Happy Nice Mall

This article is part of a special report Climate Solutionslooks at worldwide efforts to make a difference.

CARCASTILLO, Spain — As bushfires devastated Cerro de Monserrate in Colombia in 2015, Juan Carlos Sesma, Spanish retail consultant working in Bogota, began considering reforestation of the planet.

With experience developing systems for restaurant chains, supermarkets and department store El Corte Inglés, he imagined his know-how could be applied to the task of reversing deforestation.

“I knew that if afforestation could be made efficient and profitable, the world would have a lot more trees,” he said.

Taking time off from work, he bought a box of Empress tree seeds—a fast-growing species that can reach 20 feet in a year—and flew back to his hometown in Spain, determined to learn how to plant trees and put his idea into practice. .

Mr. Sesma, 38, is among a growing group of global citizens who are not only concerned with the future of the planet but are also trying to find innovative solutions to save it. Thanks in part to the influence of young environmental activist Greta Thunberg and initiatives like Prince William’s initiative. gravity Award, they attract more attention.

But it wasn’t always like that.

Initially, only one person believed in Mr Sesma’s plan – a Cistercian monk who tended the orchards in the Monasterio de la Oliva, near Mr Sesma’s family home.

One morning recently, Reverend Enrique Carrasco, 83, pushed a wheelbarrow into the monastery’s vegetable garden. Dressed in blue overalls instead of robes, he told Mr. Sesma how he had taught him to grow and plant Colombian seeds in a fallow field on the monastery’s grounds.

Together, Mr. Sesma and Reverend Carrasco watched the seeds grow into saplings and then trees too tall to exceed the Spanish government’s height. State Meteorological Agency complained that they had overshadowed a nearby weather station.

There was another problem. The seeds were too invasive to be compatible with Mr Sesma’s dreams of reforesting biodiversity. But he was not deterred.

Now, the three-year-old start-up he co-founded, CO2 Revolution, It uses big data analytics and advanced drone technology to sprinkle millions of lab-developed seeds into inaccessible deforest land for trees native to Spanish forests and suitable for recreating lost ecosystems.

It’s a challenge. According to Ministry of Ecological Transition95,000 hectares of forest – almost 0.35 percent of Spain’s total area – ruined more than 11,000 wildfires each year. Traditional reforestation methods are slow and costly because disaster areas are often inaccessible or unsuitable for machinery.

Forests will be at the center of discussions at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in the next few days, as governments around the world set the goal of net-zero by 2050, i.e. balancing emissions with the elimination of greenhouse gases.

CEO Marc Palahi european forest institute It hopes the talks will focus on policies to grow global reforestation by attracting investment in a new forest. bio-economy. He said he believes sustainably produced wood products such as biopharmaceuticals, biotextiles and building materials can provide over a trillion dollars of job opportunities and jobs.

In a phone interview, he agreed that “drones are a big help in remote areas.” But he said the key to achieving global reforestation goals is sustainable forest management.

Dr. “Planting trees is not as difficult as managing them for the next few decades,” Palahí said.

When Mr. Sesma and his co-founder Javier Sánchez founded the CO2 Revolution in February 2018, their goal was simple enough: plant trees to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The company has three business lines. It provides consultancy services to businesses that want to measure and reduce their emissions. Customers can also reduce their carbon footprint by hiring CO2 Revolution to plant on degraded land using a mix of modern machinery and traditional methods, often involving local communities. In its third line of business, which is both more revolutionary and challenging, CO2 Revolution is cultivating entire forests with low-cost drone technology. Then it sells carbon credits.

At first things progressed slowly. “It was such an innovative idea that people saw it as surreal,” said Mr. Sánchez, 33, who left his job as sales manager at a German supermarket company to join forces with Mr. Sesma.

Entrepreneurs, who met in cafes in the first months, invested their savings in their companies. They hired machines to coat the seeds with nutrients to help them germinate. They equipped the drones with custom-made dispensers. And they asked permission from the landowners and Spanish authorities for planting.

But in their first attempt at aerial reforestation, only a small percentage of the seeds took root: some fell on stones; others rolled downhill; rats and rabbits ate those who made their nests in the ground.

Still, he noticed them. In October 2018, CO2 Revolution was named one of the world’s top 100 start-ups in a competition organized by the innovation platform. South Summit.

Shortly after, CO2 Revolution reached its first major customer, the multinational, LG Electronics Iberiahired them to plant trees on the scorched earth outside Madrid. An agreement was also signed to use LG’s display technology for enhanced drone flight precision.

The client list began to grow and investors, for example Navarra Regional Government, they pulled.

Mr Sesma and Mr Sánchez brought in a carefully selected group of microbiologists, engineers and software programmers.

One morning in his sun-drenched laboratory in central Spain, Jaime Olaizola, a forest engineer, pointed to a pile of plastic dishes containing samples of pine and cedar seed.

A 47-year-old expert in researching microorganisms in the soil, Dr. Olaizola explained that the seeds, which he calls Iseed, are designed to anticipate the problems they will encounter when released into nature. Their clay coating is key. Contains a powerful blend: plant extracts to deter rodents; dried hydrogel to retain moisture; mushrooms to strengthen the defense; and Bohemian truffle to capture nutrients and promote root growth.

When the seeds grow into seedlings, photosynthesis kicks in and nature takes over.

Andrew Heald, director NGPTA, a forest restoration company cautious. He acknowledges that while drones can reforest the planet faster than humans, many seeds must be dispersed for just one to sprout.

Dr. Olaizola acknowledged the concern but said, “If it takes 10 percent root, that’s a success.”

His expectation, based on experiments in his lab, is that 50 percent of the seeds sown in the air this year will become trees. He will not know for sure until the end of the November-April October season.

Similar initiatives have sprung up all over the world. Canadian start, Flash Forestdeveloped a mechanical device that shoots seed pods from drones deep into the ground. Inside Australia, Dendra Systems uses aerial insemination techniques to restore koala forests.

Reforest’Action, Stéphane Hallaire’s Paris-based company, used basic tools such as shovels and shovels to plant 17 million trees in 40 countries over the past decade. Mr Hallaire said the use of drones is a viable method of capturing CO2 in countries with large populations such as Canada or China. But he said he prefers to involve local communities and empower the next generation of entrepreneurs to develop a more sustainable form of reforestation.

“People need to improve their living conditions so that trees are not cut down,” he said.

In line with the European Union’s commitment to plant an extra three billion trees in its member states before 2030, Mr Sesma and Mr Sánchez said they would be happy to plant an extra tree for every person on the planet each year.

It’s an ambitious goal, but Mr. Sánchez said it’s not unattainable: “With technologies like ours, it’s possible.”