An exciting announcement on our birthday!
November 5, 2020
Some interesting things have happened on 5th November over the years. Guy Fawkes was arrested in 1605, the Flux Capacitor was invented in 1955, and GoCarbonNeutral.ie was launched in 2019. Now in 2020, there’s something else, and we’re pretty excited about it.
This day last year we gathered near the ‘Hungry Tree’ in King’s Inns, Dublin to launch our initiative that was the first of its kind globally – the business community coming together to tackle an ambitious goal: to jointly contribute to large-scale reforestation, one acre at a time, taking direct, meaningful action to address the climate and biodiversity crises with tree planting projects based in Ireland.
It’s been an interesting 12 months to say the least! The enthusiasm and support we’ve had has been heartening. Through the pandemic, we’ve been sourcing land, organising planting, building relationships with forestry and biodiversity experts all over the country, signing more and new partnerships with different types of businesses, and now today I’m really excited today to be able to talk about our most ambitious and exciting partnership yet.
Forestry Partners will be coming together with Coillte Nature, the not-for-profit arm of the Irish State forestry company Coillte, to form the Nature Trust, a new not-for-profit that will significantly increase the scale and ambition for our reforestation efforts. The Nature Trust will seek to create more native woodlands across Ireland, in partnership with local communities, and at a hugely increased scale.
We’ll shortly be launching an innovative new financial product with a major financial institution, subject to regulatory approval – a Green Certificate that will be the first of its kind in Ireland. This will provide the funding in partnership with corporate investors, philanthropists, crowd funds and others to deliver on our increased ambition, and Forestry Partners couldn’t be more pleased to be partnering with such exceptional people to make this happen.
We’re going to have a busy few months ahead, so watch this space and please visit naturetrust.ie to learn more. Or you can learn more about Coillte Nature and see a video about the initiative here. Thanks for your support.