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Tree-planting event celebrates the UN’s 75th anniversary

26 October 2020
ITC News
ITC volunteers organize tree-planting event to mark the UN’s 75th anniversary as forestry expert talks about biodiversity and mitigating climate change

More than 30 staff members of the Geneva-based International Trade Centre (ITC) donated and planted 130 trees in Arnex-sur-Nyon, Switzerland in partnership with the social enterprise Almighty Tree ahead of the 75th anniversary of the United Nations on 24 October 2020.

The theme of this year’s UN global communication campaign − ‘The future we want, the UN we need’ − sparked the initiative, which was organized as part of ITC Gives Back, the organization’s volunteer programme. Worldwide responses to the UN anniversary campaign have converged on tackling critical challenges, including COVID19, inequality and climate change.

ITC volunteers planted the trees in a public forest in the Nyon district near Geneva. They donated nearly 2,000 Swiss Francs ($2,200) to Almighty Tree, who will care of the trees for four years. Participants observed Swiss government COVID19 guidelines for gatherings.

Almighty Tree is developing a mobile phone app to track the trees’ progress to better measure their impact on tackling climate change.

‘To produce one square meter of wood, a tree purifies 1 million square meters of air,’ Gilles Suard, CEO and Founder of Almighty Tree, said. ‘They breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen – the opposite of what we humans do.’

Experts say the climate impact of trees is significant. They gain mass by sucking carbon from carbon dioxide in the air. Studies have found the average carbon content is generally 50% of a tree’s total volume, and accounts for most of its mass.

Kuliya Nikusheva, envoy of the ITC Gives Back programme, and Milou van Bruggen, idea initiator and co-organiser of the tree planting activitiy, expressed thanks those who participated in the initiative. They said they were looking forward to holding another tree planting event in spring.