Fund native-species restoration through vetted local partners, and report multi-year survival — not seedlings planted

Mechanism

Treat planting as the start of a multi-year restoration, not a one-day event. The components that separate durable restoration from a failed headline:

• Right place. Target degraded land, biodiversity hotspots, and crisis zones where trees genuinely add carbon and habitat — and explicitly avoid existing carbon-rich ecosystems (species-rich grassland, peatland) that are already doing the job.
• Right species, right season. Use diverse native species suited to local soil and rainfall, planted in the correct season; avoid monocultures and ill-adapted exotics.
• Local partners do the work. Fund established local organisations to grow, plant, and nurture trees through the fragile establishment years, rather than parachuting in for a planting photo.
• Measure survival, for years. Combine satellite monitoring with field visits to track how many trees are alive over time, and report survival rather than seedlings distributed.

Where it fits

This approach suits funders willing to pay for the unglamorous parts — aftercare, monitoring, replacement — and to wait years before claiming impact. It pairs naturally with a steady revenue stream, which can sustain multi-year partner relationships that grant cycles or one-off campaigns cannot.

Honest limits

• Slower and costlier per "tree" than headline planting — by design, because keeping a tree alive is most of the cost.
• Additionality and permanence remain hard to prove. Even well-run programs face open questions about whether trees would have grown anyway and whether they will survive decades; survival reporting and third-party verification matter, and planting should not be sold as a like-for-like offset against fossil emissions.
• Restoration is second-best to protection. Where intact forest still stands, protecting it is cheaper and more certain than replanting; this approach complements, not replaces, stopping clearing in the first place.

Evidence

Ecosya's reforestation program — diverse native species, local-partner model, satellite-plus-field monitoring, biodiversity-hotspot targeting — is the most-documented at-scale example and is attached as a case study. The failed case studies attached to this solution (record-breaking mass plantings that skipped season, site, species, and aftercare) show what