IOC reveals details of its “Olympic Forest” project

International Olympic Committee (IOC), June 2021

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced today the details of its project to plant the “Olympic Forest” in Mali and Senegal, an element of the IOC’s climate-positive strategy.

The project is a contribution to the Great Green Wall initiative, which restores degraded landscapes across Africa’s Sahel region. It will involve planting around 355,000 native trees across approximately 90 villages in Mali and Senegal – host of the Youth Olympic Games Dakar 2026 – and will cover a combined area of around 2,120 hectares.

We're a long way from ending deforestation, but we can still stop it

World Economic Forum, December 2020

In 2014, governments, companies, NGOs and Indigenous groups committed to 10 goals to protect trees, under the New York Declaration on Forests. The goals intended to halve deforestation by 2020, and stop it by 2030.

But assessments have concluded we're actually further from stopping deforestation now than we were six years ago.

Despite the challenges, the goals can still be achieved with the right measures.