About Us
Our planet is really cool, sometimes we just forget it.
While being one of the most important solutions to address the effects of climate change, forests are also an amazing instrument to reduce global poverty, stop biodiversity loss and reverse desertification.
Established in 2010, WeForest develops holistic and multi-stakeholder reforestation projects, also known as the ‘Forest Landscape Restoration’ (FLR) approach that aims to regain ecological functionality and enhance human well-being in deforested or degraded landscapes.
Our long-term impacts are measured in different ways:
- Forest and biomass growth
- Carbon sequestration in trees and in soil
- Wildlife conservation
- Soil and Water conservation
- Community entrepreneurship
- Poverty alleviation
Our vision is a world where communities and nature sustainably thrive together to stop global warming in our lifetime.
Our mission is to conserve and restore the ecological integrity of forests and landscapes, engaging communities to implement and deliver lasting solutions for climate, nature, and people.
Since 2009, over 450 companies and organizations globally have trusted WeForest and proudly communicate on Making Earth Cooler. With their support, we have reached 40,000 ha of forest under restoration (at the end of 2020) which represents roughly 50 million trees. We are on track to reach 93,000 ha – the equivalent of 100 million trees – by 2024, making a significant contribution to the UN Decade on Ecosystem restoration and impacting most of the UN SDGs (more specifically goals 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 13, 15 and 17).
Over the years, WeForest has grown to a passionate team of over 50, based primarily in our field offices in Zambia and Ethiopia and in our global Brussels headquarters.
Our values describe us best:
- Integrity: We are truth tellers, and we keep our promises.
- Transparency: Share the good as well as the bad news, internally and externally and ensure consistency with our values in everything that we do.
- Excellence: When we demand more of ourselves than our clients do. It is a process, not a destination: the context and the needs change, requiring us to always adapt
- Collaboration: As no-one can do it alone, we love to work with anyone sharing the same values to get the job done. And when we’re done, we will be looking for new challenges to address.
- Passion: We are driven by our passionate belief that forests are our best and most realistic near-term solution.
- Courage: Be audacious as an organization and as individuals.
While we double our impact every year, we know this will never be enough to address all the challenges we are currently facing as a species. We therefore welcome all initiatives aiming at advancing our cause and are developing an accelerator program to coach less mature organizations in replicating and taking an active role around the landscapes where we work.
Our strategy for the coming years is to continue scaling our Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) impact, focusing on the most degraded or threatened areas in key biodiversity hotspots where forests play a key role for people and climate.