CASE STUDY WILDER CLIMATE SOLUTIONS
A data-driven approach to global reforestation
Wilder Climate Solutions, Accenture and Amazon Web Services help accelerate global tree planting through a mobile app
3-minute read
Planting seeds of hope
The world is facing a tree seed shortage and countries like Canada are in desperate need of a solution. In 2023, fires in the country destroyed more than 18 million hectares of forest—an area the size of North Dakota. The available supply of tree seeds is just a tiny fraction of what’s needed to replant these forests. In fact, Canada will need as many as 11 billion seeds to meet its goal to plant 2 billion trees by 2030. The big question that seedling growers, ecological restoration groups and other reforestation organizations are asking is: Where will these seeds come from?
In September, Wilder Climate Solutions, Accenture and Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched a mobile app that aims to solve the seed supply challenge—in Canada and around the world. Squiirrel is a one-stop digital marketplace that connects seed collectors and growers while building capacity to scale seed collection. The goal is to turbocharge reforestation and help fight biodiversity loss and climate change.
Accelerating global tree planting
At a global scale, planting healthy forests can potentially sequester 25% of atmospheric carbon and help address climate change, but there are not nearly enough seeds to pursue this strategy. Historically, it’s been challenging for seedling growers and ecological restoration organizations to find a sufficient quantity of seeds due to the lack of an established seed marketplace where they can connect with seed collectors.
Squiirrel fills this gap. The app enables restoration experts to post seed demand to the marketplace and find collectors to meet industry needs. It also helps collectors accurately collect the data for their seeds and ensure the information is traceable. Seed users can browse available seed collections with details on species, quantity and geography, discuss contract details with collectors, and plan deliveries. The app is built on AWS’s cloud platform, exemplifying AWS’s efforts to democratize access to powerful cloud technologies.
Powering reforestation with data
Now, more than ever, reforestation needs to be data-driven. As the climate warms, tree species may no longer be optimally adapted to their historical native regions and may have better survival elsewhere. Growers and planters need high-quality seed data to put the right seeds in the right place. Squiirrel provides a guided, universal workflow for collectors to input and share their data with growers. It also allows collectors to upload and tag photos of their seeds with Global Positioning System (GPS) data so that growers understand precisely where they were collected. Accenture built the app’s capabilities on the AWS platform, which include secure data storage, privacy, image libraries, GPS tagging, monitoring transaction trends, user sign-up and sign-in, and data privacy.
While Squiirrel currently connects seed collectors and seedling growers in Canada, the vision is to expand its reach to the entire seed supply chain worldwide, including tree planters, reforestation groups and forest monitoring organizations. Squiirrel has set the stage to transform global reforestation by scaling the seed supply.