“France has lost 70% of its hedges since 1950”

Paris Match. What memory do you keep of your father, Yves Rocher?
Jacques Rocher. He was silent and had an almost spiritual relationship with nature. He said: “The forest is my private conversation.” I think she brought him some kind of consolation. As a teenager, my father had experienced health problems related to a period of his schooling spent in a poorly heated boarding house. My grandfather ended up giving him lessons at home, then he died in 1944. My father was 14 years old. It was then that he made the forest his refuge. He healed the bruises in his soul there, drew his inspiration from it, collected himself there and found the meaning of life there.

Did he take you with him?
A little… But above all, I forged my own experience. This will no doubt seem esoteric to you: for me, the forests are inhabited by spirits and by time. As a child, with my brothers, I played in the woods around La Gacilly. My real sensibility came when I was 14 years old. I was taking pictures of the marshes of Glénac, all misty at daybreak. The beauty of nature, the explosion of life, those hundreds of frogs singing all around me… There are little things like that that upset you forever. We were not yet talking about ecology or environmental protection. My father had always been aware of the fragility of wild beauty. Mayor of La Gacilly, he was fiercely opposed to land consolidation which involved the felling of hedges and century-old trees. I also remember that in 1972 he had financed the arrival of 500 kids and young people. Among them was Allain Bougrain-Dubourg. Our “Club of young friends of animals and nature” had organized the expedition. We exchanged on the living for three days. Today, children and teenagers are very concerned about ecology, we must help them to mobilize. When I see that in France we still have to fight against the worst hunting practices, such as the use of sticks coated with glue to trap birds! In the name of what do we indulge in such barbarism? Tradition has a good back!

What is the first tree you planted?
I do not remember anymore. But, in the family, we have the habit of planting one at each birth. Trees are so magical. Thanks to the molecules they exchange and their root networks, they communicate with each other and are capable of alliances. They can transmit signals by means other than a nervous system, isn’t that dizzying? The tree is the receptacle of life and it embodies the notion of time. Just after the war in Lebanon, with an NGO, I planted cedars near the famous Bcharré forest where the 2,000 year old cedars of God stand. Faced with them, we understand: we are only passing through. The oldest tree in the world is more than 9,000 years old, it lives in the far north of Europe. It relativizes our sufficiency to want to dominate everything!

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We want to save nature, but we prevent kids from climbing trees, lest they fall!

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In thirty years, thanks to your foundation, 100 million trees have been planted in 35 countries. Did you imagine such success?
At first I wanted to plant 1 million, they told me I was crazy. So I replied: “We are going to set up a crazy club!” This is how, in 2007, I met Sadhguru, an Indian spiritual master who wanted to sow, by 2020, 25 million trees in the heart of Tamil Nadu, a state located in the extreme south of India, seriously threatened by desertification. The first time we saw each other was at his ashram. I asked him his age, he replied 325 years old! He’s actually 60… but I thought it started off well. The energy he deployed with his volunteers made us want to continue to push back the desert and reforest a devastated place. We now plan to replant 114 million trees.

How did you manage to enamel the world of planters and planters?
The first step, the key, is to detect on the ground the local actors or the NGO carrying out a project in favor of nature and biodiversity. We have a team that unearths these nuggets at the Foundation, but this is also done without necessarily having to go to the end of the world, through meetings. In 2008, we awarded the Terre de femmes prize to Sylvie Monnier, a farmer in Auvergne and founder of the Afahc (French Association of Trees and Country Hedges). She is a fierce defender of the hurdles. We decided to expand its story. Deforestation does not only concern developing countries, the situation is also alarming in France: since 1950, we have lost 70% of hedgerows. Each year, 11,500 kilometers of shrubs essential to biodiversity disappear. With our partner, Afac-Agroforesteries, and thanks to the mobilization of farmers, local authorities, associations and schools, we have planted 5 million country trees in twelve years. And by 2050, with the Fund for the tree, which we launched in order to reconstitute the bocage, we hope to erect another 750,000 kilometers of hedges. Our goal is to protect soil and water resources, to revive bocage biodiversity and to encourage farmers to engage in a more sustainable practice.

What is your most important program?
Ethiopia. This country is subject to the ravages of drought as well as to humanitarian crises. Its dazzling development comes at the cost of the environment. In just fifty years, Ethiopia has lost 90% of its forests. Members of Green Ethiopia fight to preserve vegetation, make soils more fertile and support food security. Since 2009, more than 46 million trees have been replanted thanks to the involvement of 40,000 people. Unfortunately, the escalation of the civil war put a damper on our plans. But we’re not going to stop, we just, for safety reasons, reduced the sails a bit.

You entered the world of video games with Minecraft#plantforlife. Explain to us…
Microsoft France, patron of the foundation, financed the production. The idea was to virtually create 100,000 trees, or 140 football pitches, before December 15, 2021, for us to actually plant in France or Ethiopia. The objective has been achieved. The interest is to speak to all generations. In our hyperconnected world, we are totally cut off from nature. Which was not the case for my generation, even if we weren’t talking about global warming. On the contrary, young people who experience climate change are mobilizing but they are locked into ultra-secure schemes. We prevent them from climbing trees, we forbid them to scratch the ground, we are afraid that they will fall or get dirty…

What are your next goals?
Continue ! We started with the idea of ​​135 million trees by 2025. The Foundation is part of a long term. Being recognized as a public utility is also a way of carrying it over time. After me, my children, nephews and nieces will undoubtedly take over.

To consult: Our special page dedicated to Heroes of the Planet

Deforestation has been denounced for decades, without the phenomenon slowing down. How do you keep the faith?
There is, indeed, enough to be demoralized: 100 million trees planted in thirty years, that’s what deforestation destroys in twenty days! I was in Rio, in 1992, for the 2nd Earth Summit. Three years after the end of the cold war, there was a euphoria, a global energy: civil society was finally going to work with governments for a better world. I was there again in 2012, I had just spent five weeks in the Amazon… Governments came and went, the problems remained. Worse, we regress. A Native American proverb warns: “When the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught and the last river polluted; when breathing the air will be sickening, it will be too late. You will find that you can’t eat the money!” But I always prefer to see the glass half full. The adventure began with an arboretum created with school children in a small garden in La Gacilly: the 500 children who had made a commitment to protect nature are now in their forties and come to walk there with their own children! We have created 500 arboretums around the world that bring together thousands of children! My optimism, I owe it to the people I meet, to these moments of life and sharing. All over the world, in France as in Ethiopia, people are putting their hands in the ground and planting. The flame should not go out. As the saying goes, whoever plants a tree plants hope.