Agriculture is one of the main pillars for the Brazilian economy: 25% of the GDP over the past two decades was made up by agriculture and animal husbandry. Furthermore Brazil is the fourth largest food  producer in the world and ranks as the number one crop producer (such as soy, sugarcane and maize). However, it seems like these numbers go hand in hand with Brazil being a large deforester.

20 million trees! - and 16.000 hectares restored: Check out this video to see the impact of these these millions of trees in the field.

WeForest is looking for an experienced Finance and Administration Director, who will be responsible for all financial and related administrative matters of WeForest Ethiopia and will support the Ethiopian team in facilitating the country forest and landscape restoration program. Read the job description below.

WeForest is looking for an experienced project manager to develop, implement and monitor forest restoration and livelihood projects in Desa’a.
Read the job description below.

"You can say that an activity will provide income, but it’s more meaningful to try to understand how much income will be generated in a given period for how many people or households – it involves disaggregating a single variable into its constituent parts, and the parts are usually very quantifiable" - Yvonne Tamba from the Land Health Decisions team (ICRAF).

This International Day of Forests,

We are all wondering,

Who will be the one,

To plant our 20 millionth tree?

In celebration of International Women´s Day, we would like to share the stories of the real change-makers in the field: the women across our project sites in Brazil, Zambia, India, and Ethiopia that have chosen to become independent, to try new things, follow training and train others and above all: the ones that have decided to make a change, for climate, their families, their country and the world.

Read some of their stories in this Exposure Campaign we created especially for this day!

More and more, we get questions like: What is the connection between soils, forests and climate change? What do forests under the ground? What role do soils have in combatting (or contributing to) climate change and are our actions helping or hindering this?

To answer these questions, we need to start with the central theme; carbon.

A progressive forest law

The Brazilian Forest Code, first introduced in 1934 (with changes in 1965 and 2012) aims to protect rivers, soils and forests in private lands (or farms) in Brazil, and requires that some landowners have 20% of their lands covered by forests. Nowadays, 21 million hectares officially fall under this law, and if they were actually all restored, an estimated 9 gigatons of CO2 would be sequestered from the atmosphere.This equals the total emissions from China over the entire last year!

During COP24 in Katowice, Poland, end of last year, it once again was discussed how to deal with an ever growing and demanding global population in an increasingly stressed environment.

Taking into account the mitigative benefits of forest maintenance and of reforestation the question seems logic: why is forest cover reducing and not expanding every year?

This synergy of growth and potential between reforestation, business and investors and customers is real, somewhat like the ‘three-legged race’ often played by children...

The theme of this year´s Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) in Bonn was´Connecting for impact´. Connecting people from across the world and across sectors - government, NGO’s, research, policy, business, finance, community, youth and indigenous organisations, is vital to reach the goal of sustainable landscapes together.

A special focus was placed on business and finance sectors and how they can and should support efforts to tackle land degradation and poverty.

The biggest climate march ever in Belgium took place on Sunday December 2nd in the streets of Brussels, coinciding with the start of the UN Climate Conference in Katowice, Poland (COP24).

Where there’s a will , there’s a way!

This ´Claim the Climate´ march, challenged Belgian and global leaders to finally show some political courage to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.

Climate Change is everyone’s challenge

When starting a new project totally from scratch, it might sometimes take up to a year before we start planting and protecting the first trees. That's a very long time you might think, but WeForest believes that high quality Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) projects need to move across the landscape at a speed where we can take the time for excellent planning and logistics, and most importantly, that involve the local community at all stages of the process.

Forest fires are a result of global warming, they also increase it. They cause more carbon to be released, increase temperatures, transforming land into deserts.
See the WeForest CEO interviewed on Belgian news (video in French)

Engineers are trying to replicate what a tree does (absorb and store carbon) to reduce carbon pollution : what’s wrong with just using trees?

Teaching a weekend course on Tropical Forest Restoration in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in exchange for trees being planted for WeForest's Atlantic Forest Project, Ricardo Cesar, WeForest's Brazil Country Representative, does not shy away from dedicating his free time to engage with over 20 graduate and undergraduate students, spark lively discussions and plant more trees!

The Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5ºC released by the IPCC on October 6, 2018 reminds us that forests are one of the solutions to stop global warming.

Our Summary

The global warming worse than expected, fortunately forestry is a big part of the solution.

WeForest, in collaboration with FAO's Forest and Water Programme and GIZ delivered a forest-water capacity building workshop in Mekelle, Ethiopia during June 2018.  The workshop trained technical participants from a range of government, NGO and research organisations aiming to build the capacity and knowledge of forest-water monitoring in Ethiopia, as it relates to Forest and Landscape Restoration (FLR).

Written by Rachel Cohen and Marie-Noëlle Keijzer.

“Governments need quality standards to know whether we are achieving FLR or not. We don’t want FLR to be fake news” explained Rafael Chaves of the Secretariat for the Environment of the State of Sâo Paulo, Brazil recently at a special event organised by WeForest and the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) with the support of PARTNERS in Nairobi, Kenya during 31st August - 1st Sept 2018.

"So what do we do ? It's simple. Be a hero (..) plant a tree...(...) But above all, remain hopeful".

Read the full article from "Global Citizenship REVIEW", 3rd quarter 2018 - p 28-29 here.
Article written by Dr Cathy Symington, WeForest Advisor and Marie-Noëlle Keijzer, WeForest Founder and CEO

Land degradation already negatively impacts the lives of 3.2 billion people across the globe. Halting and reversing this degradation through Forest and Landscape Restoration (FLR) is now an international priority to address climate change, biodiversity loss, food and water security and improvement of human well-being.