Building Climate Resilience | Saving Habitats | Helping Communities

About Spades

Serving communities globally to help restore their environment, benefit economically, and collaboratively design and implement reforestation projects.

Powering Climate Resilience

Spades addresses climate change through profitable reforestation and agroforestry projects worldwide.

Reorienting around climate, the world already has investments dwarfing the dot-com bubble – the start of The Climate Age​.

Reforestation is an unprecedented opportunity:

  • Trees are half of the solution to climate change, removing the emitted greenhouse gases.
  • Tree density creates visible local climate resilience.
  • Tree assets are worth >20x initial costs, enabling significant investment having >20% IRR investor returns.

Spades unique assets:

  • Proprietary design model (Terrazone), breakthrough biotech (Ecofit), and SaaS/TaaS monitoring platform (Topodox).
  • Signed regreening partners with most of the earth’s total planting capacity, technical knowledge, and local presence.
  • Balanced finance with incentives for investors, governments, and communities – everyone wins.
  • An international, diversified project portfolio.

Leading with Vision

Mission-focused for people, the environment, and economics

Our vision is to sustain the world with trees by integrating thriving human, environmental, and economic solutions. In executing our mission, Spades connects human and social impact, environmental stewardship, and economic development in a synergistic way. For the greatest environmental and social impact, our actions align with seven essential values.

3 leaves representing Spades' mission statement
Spades Sustainability Values

Demonstrating Strong Cultural Values

Communities, organizations, and people thrive when the soil of their culture is alive. The fruits of an organization’s values are evident in its actions and behaviors, formed by its culture.

Nine principles define Spades’ culture:

  • Love, hope, justice,
  • Courage, trueness, creativity,
  • Impact, results, and accountability.

Because of love, we act with courage, which results in impact. With each challenge we face, we test our values, and – with each call to action that makes us dig deeper – we strengthen them.

Our values transcend feelings and good intentions. Every decision we make reflects our values. If we act inconsistently with these values, we expect to be held accountable.

Sustaining Our World with Trees™

Spades serves people and communities around the world. Our goal is to help communities restore their environment for future generations, benefit economically from this development, and be engaged in the design and implementation of the development.

Our projects cover developing and mature economies, across many climates and ecosystems, with farmers, foresters, indigenous communities, pastoralists, as well as small and large landowners.

People and trees are interconnected. Trees provide shade, shelter, meeting places, and beauty. They also produce food, fuel, and medicine, improve soil and water quality, and provide resilience to drought and flooding. Deforestation, on the other hand, has devastating effects on communities. Forest loss contributes to climate change, desertification, soil erosion, fewer crops, flooding, increased greenhouse gas emissions, and various problems for indigenous people.

Forests create numerous benefits, vibrant communities, and sustain traditional cultures and livelihoods. Communities’ inclusion in the Terrazone™ approach to regreening is designed to maximize the synergies of balanced, diverse interests in rural development.


Aligning Values with SDGs

More than 125 nations have committed to improving their lands and ecosystems, according to a UNCCD report published in May 2021. The nations have already pledged to protect more than one billion hectares of their lands.

At the UN’s Climate Change Conference, COP26, 140 countries made pledges to protect natural habitats and halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030.

Spades’ solutions address many urgent global issues. We generate benefits in reforestation, regenerative agriculture, integrated rural land use development, diversified ecosystems, better water resources, carbon sequestration, air quality, and investment opportunities.

Leadership, advisors, and staff are empowered to live by our values and align themselves with sustainable development goals.

Every Spades project supports multiple SDGs directly and indirectly.


Creating Societal Value and Economic Impact

Spades is a Delaware public benefit corporation. Our specific benefit purpose is to remediate climate conditions by growing plants, especially trees, to sequester carbon and activities related to this objective. 

For donors requiring a registered U.S. nonprofit for donations, Spades is affiliated with Cheetah Development, an organization represented on our Board. We also engage with nonprofits across the world.

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