Meet Marianna Muntianu.
For the past ten years, she's been planting trees all over Russia. A lot of trees. Together with an army of volunteers, she's been responsible for reforesting the equivalent of 1,350 football fields in 24 regions, well over a million trees.
She first got the idea in 2010, when wildfires tore through the forests of Kostroma, her home in western Russia. "Smoke covered cities, and people walked the streets wearing masks. The picture was so eerie, and I was devastated we were losing this beautiful natural heritage.” When she realized the spaces weren't being reforested, she gave up her studies in finance and joined an environmental organization. “By planting a tree, I wished to move from destruction, to creation."
Within a few years, she'd set up an online platform called Plant the Forest, that gathered volunteers through social media, and raised funds and awareness through a mobile game. They've now planted hundreds of thousands of seedlings in areas all around the country that were badly in need of reforestation, and the movement is going from strength to strength, bring together Russians united by their love of nature. Her latest initiative is a "Russian Climate Fund" that aims to plant 1 billion trees by 2030
