A forest that already stands stores carbon dioxide — but it hardly takes up any more. A tree that is growing, on the other hand, turns CO₂ into wood year after year. Anyone who wants to relieve the climate therefore needs not simply forest, but growing forest. And nowhere does more new growth arise than where there was nothing at all before.

Add to that: the desert is spreading — through global warming, through overuse. With it, soils, harvests and livelihoods disappear. Every tree wrested from it works twice over: it binds carbon dioxide, and it holds the soil.

Since the summer of 2012 we have therefore been planting trees in the Egyptian desert, at Sekem, a biodynamic organisation that farms around 1'000 hectares in the middle of the Sahara sand, in the El Wahat oasis some 350 kilometres south-east of Cairo. When Francesco asked whether they could plant trees for us, he expected a shake of the head. Instead, Sekem planted gladly: over 10'000 trees, which as a windbreak also protect Sekem's fields from the advancing sand. Year after year we fund their care and replacement; the trees grow, and with them the shade, the soil, the work.