Plant-for-the-Planet is an organisation that aims to raise awareness among children and adults about the issues of climate change and global justice. The Initiative also works to plant trees and considers this to be both a practical and symbolic action in efforts to reduce the effect of climate change. Its motto is "Stop Talking, Start Planting". In 2011, it reached a goal of planting a million trees. The organisation is part of the Partner Circle of the Foundations Platform F20, an international network of foundations and philanthropic organizations.
Origin The idea for Plant-for-the-Planet was first developed in Germany in 2007 by Felix Finkbeiner, a nine-year-old boy. It was when Finkbeiner's teacher set the assignment to prepare a school report about the issue of climate change, that was first inspired. While conducting his research he came across the story of Wangari Maathai, a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate from Kenya who had worked to plant over 30 million trees across Africa as part of her "Green Belt Movement". At the end of Felix's presentation, he shared the idea that the children of the world could plant 1 million trees in every country on Earth. On 28 March 2007 the first tree was planted at Finkbeiner's school, marking the official launch of Plant-for-the-Planet. Frithjof Finkbeiner, with the Global Marshall Plan Foundation he founded, provided a website and, according to his statements, 1 million flyers to support this campaign in March 2007. On 22 March 2007, a campaign began at the Munich International School in Starnberg-Buchhof, where students packaged these flyers and sent them to 7,000 schools to publicise the UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) campaign. An online tool on the website was used to manage donations, tree sponsorships, and reports of planting activities. Students in Bavaria and across Germany also got involved and continued to plant trees under the initiative's name. Colin Mummert helped spearhead the Munich campaign for Plant for the Planet. After one year, 150,000 trees had been planted, and in 2008 Finkbeiner was able to reach a larger audience after he was elected to the children's board of the UNEP during the International UNEP Children's Conference in Norway. On 21 September 2009, Maathai and Felix Finkbeiner met in New York at the invitation of the UNEP for a press conference marking the opening of the International Year of Forests. The eleven-year-old Finkbeiner presented his campaign "Stop talking. Start planting." It was designed to raise awareness of the climate crisis among children and adults alike. Meanwhile, UNEP Director Achim Steiner announced that the self-imposed goal of planting one billion trees had long been exceeded and that new goals had to be set. The commitment of China, where 2.6 billion trees had been planted by the government, had been decisive in achieving this goal. On 8 October 2010, the UNEP campaign received the EFFIE in the Social National/International category. The award is presented annually in 15 categories to honour non-profit organisations and initiatives and their effective social marketing communications.
Development Since its creation in 2007, the organisation has developed into a worldwide movement. In August 2009, Finkbeiner spoke at the UNEP Tunza Children and Youth Conference in Daejeon, South Korea. There he promoted Plant-for-the-Planet and recruited children all around the world to promise to plant 1 million trees in each of their own countries. Plant-for-the-Planet promotes the view that each tree is a contribution towards environmental and climate protection. It also suggests that each tree planting is an action for social justice. The organisation says that it is most often the developing countries that suffer the most from the effects of climate change, despite the fact that they have most often done the least to cause it. Plant-for-the-Planet says it considers each tree to also be a symbol for climate justice. Felix Finkbeiner continued to campaign for environmental protection and tree planting. The Plant-for-the-Planet Foundation was founded in Bavaria in 2011, and in the same year was officially entrusted by the UNEP with the responsibility of continuing the Billion Tree Campaign. By the start of 2011, there were children participating in more than 93 countries. As the organisation has grown, so has its main goal. By 2011, the children had achieved their goal of planting a total of 1 million trees around the world. The organisation also received the tree counter from the UNEP, which, according to media reports, had already registered twelve billion trees at that time. Since entries for more than 10,000 trees could not be verified, leading to false reports of unknown proportions, the foundation now states that it no longer promotes this tree counter and has distanced itself from the figure of "12 billion trees." Founder Felix Finkbeiner was in 2018 awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Educational networking events known as Global Youth Summits are held for Climate Justice Ambassadors and their youth leaders and supporters, most recently in Berlin in 2024. Previous Global Youth Summits have been held at the Evangelishce Akademie, Frankfurt 4–8 October 2023, at Jugendherberge Bonn, in November 2022 and 20–24 November 2019 and online, 16–18 October 2020 and 22–24 October 2021. Jakob Blasel announced in an interview with Der Spiegel in April 2019 that the financial management of the German branch of the "Fridays for Future" movement (FFFD) is handled by the Plant-for-the-Planet Foundation, which takes care of account management and financial transactions for FFFD. FFFD does not want to set up huge bureaucratic structures. As a result of negative media coverage in December 2020, FFFD removed the name of the organisation from its website and replaced it with "a well-known NGO" that manages the funds. When it took over the temporary trust account service in 2019, Plant-for-the-Planet had already advised FFFD to set up its own non-profit organisation. Plant-for-the-Planet asked FFFD to close the trust account in 2020.
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