stimulus to the green economy.


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