Land Use Policy 103 (2021) 105306

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Land Use Policy

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/landusepol

The contribution of Fintech to sustainable development in the digital age:

Ant forest and land restoration in China
Yufei Zhang a, b, 1, Jiayin Chen a, b, Yi Han a, b, Mengxi Qian a, b, Xiaona Guo a, b, Ruishan Chen a, b, *,
Di Xu c, Yi Chen d
a
Key Laboratory of Geographic Information Science (Ministry of Education), Shanghai, 200241, China
b
School of Geographic Sciences, Institute of Eco-Chongming, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200241, China
c
School of Environmental and Geographical Sciences, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, 200233, China
d
Department of Architecture, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, 211816, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Land degradation is a global issue that affects the livelihood of billions of people worldwide. Various responses
Ant Forest have emerged to achieve the land degradation neutrality target, including the UN one billion tree campaign and
Internet+ Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. Ant Forest, a land restoration approach initiated by China’s largest Fintech
Fintech
company Alibaba, has made substantial progress on land restoration in degraded areas in China, especially in
Land restoration
China
desert areas. It represents a new model of transforming environmental protection intentions and activities of
users into actual environmental benefits by planting trees. The lessons and implications of Ant Forest can
contribute to ecosystem restoration globally. However, the effects and effectiveness of Ant Forest are not fully
understood. Here we use the data from official reports from Alibaba’s ant financial, as well as remote sensing
data, to examine how the Ant Forest contributes to land restoration and its socio-economic effects. We found that
Ant Forest has many potential roles for achieving sustainable development goals, ranging from land restoration,
carbon emission reduction, poverty reduction, human health improvement and many more. While its innovation
has brought its international reputation at home and abroad, whether the project itself can sustain is still a
question that needs to be concerned. The Fintech facilitated restoration has the potential to be scaled up, but it
still needs to continue updating its platform, keep the intentions of the existed users and encouraging more new
users to join in the effort.

1. Introduction International organizations such as the UN have taken historical

Land degradation is affecting more than 2 billion population globally
(IPBES, 2018). Recent global assessments on land degradation show that
land degradation will get worse because of global climate change and
human interventions (IPCC, 2019), especially in the desert areas. The
new world atlas of desertification found over 75 % of the earth’s land
has been degraded, and it will rise to more than 90 % by 2050. Africa
and Asia will suffer the most from desertification as 38 of 48 Asian
countries are under threat of desertification (https://wad.jrc.ec.europa.
eu/), which would be a great challenge to achieve many United Nations’
Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) (Barbier and Hochard, 2018;
Stavi and Lal, 2015). Thus, how to combat desertification and facilitate
land restoration is a global priority (Willemen et al., 2020).
steps towards restoring the degraded ecosystems. FAO, UNESCO and
WMO worked together and published the first world map of desertifi­
cation in 1977. Later, UNEP and ISRIC made a global assessment of
human-induced soil degradation in 1990. Based on these efforts, The
United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) was
adopted in Paris, France, on 7 June 1994 (UN General
Assembly-president of the 65th session, 2010). United Nations Confer­
ence on Sustainable Development was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in
2012, which further underscores the urgent need for individuals, com­
panies and governments working together to address land degradation
(UNCCD, 2008). In early March 2019, the United Nations’ General As­
sembly has declared 2021–2030 as a decade of ecosystem restoration,
which highlighted the role of ecosystem restoration in achieving the

