How Alipay enabled the planting 122 million trees with Ant Forest

We learned more about the positive impact on the environment initiated by Alipay with the reforestation project Ant Forest.

In August 2016, Alipay, the world’s leading payment and lifestyle platform, introduced Ant Forest within app to promote a greener lifestyle and encourage low-carbon activities — such as paying utility bills online and walking to work instead of driving — among users.

Operating as a mini-program on Alipay – the world’s most used app outside social apps – Alipay Ant Forest has far exceeded expectations. As of August 2019, over 500 million people had joined Alipay Ant Forest, planting 122 million trees in Gansu Province, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and other areas in China and avoiding 7.9 million tons of carbon emission.

The tree-planting activities have also created 400,000 job opportunities for local communities and RMB 60 million in income by August of 2018.

On September 19th, 2019, Alipay Ant Forest was awarded the United Nation’s highest environmental honor – the “UN Champions of the Earth” award – for inspiring over half a billion people to take action in their daily lives to live greener lifestyles and help protect the environment through the power of digital technology. One week later, Alipay Ant Forest won the 2019 UN Global Climate Action Award for using digital technologies to scale up climate action.

How does Alipay Ant Forest Work?

A user collects green energy from a virtual tree.

Alipay Ant Forest users are encouraged to engage in low-carbon activities in daily life, such as paying utility bills online and commuting by walking or cycling instead of driving.

Such behavior is counted and converted into virtual “green energy” that can then be used to grow a virtual tree in Alipay Ant Forest within the Alipay app. With enough energy points, the virtual tree can be converted into a real tree and planted in arid areas in China by Alipay and its philanthropic partners. In turn, this tree-planting initiative inspires users to further adopt low-carbon and environmentally-friendly lifestyles, forming a virtuous cycle.

Here’s a video explaining how this works.

Why does it matter?

Saxaul trees planted by Alipay Ant Forest users and philanthropic partners are helping save degraded land from the Tengger Desert in Gansu Province, Northwest China.

500 million of individuals, about 7% of the world’s population, have started pursuing a greener lifestyle after joining Alipay Ant Forest. The initiative’s bottom-up approach to tackling global environmental challenges not only complements existing efforts, but also demonstrates how good intentions can be transformed by technology to deliver tangible results and bring positive social impact.

The innovation continues

Since its launch, Alipay Ant Forest has spared no effort to improve the product and service to meet evolving demands from users. To increase transparency, in November 2017, Alipay Ant Forest introduced a new feature with its technology partners, which allows users to view real-time aerial images of Alipay Ant Forest trees.

Alipay Ant Forest is also expanding low carbon emission use cases with a variety of partners. As of the end of 2018, there have been 19 such use cases ranging from cycling and online payment to green takeout (opt out of disposable cutlery) and parcel recycling. Since January 2018, users are also able to jointly grow trees with friends, family and loved ones.

In June 2019, inspired by Alipay Ant Forest, the Philippines’ leading mobile wallet GCash introduced GCash Forest, a new feature accessible through the GCash app which enables local users to contribute to reforestation and environmental preservation by adopting low carbon activities in their daily lives. (photo as below)

More international footprint

April 16, 2019. An Alipay Ant Forest representative shared the initiative’s experience in combating climate change at a G20 gathering in Nagano, Japan.

In January 2017, United Nations Environmental Program and Ant Financial Services Group jointly launched Green Digital Finance Alliance. Launched at the World Economic Forum, the partnership aims to leverage digital technologies and innovations to enhance financing for sustainable development.

In September 2017, Ant Financial was named #6 in Fortune’s third annual Change the World list, which highlights companies that are “making measurable progress addressing important social problems…as a core part of their business strategy.” Ant, a first-time entrant and the highest ranked Asia-headquartered company on the list, was recognized for the environmental impact of Alipay Ant Forest, the world’s largest platform for tracking individuals’ carbon footprint.

In April 2019, Alipay Ant Forest was invited to speak at the second Climate Sustainability Working Group meeting of G20 in Nagano, Japan and shared its experiences in harnessing digital technology to combat climate change.

Filipina Alipay user Joahnna (living in China now) shows off her Alipay Ant Forest virtual tree while her friend (living in the Philippines) shows off his GCash virtual tree

In July 2019, Harvard published a case study on Alipay Ant Forest, titled Growing a Global Forest: Ant Financial, Alipay, and the Ant Forest ,to introduce at length how this green initiative has encouraged hundreds of millions of people to contribute to the fight against climate change and the protection of our environment overall.

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