Reforesting the world: How a UBS Global Visionary is tackling climate change
Brought to you by UBS
Reforestation may be one of the best ways to battle climate change, both globally and in Luxembourg. But it’s not as simple as just planting trees. There’s a science to reforestation that Hawaii-based start-up Terraformation wants to promote worldwide, using advanced innovations with time-tested techniques to overcome the biggest barriers to recreating forestland.
“Years working in Silicon Valley have taught me that using reliable, older generation tech is far more effective for solving a large-scale problem than creating novel tech that is bound to be unreliable and will require years of debugging,” says Yishan Wong, Terraformation founder, UBS Global Visionary and former CEO of Reddit.
“For Terraformation, that reliable technology is seeds, trees and forests - and to overcome the bottlenecks of land and water, we use solar and desalination, both decades-old technologies.”
Yishan Wong, Terraformation founder and UBS Global Visionary
It was an unprecedented heat wave during a trip to Hawaii that set Wong on the path to battling climate change. “I started thinking about how the climate touches everyone’s life,” he remembers. “It has a very personal, daily impact on every life on Earth.” Wong became determined to repurpose his skills in solving problems at scale, honed through years of working in Silicon Valley, to finding concrete solutions for climate mitigation.
APPLYING AN ENGINEERING MINDSET TO CARBON CAPTURE
After extensive research on geoengineering and carbon capture systems, Wong honed in on the huge potential of reforestation. “In a side-by-side comparison, reforestation jumps out as an order of magnitude more effective than exotic technology-based solutions,” he says. This led him to found Terraformation in Hawaii in 2019, with the aim of restoring three billion acres of native forest worldwide.
The world's largest 100% off-grid, solar-powered desalination facility in Hawaii
One of Terraformation's plant nurseries
Wong was named a UBS Global Visionary in 2021, joining a select group of entrepreneurs dedicated to solving some of the world’s toughest-to-crack social issues as defined by the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. UBS, the world’s largest global wealth manager, believes innovators such as Wong will help us meet these goals.
SCALING UP REFORESTATION
Terraformation put its techniques to the test at the company’s first pilot site in Hawaii, which used an off-grid, solar-powered desalination system to provide water for the reintroduction of several thousand native trees. Not only did the project achieve successful reforestation of the degraded land, it did so at a rate five times faster than average.
Closer to home and inspired by the topic of reforestation, more than 100 employees at UBS in Luxembourg recently teamed up with non-profit foundation Hëllef fir d’Natur of natur&ëmwelt to plant a new 5000m2 forest in the north of the Grand-Duchy.
The forest will provide an average carbon sink of three tonnes of CO2 offset per year, as well as help to reduce the amount of stormwater run-off in the area
UBS Luxembourg team with natur&ëmwelt in the north of Luxembourg
GLOBAL REFORESTATION THROUGH ACCESS TO SEED BANKING
Already managing a number of successful reforestation projects in Hawaii and a partner in large-scale tree planting projects across five continents, the multidisciplinary team has turned its sights to the goal of establishing the world’s biggest network of reforestation seed banks.
“The world will need between two and three trillion native seeds to restore one trillion trees,” notes Wong.
To this end, the company has developed compact, modular, and off-grid seed banking solutions to make seed banking accessible and available anywhere in the world. Estimating that 100,000 working seed banks around the globe will be needed to achieve reforestation at scale by the end of this decade, Terraformation’s goal for the coming year is to establish the first 1% of this global network with 1000 seed banks.
UBS Luxembourg employee planting a tree
ABOUT UBS IN LUXEMBOURG
With a long standing tradition and track record dating back to 1973, UBS in Luxembourg acts as the main EU hub for cross-border Wealth Management services, as well as the European Hub for Asset Servicing. We are able to serve our clients worldwide through our booking center in Luxembourg with a special focus towards the Benelux countries as well as the Nordic markets where we have our Advisory Offices in Denmark and Sweden. Our focus to deliver best in class service towards our clients shines through in how we excel in the world's #1 Private Banking centre in the Eurozone and the #2 largest Fund Industry, delivering a range of Wealth management products as well as Depository Bank services.
TAKEN FROM ISSUE 2 - INTO THE FOREST
