Planting 12.5 million trees and counting – Earthshot winner Florent Kaiser on local water stewardship in Latin America

How do you plant 12.5 million trees and mobilise over 40,000 local and Indigenous people across six South American countries? 🌎

In this episode of The Stream, we sit down with Florent Kaiser, Executive Director of Global Forest Generation and co-founder of Acción Andina, a grassroots movement restoring high Andean forests.

A past Earthshot Prize winner and recognised by the UN as one of the World Restoration Flagships, Florent shares:

• Why the next phase of Acción Andina is called “the path of water.” 💧
• How restoration ties directly to water stewardship, climate resilience, and community livelihoods.
• New financial models shifting from corporate to local finance.
• The role of Indigenous leadership in linking global sustainability ambitions with local action.

We first met Florent at London Climate Action Week, and his vision left a lasting impression. Tune in to hear how a movement rooted in local action is reshaping global water and nature restoration.

🔔 We hope you enjoy the episode and make sure to follow and subscribe to our channels to get alerts on the episodes. 

We’re delighted you can join us on this voyage of discovery, as we journey down The Stream.

Special thanks to this season's sponsor, Raymond James.

And our charity partner, Frank Water.

And thanks to our knowledge partners: British Water, WWF, Water Alliance, DCU Water Institute, SurplusWater25, Earth and Environmental Science at Berkeley  Lab, Water Foundry and Atlantean Media.