“The survival of us children and young people should be worth it†Plant-for-the-Planet calls for the G7 Heads of Government to support its greatest afforestation project in the history of humankind”
Tutzing, 26th May 2015:  The children’s and youth initiative Plant-for-the-Planet has called upon the G7 Heads of Government to support the greatest afforestation project in the history of humankind.
“Over the last eight years, we children managed to plant 14 billion trees with the help of many adults,†said Yugratna Srivastava (19), student from India and long-term member of the Plant-for-the-Planet Global Board. “Now it is time that the Heads of Government play their part in ensuring our survival.†This message and a Youth Manifesto were the result of their Youth Summit, which had 88 participants from 23 countries. The manifesto was developed together with economists and climate and political scientists. It states as its first goal to plant 1,000 billion trees. Those new trees would sequester one quarter of man-made CO2 and would work as a time buffer for their second goal, a worldwide energy revolution that needs to be implemented by 2050.
A joint study conducted by Yale University proves that there is more than enough room on the planet to realize this greatest afforestation project in the history of humankind. The study will be published over the coming months. “The survival of 3 billion children and young people should be worth more than the amount spent on saving a few banks “, states Felix Finkbeiner, the high-school graduate who founded Plant-for-the-Planet, referring to the sums that were 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†says Felix Finkbeiner.
The Youth Summit 2015 was organised as a co-operation between the children’s and youth initiative Plant-for-the-Planet, the United Nations Environment Programme, UNEP, and the Evangelische Akademie Tutzing. Sagar Aryal and Sudeep Ghimire were the representative from Nepal in the youth summit.The global leaders of this world will be invited to the next summit which will take place May 11th – 16th, 2016, to jointly work on the detailed implementation of a global energy revolution. The Youth Manifesto was also distributed personally to all embassies in Berlin today. The film and photo material with the messages of the youths to the G7 leaders, written on helium balloons and filmed from the helicopter perspective, can be found here: t1p.de/g45o
