1 Billion Trees in thriving ecosystems and communities
Pledge by
Royal Dutch Shell
Conserving and planting 1 billion trees by investing in high quality afforestation, reforestation and avoided deforestation globally through 2030 and beyond, supporting local communities and biodiversity.
- Type
- Conserving, Restoring & Growing, Enabling
- This pledge will take place from
- 2020 to 2030 and beyond
Pledge overview
Shell aims to build a global and high-quality nature-based solutions portfolio at scale. This includes the protection, creation, or restoration of natural ecosystems – forests, agriculture, grasslands, wetlands and coastal – to enhance their carbon storage capacity. Our investments focus on projects that offer co-benefits, including improvements in biodiversity, water quality, flood protection and livelihoods for local communities.
Actions in this pledge
-
Conserving trees and forest landscapes
Supporting actions
- Permanent conservation
- Secure a forest through acquisition or legal agreement to avoid planned or unplanned deforestation or degradation, and/or ensure permanent conservation of land
- Conservation support activities
- Support the operating costs and activities of existing conservation areas, including advocacy for conservation policy
Additional details
Plans, milestones, delivery and performance monitoring for our pledge are fully aligned with the systems and processes that we have for developing our global nature-based solutions portfolio.
Conserving
- Trees
- 550-600 million
-
Restoring and growing trees and forest landscapes
Supporting actions
- Assisted natural regeneration
- Actions that support natural regeneration without tree planting, such as Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration, forest soil remediation, exotic species control, disease prevention, and wildfire protection
- Reforestation
- Re-establishment of forest through planting and/or deliberate seeding on land classified as forest, that has been degraded or where trees are unlikely to regenerate naturally
- Agroforestry
- Activities that establish and manage the integration of trees into agricultural landscapes, silvopastoral systems, farming in forests and along forest margins and tree-crop production
- Mangrove restoration
- Establishment or enhancement of mangroves along coastal areas and in estuaries
Additional details
Plans, milestones, delivery and performance monitoring for our pledge are fully aligned with the systems and processes that we have for developing our global nature-based solutions portfolio.
Restoring & Growing
- Trees
- 400-450 million
-
Enabling activities for trees and forest landscapes
Supporting actions
- Nursery and seedling development
- Establish tree nurseries, including actions such as identification and collection of seeds and/or growing seedlings
- Sustainable forest management
- Activities that support the stewardship and use of forests (including by local communities and indigenous peoples), to maintain their biological diversity, productivity, and regeneration capacity, as well as their potential to fulfil relevant ecological economic and social functions
- Market development for sustainable forest products
- Activities that create markets and demand for ecologically and socially responsible timber and non-timber forest and agroforestry products, e.g. capacity-building for the harvesting and processing of agroforestry products, forest certification standards, etc.
- Education and capacity building
- Forest / tree species conservation and restoration education programmes, targeted educational and behaviour change campaigns, training and capacity building, including promotion of local and traditional knowledge and practices
- Community mobilisation
- Community mobilisation and engagement activities for conservation, restoration and reforestation, including enabling systems of community governance, etc.
- Data collection, management and technological tools
- Activities that provide data and/or technological tools to support conservation and restoration (e.g. monitoring etc.)
- Financial innovation
- Activities that create additional financial opportunities and incentives for conservation, restoration and reforestation (e.g. blended financing vehicles, etc.)
Additional details
Plans, milestones, delivery and performance monitoring for our pledge are fully aligned with the systems and processes that we have for developing our global nature-based solutions portfolio.
Enabling
Carbon benefits
120 million tonnes CO2e per year by 2030
Our ecologically and socially responsible approach
To ensure environmental and social safeguards, project methodologies have requirements regarding ‘no net harm’ that require project proponents to identify potential negative socio-economic or environmental impacts and to take steps to mitigate them. In addition, Shell works with implementation partners to ensure that Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) is properly agreed before project activities commence, including ensuring that local community representation and involvement in decision-making processes for benefit sharing. This includes possible marginalised groups such as women, youths, and migrants.Safety, security and social governance standards: Shell expects projects to have a positive net impact. Our partners are required to adhere to Shell’s standards and processes to mitigate key Health, Safety, Security and Environment risks to their projects. Shell manages this through a comprehensive due diligence process when contracting with project developers.
Carbon certification: The majority of our projects are certified under credible, high-quality and independent carbon credit standards. Working with PricewaterhouseCoopers, we have assessed and approved a range of global carbon credit standards, including both voluntary and government standards. These include the Verified Carbon Standard, Gold Standard and the American Carbon Registry.Environmental and social benefits: similarly, most Shell projects are certified under the requirements of the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Standards (CCB). The CCB Standards test projects for their delivery of social and biodiversity benefits. By exception, where projects are not certified to the above standards (for example if scale is not sufficient), Shell follows its venture and contract management review process to ensure delivery and performance of the contracts with our implementation partners.
Our system of accreditation
Shell’s projects are assessed under the requirements of recognized third party independent standards including the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) and the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Standards (CCB). In addition, we work with third party remote sensing platforms to measure and monitor the outcomes of our investments.
Our partners
Currently we work with project implementation partners including Climate Bridge, Forestry and Land Scotland, Landlife, Schleswig Holsteinische Landesforsten, Staatsbosbeheer, Tsilhqot'in National Government, WeForest, and Select Carbon which is a wholly owned Shell company.
We continue to explore new projects with other implementation partners across Asia, Latin America, North America, Europe and Africa.
Our locations
We are developing a global portfolio in line with our ambitions for scale.
Our implementation progress
Pledge implementation progress reporting is managed in collaboration with IUCN’s Restoration Barometer, and is required annually from the year following pledge publication.
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Shell pledge implementation progress report 2022
not submitted