* Corresponding author at: School of Geographical Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200241, China.
E-mail addresses: 10183901239@stu.ecnu.edu.cn (Y. Zhang), chenrsh04@gmail.com (R. Chen).
1
Present/permanent address: School of Geographical Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, China.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2021.105306
Received 9 August 2020; Received in revised form 22 December 2020; Accepted 21 January 2021
Available online 2 February 2021
0264-8377/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Y. Zhang et al.
sustainable development goals, and took land restoration as an effective
measure to address the climate crisis, strengthen food security, and
protect water resources and biodiversity (Aronson et al., 2020).
China has a long history of fighting desertification (Guo et al., 1992),
it has initiated many large-scale programmes to combat desertification
since the 1950s (Bryan et al., 2018), the majority of them have made
great progress. However, many of these efforts were ascribed to
top-down governmental policy implementation, the contribution of in­
dividuals, companies, private sectors, and civil society from bottom-up
approaches was largely overlooked (Folke et al., 2019; Galaz et al.,
2018). Financial companies (Fintech) can play an important role in
combining the individuals and private sectors to achieve public good
(Galaz et al., 2018). Fintech can manage its large numbers of customers
with artificial intelligence, big data and cloud platform technologies,
and increase benefits without necessarily causing additional costs. The
sharing bike companies have help to improve resource efficiency, and
also reduced environmental pollution and carbon emission simulta­
neously (Mi and Coffman, 2019). The peer-to-peer food-sharing app in
Greater London has contributed to reduce food waste and avoid carbon
emission (Makov et al., 2020) Fintech also has potential to reduce waste
generation, emissions and water consumption in China’s online food
delivery and takeaway market (Zhou et al., 2020). Mobile money also
serving as a critical approach for financing the smallholder farmers and
increasing investment in agribusiness, which further being combined
with monitoring technology and big data platform to achieve rural
environmental management (Hinson et al., 2019). Besides, Fintech can
help financial institutions effectively identify green projects and mea­
sure their environmental effects (Li and Jiang, 2017).
From August of 2016, a new approach of planting trees in China, the
Ant Forest program which connects individual users, Fintech, and
reforestation action, has been initiated. Until April of 2019, five hundred
million users of Ant Forest have planted 100 million trees on 94,000 ha
desert areas, and the number of trees still keep growing. The Ant Forest
also helps to reduce local poverty in land degraded areas, and improve
health of Ant Forest App users. The United Nations has promoted it as a
success model of land restoration in 2019.
The Ant forest project has made great progress in planting trees in
China, however, until now, studies related to that has largely focused on
its business model, user’s pro-environmental behaviors or sustainable
development of the program itself (Bo et al., 2020; Mi et al., 2021; Wang
and Yao, 2020; Yang et al., 2018; Zhang et al., 2020), its potential and
effectiveness to land restoration have not been examined. Here we
present the first review of the effectiveness of the Ant forest project and
explore its potential to be scaled up. Based on remote sensing data and
data from the technique report of Ant financial company, we first
introduce the Ant Forest project, including its role and mechanismland
restoration, and then discuss its effectiveness and potential to contribute
to land restoration and other sustainable development goals. Our study
indicates that Fintech could contribute to sustainable development in
the digital age and that the lessons and implications of Ant forest could
provide reference to make similar land restoration projects across the
world more effective.
2. Ant forest project
2.1. Development of ant forest project
In the recent two decades, the development of the Internet, mobile
devices, online payment, and others have contributed to the integration
of the Internet, finance, and green initiative. The integration has pro­
moted the innovation of many online business models, and changed
every life in many parts of the world. This has brought the fourth
technological innovation, and made the world smaller and the goods
and services more accessible. It also has many benefits for the envi­
ronment. Nowadays more and more financial companies and Internet
companies are participating in environmental campaign in various
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Land Use Policy 103 (2021) 105306
ways, and their contribution to sustainable development is increasingly
important (Folke et al., 2019; Galaz et al., 2018). The United Nations has
encouraged companies to promoting environmental and social re­
sponsibility in their investment.
China has started to promote Internet related business since 2015.
China’s prime minister Li Keqiang proposed the concept of Internet Plus
in his Government Work Report on March 5, 2015. Internet Plus refers to
the application of the Internet and other information technology in
conventional industries. Various internets such as mobile internet, cloud
networking, big data and internet of Things can help the conventional
industries to create new industries and business development in China
(State Council, 2015). Internet Plus Ecology is one of its developments.
China released a three year action plan on Internet Plus Ecology in
January of 2016, which aims to apply various internets to environ­
mental protection and conservation. Fintech is a product of internet
plus, it is a new financial business model that combines traditional
financial institutions and Internet enterprises who own big data to
provide many financial services such as payment and investment. Fin­
tech companies can also be connected to the conventional environ­
mental protection and conservation. Companies such as Amazon and
Google in the US, Alibaba and Tencent in China own very large market
value, have a large number of customers, and use most advanced
Internet and big data technologies. They have the potential to make a
great difference in achieving sustainable development goals. As one of
the main products of ’Internet + Ecology’, Alibaba’s Ant Forest has fully
demonstrated the potential of the business model for environmental
conservation and land restoration (Xiong and Meng, 2018).
Ant Forest is launched in August 2016 by Ant Financial Services
Group, a branch of China’s largest online shopping company Alibaba. It
aims to encourage the users of Alipay, Alibaba’s mobile payment plat­
form-, to reduce carbon footprint. Combining the internet, finance, and a
low-carbon lifestyle, Ant Forest is a gamified app, as well as a personal
carbon account and public benefit activity. The users will get "green
energy points" on their personal carbon savings accounts when they take
action to reduce their carbon emissions, such as by walking or biking to
work, going paperless, and buying green products (Fig. 2). These green
energy points can be used to grow a virtual tree on the user’s app. Alipay
will plant a real tree with local residents in a selected area of Northwest
China when the user’s green energy points reach a certain amount. An
increasing number of online platforms are sharing data with Ant Forest,
including mobile phone recycle platform, e-conferencing providers, e-
reader services, and recyclable packaging manufacturers, which makes
individual carbon savings account more comprehensive and
accountable.
After four years of rapid development, Ant Forest becomes well
known in China and has achieved many successes. On October 23, 2018,
the National Greening Commission and the China Greening Foundation
signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the Ant Financial Group
on “Internet + voluntary tree planting”, Alipay’s Ant Forest tree planting
model was formally incorporated into the national compulsory tree
planting system. In January 2019, the National Greening Commission
and the China Greening Foundation issued an online “Certificate of civic
responsibility for tree planting” to Ant Forest. In February 2019, Ant
Forest built a collaboration with Hema, another branch of Alibaba, to
encourage customers get green energy without using plastic bags when
shopping online. On April 22, 2019, Alipay announced that 500 million
users of Ant Forest had planted 100 million real trees in desertification
areas, covering a total area of nearly 100,000 ha. In June 2019, the
“Public Welfare Forest” project was launched, and soon attracted many
universities and voluntary organizations to join. Users could choose to
plant trees for their work units, and in a sense of competition, this move
attracted more enterprises and institutions to participate, expanded the
user base. On August 27, 2019, on the third anniversary of Ant Forest,
Ant Financial launched a research report on the low-carbon lifestyle of
the public in the context of the Internet platform. By August 2019, the
500 million users of Ant Forest had planted 122 million real trees in
Y. Zhang et al. Land Use Policy 103 (2021) 105306

