Give the world’s faith communities the means to restore the Earth

An independent coalition equipping religious communities to bring degraded land back to life.

Up to 40% of the world’s land is degraded, and restoring it is one of the few climate actions open to almost everyone, almost everywhere. Faith communities are placed to lead it: they steward roughly 8% of the world’s habitable land and hold the trust of billions of people. They have the ground and the patience that restoration demands. What most of them lack is the training and funding to act. Faiths for Land was built to close that gap, and this campaign funds its first year as an independent coalition.

Faiths for Land is the newest coalition in the FutureFaith Network, joining Faiths for Oceans and Faiths for Biodiversity in a connected effort to mobilise the world’s faith communities for the planet’s recovery across land, ocean, and the more-than-human world.

An approach that already works

Over the past two years, FutureFaith’s co-founders, Tariq Al-Olaimy and Gopal Patel, built the faith engagement workstream of the UN’s G20 Global Land Initiative from the ground up. Working with the United Nations and a wide network of restoration partners, they created a global Stocktake, the Multi-faith Rio Trio Call to Action, and a Faith4Land capacity-building programme.

Faiths for Land is the independent coalition that now carries that proven work forward, guided by a Technical Working Group of leading restoration partners that includes the World Resources Institute, WWF, the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, and Trillion Trees.

What is holding it back

The will is everywhere; the support system is not. Only 28% of environmentally active faith groups have a restoration policy, 76% lack the technical capacity to run a project well, and fewer than 20% of faith-led efforts are monitored, so most of the work is never counted and never funded.

The proof is already on the ground, across faith traditions:

When the UN put out an open call to faith communities, the response settled the question of appetite. A single open call drew 700+ responses from communities in 102 countries, together responsible for 15.3 million hectares. Drawing on more than 100 faith organisations across 24 countries, the Stocktake found that 92% are already committed to restoration and 74% run active programmes, with a further 16% preparing to start. And the work is already in the ground: faith actors in Kenya planted more than 10 million trees between 2018 and 2021, restoring over 7,000 hectares, while in Madagascar a Catholic-led programme brought back 7,413 hectares and generated $760,000 in farmer income.

The appetite is no longer in question. What the field has never had is a faith-driven structure, independent by design and built to outlast any single UN or government initiative.

What We’ll Do

Connect. Faith organizations with technical partners, funders, and restoration networks — giving the sector a single entry point to faith-led restoration, in coordination with Faiths for Oceans and Faiths for Biodiversity.

Build capacity. Faiths for Land will operate a free online resource hub bringing together training materials, peer learning, facilitator guides, and action-planning tools co-developed with leading restoration partners — so any faith community, anywhere, can find what it needs to plan, restore, and sustain a land restoration project.

Amplify. Faith voices in global land, climate, and biodiversity policy processes. Faiths for Land will organize faith participation in major international restoration and environmental forums, help faith leaders speak with one coordinated voice, and advocate for faith-based contributions to be formally recognized within global restoration targets.

Track and communicate. The collective impact of faith-led restoration globally. Faith groups have planted an estimated 300+ million trees in the last decade, but monitoring data exists for fewer than 20% of initiatives. Faiths for Land will aggregate member data and communicate results to funders, policymakers, and the public.

The Technical Working Group keeps the coalition’s practical guidance grounded in current restoration science.

Who is behind it

Faiths for Land is one of three coalitions in the FutureFaith Network, so faith communities have one connected home for restoring the natural world.

Its co-founders, Tariq Al-Olaimy and Gopal Patel, have spent a decade putting faith at the centre of the climate and restoration conversation, from the TED stage to supporting the development of the World Economic Forum report “Faith in Action” which argued that faith actors are essential partners in the global response.

Between them they have engaged faith organisations representing over a billion people and hold roles across all three UN Rio Conventions. This is a proven foundation, now ready to operate independently and at scale.
Watch: Gopal D. Patel, The unexpected way spirituality connects to climate change (TED).

Watch: Tariq Al-Olaimy, The spiritual wisdom we need for a planet in crisis (TED).

Our goal, and how funds are used.

This campaign funds the coalition’s first year, beginning with its public launch in Q3/Q4 2026: a free resource hub kept live, faith communities onboarded with training, a coordinated faith delegation at a major UN summit, and the first shared baseline of faith-led restoration data.

Your gift funds the coalition itself rather than a single planting day, the backbone that turns thousands of willing communities into restored hectares. Give whatever you feel moved to, and bring one person with you. Here on Ma Earth, the number of people who show up counts as much as the size of any gift.

Why now

The world has pledged to restore 350 million hectares of land by 2030 and to halve degraded land by 2040, and restoring degraded land sits at the centre of those goals. Faith communities have the reach to act almost everywhere and the patience to see it through.

Join us, at whatever size feels right, and you help build the lasting structure that turns all this readiness into living land again, for the people who hold it sacred and for those who come after them.