The children’s and youth initiative Plant-for-the-Planet has called upon the G7 to support the greatest afforestation project in history. Balloons bearing messages from young people were released over Tutzing Castle near Lake Starnberg in Germany during the run up to the G7 Summit in Schloss Elmau which begins on June 7, 2015.
Message of the youths reaches G7 on flight to Elmau: “Plant trees for our survival”
Tutzing, 4th June 2015 - The children’s and youth initiative Plant-for-the-Planet has called upon the G7 to support the greatest afforestation project in the history of humankind. “Over the last eight years, we children have managed to plant 14 billion trees with the help of many adults,” explained Yugratna Srivastava (19), from India, Plant-for-the-Planet Global Board member, “Now it is time that the Heads of Government play their part in ensuring the survival of us children and youth. Planting 1,000 billion trees is a realistic goal, as confirmed by Yale University.”
The 1,000 billion new trees will sequester a quarter of human-made CO2.
“The survival of 3 billion children and young people should be worth much more than the survival of a few banks “, stated Felix Finkbeiner (17), who founded Plant-for-the-Planet, referring to the sums provided by all governments after the financial crisis in 2008. “If every corporation and every billionaire on the Forbes-list pledged to plant one billion trees, we could reach our goal to plant 1,000 billion trees by 2020.”
The Youth Summit, with 88 participants from 23 countries, ended with a detailed Youth Manifesto, which has already been distributed to all Heads of Government.
The summit is a co-operation between Plant-for-the-Planet, the United Nations Environment Programme UNEP and the Evangelische Akademie Tutzing. The world’s leaders are invited to the next summit on 11-16 May 2016, to jointly work on the detailed implementation of a global energy revolution.
4 June 2015
