2 System Shifts
I. Forests Transformation: When Deforestation Finally Slows 🌳
The latest UN Global Forest Resources Assessment reveals a transformation decades in the making: global deforestation has nearly halved since 1990, dropping from 17.6 million hectares lost annually in the 1990s to 10.9 million hectares over 2015-2025. South America cut annual forest loss by half, whilst forest area in Asia increased between 1990 and 2025.
Some countries achieved remarkable reversals with the top countries being China adding 1.7 million hectares of forest annually through afforestation programmes, and Russia achieved a net gain of 942 thousand hectares each year between 2015 to 2025. Forests now store 714 gigatonnes of carbon across 4 billion hectares, with 20% located in protected areas.
Yet challenges intensify. Current deforestation rates remain 63% higher than the trajectory needed to meet the 2030 target of halting forest loss. Wildfires, increasingly driven by climate change, became the leading driver of tropical forest loss in 2024 for the first time on record.
The Shift: Global deforestation is declining, proving reversal is possible. When nature regeneration expands, forests are returning, yet the pace must accelerate to meet planetary commitments made by over 100 nations and to secure planetary resilience. 🌲🌍
II. Tropical Forest Forever Facility: When Conservation Meets Capital at Scale 🌳
At the COP30 Leader's Summit in Belém, the Tropical Forest Forever Facility launched with over $5.5 billion announced and 53 countries endorsing a historic declaration. Norway committed $3 billion over ten years, whilst Brazil and Indonesia reconfirmed $1 billion each, Portugal committed USD 1 million, with over 50 countries expressing support for the initiative, covering over 90% of tropical forests in developing countries.
The facility marks a paradigm shift in global efforts to protect and restore tropical forests, as the facility will address a market failure and recognise the value of, and pay for, the ecosystem services provided by tropical forests to the world. Payments to countries will be based on satellite remote sensing data tracking forest canopy annually, with at least 20% of the allocation mandated to go to Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and a governance system in which forest and sponsor countries participate on equal footing.
The facility has potential to support over 1 billion hectares of tropical forests across over 70 countries. The World Bank serves as trustee, whilst the facility's asset allocation excludes investments in activities related to coal, peat, oil, or gas.
The Shift: Forest conservation is transitioning with new financing mechanisms and commitment. When tropical nations, Indigenous Peoples and local communities receive long-term funding for maintaining forest restoration, protection becomes economically viable at unprecedented scale. 🌍💚
What if forests are teaching us that nature restoration at scale is ready, only awaiting for our commitment? 🌳⚡
3 Field Stories
I. China: Where AI-Powered Electronics Circular Systems 📱
In Shanghai, ATRenew operates the world's leading circular economy for electronics through Matrix, an AI-powered system processing up to 100,000 devices daily. In just five years, the company has processed 150 million electronics, equivalent to every smartphone in the UK and France combined, whilst supervising the green disposal of one million discarded devices, preventing nearly 155 tonnes of e-waste pollution.
Operating through 2,000 retail locations, eight regional centres, and consumer partnerships across China, Japan, and Sweden, ATRenew makes trading in old phones, laptops, and watches easy and affordable. The company is expanding into Southeast Asia and Latin America, ensuring pre-owned electronic devices gain second, third, and even fourth lives across borders.
Global e-waste is projected to reach 82 million tonnes annually by 2030, with the average mobile phone lifespan just two years. ATRenew set out ambitious goal: by 2030, boost AI efficiency by 20% and increase China's second-hand electronics recycling rates from 10% to 30%, ushering in a world where every device is used for longer.
The Impact: ATRenew demonstrates that emerging technologies can help to build scalable circular economies. By making reuse desirable and accessible, they are proving products once tied to disposal mindsets can become the future of sustainable consumption. ♻️
II. Bangladesh: Where Floating Hospitals Build Climate Resilience 🛶
In Bangladesh's coastal regions, where cyclones, salinity, and erosion threaten millions, Friendship transforms vulnerability into resilience. Founded by Runa Khan in 2002, the organisation has grown from a single floating hospital to reaching 7.5 million people annually with healthcare services, providing 8.3 million days of emergency food support, and delivering safe drinking water to 80,000 people in coastal areas.
Friendship has restored over 60 kilometres of mangrove forests, planting more than 650,000 trees across 200 hectares on Bangladesh's southern coast. These mangroves shield villages from deadly cyclones whilst acting as major carbon sinks. The organisation builds raised plinth settlements and dismantlable schools to withstand rising waters, and floating hospitals bring healthcare to remote populations.
Recognised as Earthshot Prize 2025 Winner, Friendship's holistic approach combines healthcare, education, livelihoods, and climate adaptation, creating locally owned, sustainable solutions.
The Impact: Friendship's initiatives equip local people to withstand future climate challenges and turn vulnerable communities into models of resilience. By combining vital services with nature-based solutions, they are transforming vulnerable communities into models of adaptation, offering blueprints for regions worldwide facing climate-driven challenges. 🌿
III. Global: Where Ocean Plastic Meets Systematic Removal 🌊
What began as a high school student's vision has become the world's largest ocean cleanup operation. Boyan Slat, diving in Greece at 16, saw more plastic than fish and refused to accept it as inevitable. By December 2024, The Ocean Cleanup achieved a remarkable milestone with 20 million kilograms of trash removed from oceans and rivers since its founding in 2013.
The approach combines ambition with precision: floating barriers sweep the Great Pacific Garbage Patch whilst solar-powered Interceptors catch plastic in rivers before it reaches the sea. Cost efficiency improved significantly as the technology matured and operations scaled.
The 30 Cities Programme, launched in 2025, targets rivers feeding the most plastic into oceans. From Bangkok to Guatemala, Jamaica to Panama, Interceptors are being deployed aiming to eliminate up to one third of all plastic flowing from the world's rivers into the ocean before the end of the decade.
The Impact: The Ocean Cleanup proves systematic removal can scale. From a teenager's refusal to accept the unacceptable, to continuous innovation and coordinated action, they are demonstrating strong trajectory to their ambitious goal: reducing floating ocean plastic by 90% by 2040. 🌊
Emerging Pattern
From Shanghai's AI extending device lifetimes to Bangladesh's floating hospitals building coastal resilience to ocean systems capturing plastic at scale, a pattern emerges: when technology serves life with systematic purpose, transformation becomes inevitable. Waste finds worth, vulnerability turns strength, chaos yields to order. ✨
1 Mindful Moment
"We have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world." — Jill Bolte Taylor, Neuroscientist
Every moment holds this quiet power: the choice to see worth, to respond with care, to imagine what could be.
Transformation lives in the choices we barely notice ourselves making. What we reach for. What we repair. What we nurture into being. Small actions, repeated with intention, trusting that the universe unfolds in its own time, that each step matters even when we cannot yet see what we perceive as progress.
One invitation: This week, bring gentle attention to the small choices weaving through your days. The repair over replace, the pause over reaction, the presence over distraction. What might unfold if you held each moment as sacred space, an invitation to align with the world you wish to see? Transformation isn't always dramatic; sometimes it whispers through the quiet acts of choosing, again and again, to live in a deeper relationship with all life. ✨