Earth Day 2016: Trees for the Earth!

We are roughly three months from Earth Day 2016 – Friday, April 22nd, the first in our five-year countdown to Earth Day’s 50th: Earth Day 2020! This is the perfect time to share with you our theme for Earth Day 2016: Trees for the Earth! Our planet is currently losing over 15 billion trees each year due to deforestation, land development, and bad forest management (that is roughly 48 football fields every minute). EDN is announcing Trees for the Earth (#Trees4Earth), a plan to plant 7.8 billion trees by Earth Day’s 50^th in 2020. That is one tree for every person on the planet! Trees for the Earth will focus on those regions of the world most affected by deforestation. In order to achieve our goal of 7.8 billion trees, we will work with partners from all levels of society, integrate trees into all of our existing campaigns, and create coalitions with national and subnational governments, mayors, faith leaders, businesses, and civil society from all across the globe. Our goals for planting these trees are as simple as they are important:

• Fight climate change and pollution;
• Support communities, their local economies, and their way of life;
• Protect biodiversity; and
• Inspire millions of people to join us in environmental citizenship and stewardship.

We have set up a page where you can register your own Earth Day 2016 event and/or look for an event near you. In the coming days you will find toolkits and other resources for hosting an event and engaging in Earth Day. This page will be updated on a rolling basis as more events come in. So please register with us and check back often. Over the next several months, you will hear much more from us about Earth Day 2016, Trees for the Earth, Earth Day’s 50th – all on top of the exciting news about the United Nations hosting a signing ceremony for the Paris Agreement this Earth Day! But at this moment, we simply wanted to share the good news with you about our plans for Earth Day 2016. We hope you are as excited and ready to work as we are! Spread the news: #Trees4earth