In 2012, the Earth Day Network made a commitment with the Global Poverty Project to plant 10 million trees in poor regions of the world over the following five years. The Earth Day Network developed The Canopy Project to protect natural lands and preserve the environment. Instead of focusing its efforts on forests, The Canopy Project is turning its efforts to impoverished communities and planting trees to promote sustainable self sufficiency.
Trees are important in reversing the impacts of land degradation so that food, energy, and income can be generated to help communities attain economic and environmental sustainability. Trees are also important for filtering the air and neutralizing the deleterious effects of climate change.
Over the last three years, volunteers of The Canopy Project have planted over 1.5 million trees in 18 countries. In the United States, hundreds of thousands of trees have been planted in the poverty-stricken areas of cities such as New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Atlanta, Baltimore, Cleveland, Flint, and Chicago, creating beautiful treescapes and improving the air and the quality of life. Five hundred thousand trees have been planted in Haiti, a country devastated by masssive earthquakes that caused landslides on denuded hillsides. In central Uganda’s poverty-stricken districts, 350,000 trees were planted to provide food, fuel, fencing, and soil stability.
The tree planting drives are funded with sponsorships and donations and are performed in partnership with tree planting organizations around the world. The Canopy Project is done in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme’s Billion Trees Campaign.
Join us in supporting The Canopy Project. You will be making the world a better place for you, me and the generations that follow.
If you would like to find out more about Earth Day and the Earth Day Network, visit this website: http://www.earthday.org/campaign/canopy-project#sthash.IfjlZOyQ.dpuf