- Chinese tech company Ant Group’s initiative, Alipay Ant Forest, sees it plant trees when users of digital payment platform adopt green activities
- Access to Alipay in shops, hotels and restaurants abroad provides international travellers with fast, convenient and safe method of payment
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The world’s forests are disappearing at a staggering rate. Between 1990 and 2016, 1.3 million square km (502,000 square miles) of forest – an area larger than South Africa – have been lost, the World Bank has reported.
Roughly 46 per cent of the planet’s trees have been felled since man started cutting them down, a 2015 study in the journal Nature revealed.
However, technology can help restore the planet’s disappearing woodlands. Alipay Ant Forest is a green initiative launched by the Chinese technology company, Ant Group, which aims to do just that.
Ant, which is an affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding, the Chinese e-commerce giant that owns the South China Morning Post, is also on a mission to make the travel industry more accessible to everyone – regardless of their abilities and backgrounds. Here’s how.
Herdsman to ‘tree planter’
At the peak of his time working as a herdsman, Nie Yusheng took care of up to 800 sheep in his hometown of Alxa League in China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region. He said his family was one of 30 households raising sheep – the area’s main source of income.