Climate Action Awards 2023-2024
3rd edition of the Life Terra Climate Action Awards
As always, the Life Terra Climate Action Awards want to recognise and amplify the contributions made by organisations and individuals towards climate action within the Life Terra project. Because climate action is more important than ever and without them, we wouldn't be where we are!
This is why we want to thank the winners of this year's categories with the Life Terra Climate Action Awards 2023-2024.
However, for this 3rd edition, we also wanted to involve the public and help us choose the winner of the "Best European ecosystem restoration project" category. Life Terra has worked with amazing restoration projects during the season, and we couldn't decide for ourselves who deserves to be the winner of this year's edition.
Join us as we embark on a journey of celebration, acknowledgement, and empowerment. Let’s vote together!
Closed Categories Climate Action Awards 2023-2024
Most Impactful Community Action: Fundación Trébol
The Fundación Trébol is a non-profit organisation that contributes to improving the quality of life and the integration into the labour market of people with intellectual disabilities. Together with Life Terra and The Municipality of Las Rozas, they participated in the planting of the first Miyawaki forest in Madrid's Community. We planted more than 2,500 trees to build a new green spot that the local community will be able to enjoy in the future. Fundación Trébol will also maintain and take care of the planted trees.
It was a beautiful initiative that mixed tree planting, social integration and environmental education!
“Best Biodiversity Project”: Finca Alía
Finca Alía is located in Cáceres where Life Terra is carrying out its largest carbon sequestration credit project in Spain to restore a deforested 38ha area with more than 60,000 trees of 19 different native species.
This project will not only help to improve biodiversity in the flora but will also help to create a better habitat for one of the most emblematic species of the Iberian Peninsula and one of the most endangered on the planet: the lynx. Encouraging projects such as Finca Alía is essential to create ecosystems that are more resilient to the effects of climate change and, at the same time, promote the development of the rural community.
Most Involved Public Sector Representative: Humberto Delgado Rosa
As the Director for Biodiversity at the DG Environment of the European Commission, Humberto Delgado Rosa and his department are in charge of EU policy on environment. They propose and implement policies that ensure a high level of environmental protection and preserve the quality of life of EU citizens. Humberto and his team are largely responsible for crafting the new Nature restoration law approved recently by the European Parliament.
Humberto Delgado's viewpoints on how tree planting can directly contribute to improving our forest stands in Europe highlight the need of pushing for more biodiversity-based projects, smarter reforestations, and sustainable forest management policies.
This award is given to Humberto and his team to thank them for their continued push to realise more nature and biodiversity in Europe, particularly in the face of the multiple challenges due to accelerated climate change.
Most Impactful Organisation: Lavera Naturkosmetik
Lavera Naturkosmetik is Europe's largest producer of natural, organic cosmetics with a strong emphasis on sustainability. As part of their environmental philosophy the company supports several ecosystem restoration projects every year, with a strong focus on young people in order to promote climate action.
In 2023 we were very pleased to start our collaboration with Lavera in our Chambord tree planting project where Boy and Girl Scouts were able to plant 8,000 trees thanks to their support. This planting project was repeated this year and also in Italy, in Villa Annoni. We look forward to planting many more trees with the Lavera team in the coming years all across Europe!
Most Involved Tree Planting Partner: Scouts Croatia
The Scouts Association of Croatia is actively taking climate action to fight against deforestation in the country. Together we planted 2,000 new saplings in Slunj, an area which has seen a decline in its coniferous forest due to disease and drought.
The event received support from various official sponsors, including the Representation of the European Commission in Croatia, the Office of the European Parliament in Croatia, and several Croatian ministries. Life Terra was also invited to participate at the GREENCAJT sustainability festival where we took the opportunity to hand the award to the Association.
Looking forward to continue our work together in the country!
Most Active Sustainability Partner: KNAF
KNAF, the Dutch karting and motorsport federation, has a sustainability policy for 2021-2023 and is making serious efforts to compensate and reduce its emissions. For two consecutive seasons, KNAF supported Life Terra with reforestation projects in the Netherlands and Germany.
The company also adopted trees and planted part of these with their own employees during a team building event to create more awareness for climate action and to learn more about the projects they donated to.
Most Involved Crowdfunder: Jeroen Oversteegen (Nationale Hypotheekbos)
The Hypotheekbos (Mortgage Forest) is a campaign set up by De Nationale Hypotheekbond which aims to plant 15,000 trees annually through donations from relations in the financial sector. The initiative of Jeroen Oversteegen, director of the National Mortgage Association, wants to create environmental awareness in the financial sector and encourage people to take action by planting trees.
The Hypotheekbos has already planted more than 5,000 trees together with Life Terra and their donors.
Most impactful Global Tree Planting Partner: My Forest Armenia
My Forest Armenia is a non-profit organisation dedicated to planting 400,000 trees, or about 120 hectares of new forest, every year in Armenia. Life Terra contributed to this objective this year and funded the planting of 3,000 trees in the country.
We are honoured to be connected to tree-planting organisation across the world to actively share knowledge and methodologies to implement ecological restoration strategies and expand our climate action efforts.
Most inspiring school action: winners of the 2024 STEM Discovery Campaign
This year Life Terra co-organised together with Scientix the 2024 STEM Discovery Campaign. More than 700,000 participants from 50+ countries took part in it and we are proud to award 2 outstanding projects:
Life Terra Green Future Map, a successful tree planting activity organised by Sherife Takmaz, a teacher from the Konya Ereğli Science and Art Center (Konya, Turkey).
This school initiative engaged teachers, pupils, and their families in an outdoor activity to learn about the environment and plant trees together. Following Life Terra’s guide for schools, they asked the City Council for support. The Mayor was excited about their initiative and supported the school with land preparation, transport, and technical advice. Read more about their action here.
Explorând natura, a project carried out by several schools from different countries. Presented by Simona Ghenea, a teacher from the Elena Cuza National College (Craiova, Romania), this project is a perfect example of intercultural collaboration in education.
This cross-border school initiative is focused on outdoor activities to encourage pupils to explore and learn in nature. Dozens of kids from Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, and Romania had the opportunity to discover the beauty and complexity of the natural world, learning through direct experience.
Congratulations both on these inspiring initiatives empowering young children!
