In 2007, when Felix Finkbeiner in Bavaria, Germany, was 9, he had to give a report on climate change. As he researched his report, Finkbeiner learned about Wangari Maathai, a woman in Kenya who led a project which planted 30 million trees. She also started the United Nations (UN) tree-planting program, the Billion Tree Campaign.

Finkbeiner was inspired. He told his classmates in Germany, “Let’s plant a million trees in every country of the world!” Two months after Finkbeiner first talked to his class, his tree-planting project, Plant for the Planet, began.

The connection between trees and climate change is important. Carbon dioxide is a polluting gas, and one of the main causes of climate change. Trees remove carbon dioxide from the air and store it. When trees are cut, their stored carbon is released again. But when trees are planted, more carbon dioxide is cleaned from the air, which helps slow climate change.

Finkbeiner went to other schools and encouraged them to plant trees. News programs learned about Finkbeiner’s plan and covered the story. Plant-for-the-Planet used groups of young students around the world to spread the ideas further. Three years after Finkbeiner came up with the idea, Plant for the Planet planted its millionth tree.

Sharing the idea is almost as important as planting the trees. Plant for the Planet offers training for students. The group hopes the students will not just plant trees, but will also talk to adults in government and businesses to try and get even more trees planted.

When Finkbeiner was 10, he spoke to the European Parliament. In 2011, when he was 13, he spoke to the UN. The UN put Plant for the Planet in charge of its Billion Tree Campaign. Most recently Finkbeiner spoke to world leaders at the 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos where the U.S. and China were among the countries to verbally sign on to Plant for the Planet’s new challenge of planting 1 trillion trees globally.

Things were not always easy. Finkbeiner once asked the leaders of big chocolate companies to give a small amount of the money they made from selling chocolate to help plant trees. The company leaders just laughed.

So Finkbeiner found people who helped him make his own chocolate bar, in a way that’s healthy for the planet. Now The Change Chocolate bar has become a best-selling chocolate bar in Germany. And for every five bars sold, a tree gets planted.

Finkbeiner is now 22, and Plant for the Planet has over 70,000 young members in 67 countries. The group also has over 130 people working for it around the world. As of 2020, the organization has established over 1,500 academies in 74 countries around the world.

In 2015, Plant for the Planet bought 52 square miles (135 square kilometers) of land in the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. Most of the trees there had been cut down. The group has already planted 3 million new trees on the land. Now, with the leadership of tens of thousands of young people and the collaboration of governments, NGOs and corporate partners around the world, 13.6 billion trees have been planted globally. Their new goal is to plant 1 trillion trees.

(SD-Agencies)