by Nadia Jessica Jonatan
Recent urbanized generations don’t get to experience forest walks and natural views that often. Living in the city can make us lose our senses with nature. Luckily, there are several initiatives to bring nature to our fingertips—by encouraging people to “Adopt” A Tree/Coral. Who are they? Let’s find out!
1. Lindungi Hutan®
Through the Kampanye Alam® program, Lindungi Hutan applies a crowdfunding method to get donations for planting trees. People can celebrate birthdays, achievements, etc. and invite others to donate as a way to commemorate together. This effort has been pretty successful to reach new audiences and enable reforestation as simple as tapping our mobile phones. Last week, an ARMY (BTS fan club) organized a campaign called ‘1000 Pohon untuk BTS JIMIN (Jimin’s Birthday Project)’ or 1000 trees for BTS Jimin’s Birthday. The results were beyond expectations! The campaign successfully gathered donations to plant over 8.700 trees in Demak, Indonesia (over 8 times the desired effect!) showing that this program is successful.
You can check more about crowdplanting here: https://lindungihutan.com
1000 trees for BTS Jimin's Birthday. Photo by LindungiHutan.com
2. WWF®
WWF® MyBabyTree® program allows individual and corporate donations to plant trees in selected locations in Indonesia. Although their tree adoption price is significantly higher than other initiatives, what sets this program apart is that we can observe our tree growth through geotag technology. We can also choose where to plant our trees, get our name signed, and receive certification for each donation.
For more information about MyBabyTree® program go to http://donatefornature.com/en/program/mybabytree
WWF® MyBabyTree® program. Photo by earthbuddies.net
3. Biorock® Indonesia
Adopt trees? Why not adopt corals too? Biorock® Indonesia allows you to adopt a baby coral simply by filling a form and donating $40. By adopting a baby coral from Biorock® Indonesia, you will also receive an online certificate, have your name placed next to your adopted baby coral and before-after photos in a year span. You can upload photos with #1coralatatime on social media to promote your conservation efforts! Although there are other NGOs that offer coral adoption for lower prices, Biorock® Indonesia offers a unique selling point by ensuring our corals live for a year. Instead of plant-and-done, Biorock® Indonesia does a plant-and-monitor approach. They make sure our adopted corals are in good health by regular scuba dive monitoring. Not only that, they use Biorock® technology that allows corals to grow 2-6 times faster, hence a faster restoration in return.
For more information about Baby Coral Adoption® check out this link http://www.biorock-indonesia.com/product/adopt-baby-coral/
Baby Coral Adoption® by Biorock® Indonesia. Photo by Biorock Indonesia®
4. Ecosia®
Yes, surfing the internet can plant trees for you. This innovation is brought by Ecosia®, the search engine that plants trees. How does it work? Ecosia® profits from ads and donates 80% or more of its profits to organizations that support reforestation. According to its claim, it has planted over 112 million trees. Although there have been debates whether it is collectively good or bad (considering non-renewable energy sources and ad blockers), what we find here is that Ecosia® supports reforestation through technology, allowing us in urban areas to connect with nature in our screen activities.
Make Ecosia® your default search engine here: https://www.ecosia.org
Ecosia® Search Engine. Photo by ecosia.org
5. CarbonEthics®
You can plant a number of trees.. But do you want to know how much carbon you owe to the environment and how many trees you have to plant in exchange? If so, you should make use of CarbonEthics® Carbon Calculator! Just input your dietary information and they will decide how many Blue Carbon Packages (mangrove & seagrass) you need to buy to compensate for your carbon footprint from food. Aside from adopting mangrove and seagrass, you can also adopt corals too. Photo by carbonethics.org
Calculate your carbon footprint via CarbonEthics through this link: https://www.carbonethics.org/carboncalculator
6. Gojek®
With the Carbon Calculator concept, Gojek® recently launched a new feature called GoGreener Carbon Offset in collaboration with Jejak.in. The difference? They focus on carbon from our transportation emission, both from Gojek® services or privately owned vehicles. This feature calculates our carbon footprint and converts the data into how many trees we need to plant daily. We can choose to donate the suggested amount using GoPay®. Tree planting is done by LindungiHutan & partners. According to Gojek®, they plan to regularly inform adopters about tree condition (height, leaf diameter, health, photo) through a newsletter. We are looking forward to witnessing the implementation by this year! (Photo by gizmologi.id)
For more info about Gojek check https://www.gojek.com
Encouraging the urban population to care about nature requires creative and relatable campaigns. There have been efforts to reach people living in cities in different ways. What do you think of these creative initiatives? Do they inspire you to adopt? Which one do you think is the most attractive?
References:
Biorock Indonesia. 2020. Adopsi Baby Coral. Available at: http://www.biorock-indonesia.com/adopsibabycoral/. Accessed November 5th, 2020.
Carbon Ethics. 2020. Carbon Calculator. Available at: https://www.carbonethics.org/carboncalculator. Accessed November 5th, 2020.
Ecosia. 2020. Plant Trees While You Search The Web. Available at: https://info.ecosia.org/what. Accessed November 5th, 2020.
Hutauruk, D.M. 2020. Gojek Luncurkan Fitur GoGreener Carbon Offset, Apa Itu?. Available at: https://industri.kontan.co.id/news/gojek-luncurkan-fitur-gogreener-carbon-offset-apa-itu. Accessed November 5th. 2020.
Lindungi Hutan. 2020. Cara Kerja. Available at: https://lindungihutan.com/carakerja. Accessed November 5th, 2020.
WWF. 2020. MyBabyTree. Available at: http://donatefornature.com/en/program/mybabytree. Accessed November 5th, 2020.