Restoring 100 million trees by 2025 with the Priceless Planet Coalition

Pledge by

Mastercard

Our 100 million tree goal is designed to restore our most essential forests, with the intent of maximizing benefits for climate, community and biodiversity.

Type
Restoring & Growing, Enabling
This pledge will take place from
2021 to 2025
Location
Australia, Brazil, Kenya and more

Company website

Pledge overview

In January 2020, Mastercard launched the Priceless Planet Coalition and committed with our partners to preserve the environment through the restoration of 100 million trees in 5 years. Mastercard believes that by working collectively with our banks, merchants, business and consumer customers and other partners we can drive more positive change than if we each acted alone.

Priceless Planet Coalition (PPC) partners will lead campaigns to engage consumers to contribute to the tree-planting goal. Mastercard’s global payment infrastructure will provide additional ways for cardholders to contribute, including “round-up” campaigns at a range of leading retailers that allow consumers to add a tree-planting donation at the point-of-sale. Mastercard corporate customers can also contribute to this effort every time employees use their cards for travel, goods or services. These businesses can contribute rebates received from their issuing banks to tree-planting projects by using their Mastercard cards.

Large-scale restoration programs need to be executed deliberately, with consideration given to several factors. Mastercard has selected global environmental organizations Conservation International and World Resources Institute to lead the design, mobilization and coordination of the program based on their science-based and holistic approaches to restoration, monitoring and evaluation, and successful track records in global conservation. With the help of these organizations, Mastercard is developing a global portfolio of high-quality restoration projects, emphasizing those with the most potential for positive impacts on climate, community and biodiversity.

Actions in this pledge

  • 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

    Priceless Planet’s approach will include a comprehensive forest restoration monitoring and evaluation protocol, which will be applied to every PPC project for a period of 5 years. Highlights include:
    • Baseline, first-year and long-term protocols for every project for the entire program period enables global analysis
    • Geospatial/remote sensing including satellite and drone technology
    • Field-based sampling/ground truthing methods
    • Statistical evaluation of methods tested to ensure comprehensive monitoring and to maximize accuracy/efficiency
    • “Counterfactual” control sites, matched with the original conditions of restoration locations chosen during the baseline period
    • Comparisons to project sites to determine the additionality of PPC projects; will not count as incremental trees

    Restoring & Growing

    Trees
    100 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
    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.)
    Additional details

    The same approach as for all restoring and growing activities of the Priceless Planet Coalition will be applied to all enabling activities.

    Enabling

Our ecologically and socially responsible approach

Projects and geographies with the greatest potential for positive impacts on climate, community, and biodiversity goals will be chosen for Priceless Planet Coalition, with help from Conservation International and WRI, who have substantial capacity to fulfill large-scale reforestation projects and will provide detailed project plans with funding and delivery timelines. Project selection criteria and standardization will focus on:
• Standardization of practices across all projects
• No invasive species, and no species destined for timber harvest
• Proper community engagement
• Ecologically and socially appropriate restoration methods• Robust and standard monitoring and maintenance plans, etc.
• Maximization of climate, community and biodiversity safeguards and benefits

Priceless Planet’s approach will include a comprehensive forest restoration monitoring and evaluation protocol, which will be applied to every PPC project for a period of 5 years.

Our results tracking

Ecological metrics

- Approximate number of trees or area of coverage that contributions have funded;
- Annual progress updates on tree growth and survival rates;
- Number of trees restored at project maturity;
- Approximate amount of carbon-equivalent sequestered;
- Additional reporting on climate, community and biodiversity benefits

Social metrics

- Job creation;
- improved livelihoods

Our partners

The most current list of partners who have joined our coalition can be found at www.pricelessplanet.org

Our locations

We are working at locations across Australia, Brazil, Kenya, and United Arab Emirates (UAE).

We are also working in several other countries for a total of 18 restoration sites across six continents. New projects will be evaluated and selected for implementation on an annual basis. Priority restoration activities will occur primarily in tropical forest ecosystems, and in particular project locations with the highest potential for CCB impacts and overall restoration value. Priceless Planet Coalition’s approach will include a comprehensive forest restoration monitoring and evaluation protocol, which be applied to every restoration project for a period of 5 years.

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.