He is a traveler with pockets full of large, heart-shaped entada rheedii seeds, which are rumored in Africa to promote dream memory and longevity. These sweet lucky charms, he offers them over the course of his encounters to tell us of his passion for trees. A little mystical, a lot of a poet, rather silent, Jacques Rocher practices the ecology of happiness on a daily basis and cultivates it in the four corners of the world. He thus digs the furrow opened by his father, Yves Rocher, the alchemist of beauty through plants, who transmitted to his three sons his tenderness for all shades of green.
Heir, with his two brothers, Daniel and Didier (deceased in 1994), of the industrial group insensitive to the sirens of the Cac40, Jacques could have slept peacefully. He preferred to be an activist. In La Gacilly, first, a little piece of Morbihan and family stronghold of these pure Bretons. The surrounding marshes, the secrets of the Brocéliande forest: Jacques fell in love with them as a kid, when he captured them in the camera of his Zenit 24×36. Thus emerged his desire to protect the living. Much later, he ensured that the Yves Rocher factories polluted neither the rivers nor the landscapes and, when the establishment of a project threatened to wipe out a copse, he invited the architect to review his plans. Then father and son wonder how to give back to nature the success it brings to their empire. “It was 1991 when we decided to create a foundation, says Jacques. One of our very first actions was to plant trees in schools. The operation mobilized students from France and elsewhere, more than 500 arboretums were then created.
A “knight with a hoe”
In Burkina, in Lebanon, in Canada… In the eyes of the children, the magic of the tree operated. From 2001, thanks to the Terre de femmes prize, Jacques highlighted those who, everywhere, are at work, ecology tied to the body. He transforms his village into a vast art gallery, an outdoor version: every summer, La Gacilly hosts the giant pictures of the best photographers. They show us how fragile the Earth is. To build his bioclimatic hotel dedicated to birds and the plant world on the hill of his childhood, Jacques calls on a dowser. It is he who decides where to locate the establishment to preserve the energy of the site. “There are also decisive encounters in life that change our path forever,” he says. My meeting with Wangari Maathai in Nairobi in 2007 was one of them. Alongside this inspiring and militant woman, Nobel Peace Prize winner, I decided to support the planting of trees. The Plant for the Planet adventure was launched.”
One day in France, the other in the Amazon, in Brazil, in Madagascar, in Poland, this “knight with a hoe”, as his friend Sylvain Tesson calls him in their beautiful leafy album “In the name of the tree”, plants wherever there is an emergency. Result: in thirty years, in collaboration with 48 NGOs and thanks to a tribe of more than a million volunteers, the Yves Rocher Foundation has raised 100 million specimens across 35 countries. In India, it participates in the creation of drought-tolerant nurseries. In Mexico, it supports WWF’s action to reforest the habitat of the monarch butterfly, threatened by endemic deforestation. In Portugal, devastated by fires favored by the intensive monoculture of maritime pines and eucalyptus with highly flammable sap, it regenerates the ecosystem thanks to trees adapted to the environment.
To consult: Our special page dedicated to Heroes of the Planet
“Because a planet without trees is a land without life”, Jacques the disillusion hunter promises not to stop there. By 2025, he hopes to plant 135 million additional trees around the world, thus contributing to the well-being of all. Knock on wood.
“In the name of the tree”, by Jacques Rocher and Sylvain Tesson, ed. Albin Michel, 224 pages, 39 euros.