OpenForests

02/06/2026

Big news 🌍✨

Our map is featured in the Annual Report, and we couldn't be more proud.

Wyss Academy for Nature is a Swiss foundation and a leading voice for solutions that help both nature and people, working where science, policy, and practice meet. Being part of how they tell their story means that our work helps demonstrate, track, and raise awareness of the real changes on the land and in nature.

We built explorer.land exactly with this purpose: to make geodata transparent and accessible to everyone and not only to experts.

More to come as we work together to further strengthen their ability to drive impact.🗺️

01/06/2026

"The global standards don't have their feet on the ground. They don't stand on the soil."

And this is exactly why Pati Ruiz Corzo and Ecologico Sierra Gorda built their own local carbon standard.

Not for the markets, but for local people.

The Carbono Biodiverso protocol, co-developed with the Querétaro state government, is turning carbon tax revenues from local companies into direct payments to forest owners.

A transparent, locally governed mechanism where 70 to 80% of revenues flow directly back to conservation on the ground.

No developer extracting value in the middle and a system designed to work for the 630 communities living inside one of Mexico's most biodiverse regions.

What makes it work is 40 years of showing up: training farmers, developing local products, and instilling pride in communities for what they preserve.

Economic dignity, environmental awareness, and community pride viewed as a single, integrated whole.

At OpenForests, working alongside Grupo Ecológico to build their carbon registry has been a reminder that local roots are not a constraint in conservation finance. They are the building blocks of the entire architecture.

🎙️ Pati and Laura Burke Pérez-Arce tell the full story in the latest episode of Beyond the Canopy. Link in comments.

29/05/2026

We don't believe in "divide and conquer."

We believe fragmented information leads to fragmented action, and that the restoration sector deserves better than scattered data and missed opportunities of collaboration.

So when and came to us with this very challenge, we got to work. The result: an interactive map of 160+ regeneration and restoration initiatives across Europe, structured, filterable, and built to support decision-making.

We turned the whole process into a case study because we do think this kind of approach is worth replicating.

See how we did it ↓

27/05/2026

"Sean rebeldes."

Be rebellious. That's Pati's answer when asked what it took to keep the Sierra Gorda Reserve going for forty years and how she sees the future.

No toxic positivity here. Pati speaks from experience.

Rebellion, courage, and a deep reconnection with nature as the actual tools for turning what seemed impossible into reality.

In the latest episode of Beyond the Canopy, Marta "Pati" Ruiz Corzo, founder of Grupo Ecológico Sierra Gorda, and Laura P. Burke Pérez-Arce, president and carbon finance architect of GESG, joined host Alexander Watson to discuss the challenges, the struggles, the brave stances, and the great achievements of forty years of conservation in Mexico.

They also emphasize the importance of the local dimension: a sense of attachment to and love for the territory, commitment to and by local communities, standards tailored to local realities, and economic and social benefits that stay where they belong: locally.

Because the most radical act in conservation today might simply be knowing your land, trusting your people, and taking care of them with love.

🎙️ Listen to the latest episode of Beyond the Canopy:
https://youtu.be/BazqVRQvH6M
🎧You can listen to the FULL EPISODE right here:
- https://youtu.be/BazqVRQvH6M
- https://open.spotify.com/episode/54e0UNNqHTA7tpgYwrvTXw?si=6ba2e9abcfde489e
- https://podcasts.apple.com/dk/podcast/40-years-protecting-mexicos-sierra-gorda-grupo-ecol%C3%B3gico/id1508026153?i=1000767283538

14/05/2026

Satellite images are made of pixels.

Tiny pieces of information, collected across space and time that represent real bits of the Earth: a forest, a river, a field, a beach.

Put together, these images don’t only reveal landscapes, but also reveals the changes affecting them:

🌱 growth
🔥 disturbance
💧 drought
🌳 regeneration

This is Episode 4 of “What the satellite sees”, our series about how satellites help us understand the constantly evolving nature.

👉 Swipe to explore
👉 Follow for the next episode

07/05/2026

30/04/2026

Not all satellites orbit the Earth the same way.

Some fly close.
Some, very, very far away.

And that distance changes everything:

👁️ what they can see
📏 how detailed it is
⏱️ how often they come back

The closer they are, the more detail they can capture.

The further they are, the longer they can stay focused on one place.

This balance shapes how we observe the planet.

This is Episode 2 of “What satellite sees”, our series about how satellites help us understand nature.

👉 Swipe to explore
👉 Follow for the next episode

24/04/2026

"Some tech bros are building machines that do what trees already do."

— Christian Kroll, founder of

Trees: Zero energy bills. No Venture Capital funding needed.

While billions flow into carbon capture tech, Ecosia is quietly doing the opposite: funding real forests, real communities, 250 million real trees.

Because the best climate technology already exists. We just stopped trusting and caring for it.

🎙️ The new episode of Beyond the Canopy is live [link in bio].

SustainabilityNow GreenTech EcoLife ForestRestoration ImpactMatters

10/04/2026

250 MILLION trees planted by a search engine.

That might seem counterintuitive. But that's the feat accomplished by Ecosia over the years.

Join us for the webinar The Science & Practice of Ecosia's Journey to Grow 250 Million Trees on April 22.

Find out how your daily internet searches can have a real impact on the environment, and how Ecosia goes beyond simply planting trees to ensure the long-term success of ecosystem restoration.

Our CEO Alexander Watson will chair Session 4 of the Ecosia's 9th Land Webinar: "Tracking Restoration Progress Through Monitoring and Follow-Up", exploring how data & science drive real accountability in reforestation.

📅 Free | April 22 | 2:00 PM CEST 

📌  See the full program and secure your spot here:

https://sciforum.net/event/Land-9?section=  

At OpenForests, we're proud to collaborate with Ecosia in making forest restoration transparent, science-based & accountable.

Monitoring

25/03/2026

Impact is not only about doing the work. It is also about making it visible.

If you're running a restoration or conservation project, showing what happens in the field in a clear and geolocated way is what buildstrust with your partners, funders and your team.

At , we built explorer.land around one belief: transparent, accessible evidence not only builds trust. It drives better decisions.

's Reforestation Catalog makes this concrete. They rate tree-growing organizations across four categories: permanence, ecological, social, and financial.
Transparency is a baseline requirement across all of them. And that includes georeferencing: knowing where a project actually takes place is part of how funders and policymakers verify that outcomes are real.

Geotransparency is no longer a nice-to-have. It's an evaluation criteria.

explorer.land enables nature-based projects to make that shift: interactive maps, data layers and reporting that turns field work into verifiable proof.

Move from claims to visibility, and from visibility to trust.

See how The Foundation uses explorer.land to map their projects.

Interested in what this looks like for your project? Drop a comment or send a DM.