The L’OCCITANE Foundation has supported environmental and social causes for close to two decades, with respecting biodiversity at the heart of its mission. In 2022, it launched its first international call for projects, dedicated to restoring some of the planet’s most threatened ecosystems: the world’s biodiversity hotspots.
These are the regions richest in life and most at risk. To qualify as a hotspot, an area must hold at least 1,500 plant species found nowhere else on Earth and must already have lost at least 70 percent of its original vegetation. Through this program, the Foundation set out to help protect and restore these irreplaceable landscapes, and support the communities who depend on them.
WeForest was chosen as one of the Foundation’s first international partners through this call, with a three-year commitment to help restore part of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest. Once covering around 16 percent of the country, only seven percent of this forest remains today, yet it still shelters more than 20,000 plant species, 8,000 of them found nowhere else on Earth.
The work centers on the municipalities of Ibitinga and Itaju, where surviving forest fragments sit isolated among farmland along the Tietê River. WeForest and its local teams are reconnecting these remnants using two complementary approaches: encouraging natural regeneration where native trees can return on their own, and actively planting fast-growing, high-canopy species where invasive grasses would otherwise block recovery.
Restoration here is inseparable from the people who live alongside the forest. In the Dandara settlement, WeForest is helping local farmers establish organic agroforestry systems, form a native-seed collection group, and develop beekeeping as a new source of income. These activities put families at the center of the landscape’s recovery and give them a lasting stake in its future.
For the L’OCCITANE Foundation, the partnership turns a commitment to biodiversity into visible change on the ground: a fragmented, threatened forest slowly knitting back together, and a community growing more resilient alongside it. It reflects a shared belief that the world’s richest ecosystems are worth restoring well, and worth restoring for the long term.
See which solution is right for you and get started today.
HQ (BE): WeForest asbl/vzw
Cantersteen 47, 1000 Brussels, Belgium
WeForest is a member of:
