In January 2020, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Dr Jane Goodall announced that the Jane Goodall Institute's youth programme, Roots & Shoots, and its partners would plant or restore more than five million trees over the following year. The pledge was part of 1t.org, a new global platform launched at the same meeting to support the goal of conserving, restoring and growing one trillion trees by 2030. It was a collective commitment by young people and community groups in around 60 countries, not a promise that Goodall would personally put five million seedlings in the ground.
Goodall, the primatologist who transformed our understanding of chimpanzees, died on 1 October 2025 at the age of 91. The tree pledge was one of the last large campaigns of a career that began in a Tanzanian forest. Here is what she committed to, why trees mattered so much to her work, and what anyone inspired by the idea can do well.
What Jane Goodall announced in January 2020
The Jane Goodall Institute published the announcement on 22 January 2020. In it, Goodall praised 1t.org as a way to connect thousands of tree-planting and forest-restoration groups so they could share funding and good practice, and said Roots & Shoots had committed to more than five million new trees in the coming year. She closed with a call to action: "Now is the time for everyone on the planet to do their part."
The institute was clear that the five million trees would come through both planting and restoration, carried out by Roots & Shoots groups, institute staff and local partners. It also pointed out that the institute had already supported millions of trees over nearly three decades of community-led conservation, especially around chimpanzee habitats in Africa.
Two small corrections to the way the story was often shared: the youth programme works in about 60 countries (some versions of the quote mistyped it as "counties"), and the platform is usually written 1t.org, short for "one trillion trees".
What 1t.org and the trillion-tree idea are
1t.org was launched by the World Economic Forum in January 2020 as a platform for governments, companies and civil society. It supports the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021–2030), led by the UN Environment Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization. Countries and businesses made pledges through it; China, for example, pledged to plant and conserve 70 billion trees by 2030, and the United States about 51 billion.
It should not be confused with the older Trillion Tree Campaign, launched in 2018 by the youth organisation Plant-for-the-Planet as a successor to UNEP's Billion Tree Campaign. The two efforts share a goal and a name but are separate.
Importantly, 1t.org's own guiding principles put conserving existing ecosystems and cutting fossil-fuel emissions alongside planting. Trees help, but they are not a substitute for reducing emissions.
Why forests matter: the numbers behind the pledge
The most cited estimate of how many trees exist comes from a 2015 study in Nature led by ecologist Thomas Crowther. Using satellite data and ground surveys, his team estimated there are about 3.04 trillion trees on Earth, and that the number has fallen by roughly 46 percent since the start of human civilisation. (Some articles at the time linked this figure to a different paper; the original study is listed in the sources below.)
Forest loss is still large. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization's Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020 estimated that around 10 million hectares of forest were cleared each year between 2015 and 2020, mostly for agriculture, although new growth elsewhere reduced the net loss to about 4.7 million hectares a year. Figures quoted by some websites, such as 13 million hectares a year and 28,000 species lost within 25 years, are older or loosely sourced estimates and should be treated with caution.
Forests store carbon, regulate rainfall, protect soils and provide habitat for most land-dwelling species. For chimpanzees, which live only in the forests and woodland savannahs of equatorial Africa, habitat loss is one of the main threats, which is why Goodall's conservation work and tree planting were always closely linked.
Jane Goodall: from Gombe to global advocate
Valerie Jane Goodall was born in London in 1934. She arrived at what is now Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania on 14 July 1960, with no university degree, to study wild chimpanzees. Her observations that chimps make and use tools, hunt, and have rich individual personalities and family bonds changed how scientists think about animals and about ourselves. The research at Gombe has continued for more than six decades, making it one of the longest-running studies of any wild animal.
She founded the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977 and Roots & Shoots in 1991, when twelve teenagers came to her home in Dar es Salaam to talk about problems they cared about. The programme grew into a global network encouraging young people to run projects for people, animals and the environment.
The United Nations named her a Messenger of Peace in 2002. She was made a Dame of the British Empire, received the Templeton Prize in 2021, and was an honorary member of the World Future Council. She also served on the board of the Nonhuman Rights Project. Some older articles say she sat on that board from its founding in 1996; according to her Wikipedia biography, she joined it in 2022 and served until her death.
A short video about Jane Goodall's 2020 tree commitment.
Tree planting done well: lessons for schools and communities
The pledge inspired many classrooms and local groups. If you want to take part in something similar, a few principles make the difference between a photo opportunity and a living forest:
- Protect before you plant. Keeping an existing forest standing usually does more for climate and wildlife than planting a new one.
- Right tree, right place. Native species suited to local soil and rainfall survive better and support local wildlife. Planting trees on natural grasslands or peat can do harm.
- Plan for aftercare. Young trees need watering, weeding and protection from grazing for several years. Decide who will look after the site during holidays and dry spells.
- Work with local people. Projects owned by the communities who live with the trees last longer. That was the heart of the institute's approach in Africa.
- Count survivors, not seedlings. A good project measures how many trees are still alive after several years.
Natural regeneration, simply protecting land so forest can return by itself, is often cheaper and more successful than planting, and counts as restoration too.
Common myths about big tree-planting pledges
- "Goodall personally planted five million trees." The figure was a collective pledge by Roots & Shoots, the institute and partners.
- "Planting a trillion trees would solve climate change." Restoration can absorb a meaningful share of emissions, but only alongside deep cuts in fossil-fuel use.
- "Any tree anywhere is good." Monoculture plantations or trees in the wrong ecosystem can reduce biodiversity and water supplies.
- "A pledge equals results." Long-term survival and monitoring are what count, and independent tallies of many large pledges are still incomplete.
Goodall's message was always that individual action matters because it adds up. Five million trees is a big number; the lasting legacy is the young people in dozens of countries who learned how to care for a piece of land and keep doing it.
For a story of one couple who rebuilt a forest tree by tree, see how a photographer and his wife planted two million trees in 20 years.
Sources: Jane Goodall Institute: Dr Jane Goodall commits to 5 million trees in 2020 (22 January 2020); 1t.org; Wikipedia: Trillion Tree Campaign; Wikipedia: Jane Goodall; Crowther et al., Mapping tree density at a global scale, Nature (2015); FAO Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020; Roots & Shoots. Video: YouTube.
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