Green energy points app contributes to planting real trees

Imagine growing real trees through the reduction of your carbon footprint. Sounds like science fiction? Think again.

Alxa League, a remote area in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, has 78,500 square km of desert. The area saw its saxual tree forests wither from more than 11,000 square km to only 2,000. In the process, Alxa has become one of the largest sources of sandstorms in China.

But Ant Forest has a green solution. The function was launched early 2017 by Ant Financial, a leading digital financial services company affiliated to Alibaba. The Ant Forest function monitors the users' carbon footprints and low carbon actions made through its Alipay payment platform. Based on this, the app awards "green energy points," which can be used to grow virtual and ultimately real trees in Alxa's desert, to users in the Ant Forest through their real-time activities.

Public participation

Ant Forest scoring system depends on how environmentally friendly a user is - such as paying a bill online instead of traveling to a store to do it, or buying a metro ticket instead of fuel for a car, and encourages people to travel in low-carbon ways. This encouraged a lot of people to adopt earth-friendly habits.

Though he has never been to Alxa, new father Jiang Shengjue has a connection with the land. When his wife was pregnant, he walked everyday with her; and as a user of Ant Forest, he contributed the accumulated "energy points" to plant a tree when his son was born.

"When my son grows up, I will tell him there is a tree planted in Alxa the same age as him and I will take him there to see it," he said.

Like Jiang, 230 million users of Alipay have activated Ant Forest accounts, according to Alibaba. By the end of August 2017, Ant Financial and its partners, including the SEE Foundation, a Beijing-based NGO in the environmental protection field, and China Green Foundation, had planted 10.25 million saxaul trees covering 10 square km or the equivalent of a 1.22-million metric ton reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

Wang Jinlong, a student in Peking University, is among the first group of users invited to visit the protected forest in Alxa. "It is so exciting to see that I have contributed to a real tree. The function [Ant Forest] changed my lifestyle and now I take the subway and bicycle more frequently and pay for goods and services with Alipay as much as I can," he said. "I am making great strides in accumulating energy points to plant my second tree," he added.

Two-sided benefits

Ant Forest changed hundreds of thousands of urban people's life. And it also changed herdsman Nie Yusheng's life. With Ant Forest, people from all around China built a connection with Nie, the 52-year-old man who brings those virtual trees into reality.

Living in Alxa, Nie's family used to depend on herding for their livelihood. However, the dry climate and overgrazing issue led to the deterioration of grasslands in the area, which is a serious threat to local animal husbandry. But the SEE Foundation has given him new hope by providing subsidies, labor and technical support to encourage Nie to plant saxaul trees in his meadow instead of struggling with the barren grassland.

Now, as the largest Ant Forest saxaul forest covering 1.7 square km, his meadow has 129,500 saxaul trees, 2,900 of which were self-planted.

"My land is full of green now. I'm so happy when I see these trees growing up day by day," said Nie.

Wang Jinlong pays with Alipay to get more energy points for his tree

An adult saxaul tree can bind 10 square meters of desert, making it one of the best plants to maintain the desert ecology. These trees are not only important to resist desertification, but also beneficial to restore pastures. Three years after a saxaul tree is planted, if it could be successfully grafted with a plant known as desert-broomrape, which is a kind of medicinal herb, Nie and other herdsmen could benefit economically.

"By integrating Ant Forest function into the Alipay app, we have provided our users with the opportunity to play a meaningful role in cutting urban carbon emissions to fight against climate change and also combating desertification in China," said Lucy Peng, Executive Chairwomen at Ant Financial.

Model for the world

"About 200 million people - that's 3 percent of the world's population - are greening their lives because they are getting immediate information about the environmental impact of their choices in a fun and competitive way," said Erik Solheim, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program. "Ant Forest shows that digital finance holds a huge untapped power to mobilize people in support of sustainable development and the fight against climate change. And this power is literally at our fingertips through our mobile devices," he added.

Chen Long, Chief Strategist of Ant Financial, said that the government and large institutions have made much progress in the field of green development. Ant Forest will make use of technology from the bottom up and expand awareness of environmental protection among common people.

China's carbon dioxide emission is exp­ected to peak around 2030 and then drop, and the country will make every effort for such emissions to drop ahead of time. In order to achieve this goal, Duan Maosheng, Director of the Center for China Carbon Market Research, Tsinghua University, said that China needs not only emission reduction efforts from production sectors such as various industries, but also to rely on the ordinary people to assist.

"Ant Forest makes a contribution to environmental protection and public welfare in China and it could also become a model project that can be replicated elsewhere in the world," said Duan.

In September, Fortune magazine published its 2017 Change the World List, which highlights the work of corporations making social benefit part of their core businesses. Ant Financial ranked No.6 on the list on the back of Ant Forest.