Alipay Gallery: Ant Forest Tree-Planting Spring 2019
To commemorate Earth Day on April 22, a group of Alipay Ant Forest users joined us to witness “chun zhong”, or spring planting — a time of year when trees are planted to help restore land suffering from desertification.
Since its launch in August 2016, Ant Forest has led to 100 million real trees planted, covering a total area of 1.4 million mu (933 square kilometers). That’s equivalent to 130,000 soccer pitches.
By enabling the average person living in China to contribute to the fight against climate change, Alipay Ant Forest has created the largest private sector tree-planting initiative in China.
Here’s a visual look back at Alipay Ant Forest, and some highlights from this spring’s tree-planting.
Planting in the desert
Alipay Ant Forest promotes a greener lifestyle and encourages users to engage in low-carbon activities, such as paying utility bills online and commuting by walking or cycling instead of driving.
Such behavior is counted and converted into virtual “green energy” that can then be used to grow a virtual tree in Ant Forest within the Alipay app.
With enough energy points, the virtual tree can be converted into a real tree and planted in the desert by Alipay and its philanthropic partners.
Currently, over 500 million people had joined Alipay Ant Forest, planting over 100 million trees in Gansu Province, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and other areas in China. Some of these users were invited to participate in tree planting activities on Earth Day.
Of course, the millions of trees would not have been planted without the help of our NGO partners and local tree planters.
Check out the photo below, featured by Time, of some of these tree planters taking a break to dance alongside an Alipay Ant Forest site in Gansu.
In the following video, we feature one of these tree planters, Yang Shenghua, a lady with a big personality who shares her passion for dancing, writing and colorful manicures with her co-workers.
The hard work and sweat by Yang Shenghua and her fellow tree planters is having a real impact on our environment.
Photos released by NASA this February showed that the earth has become greener than it was 20 years ago mainly due to China’s tree-planting program and intensive agriculture in both China and India.
We’re also bringing our experience overseas. In April 2019, Alipay Ant Forest was invited to speak at the second Climate Sustainability Working Group meeting of G20 in Nagano, Japan and shared its experiences in harnessing digital technology to combat climate change.
Alipay Ant Forest has also attracted non-mainland fans such as Joahnna Esquivias, a student from the Philippines who has lived in China for the past two and a half years.
Watch as Joahnna talks about the initiative in her own words.
Interested to find out more about Alipay Ant Forest? Here are some infographics and a video demonstrating how the whole thing works.
We hope more people can join us in our efforts, as we strongly believe that good intentions can be transformed by the power of technology, delivering tangible results and bring positive social impact.
Thank you for reading!
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