China, with an area of 1.5 Singapore, which reduced carbon emissions

by 7.92 million tons (Fig. 1) .
Ant Forest has made many progresses since it initiated in 2016 and
become a successful model of green finance. It has been considered as an
important approach to plant trees and has won widespread recognition
of national and international organizations. It has received the United
Nations’ highest environmental honor for the annual award of conser­
vation action- the Champion of the Earth Award on September 21, 2019
(Rukikaire, 2019). At the same time, ant forest expands multi-platform
cooperation, expands the scale of development, and gives full play to
individual in the afforestation campaign. Ant Forest project has suc­
cessfully transformed the environmental protection intentions of Ali­
pay’s 500 million users into 122 million trees that are mostly planted in
desert area of China from 2016, and creatively linking urban residents’
low-carbon behavior with planting trees to control desertification, and
helped to reduce carbon emissions and eradicate poverty in desert areas
of northwest China (Rukikaire, 2019). The UNEP has recognized that
Ant Forest harnessed human ingenuity and creativity to create a better
world. Ant Forest also won the United Nations Lighthouse Award, the
highest honor in the world for Combating Climate Change, on December
11, 2019, during the 25th session of the United Nations Climate Change
Conference (COP25) in Madrid (UNFCCC, 2019). It has shown that Ant
Forest can be a model for restoring degraded ecosystems and combating
climate change on a global scale. Fig. 2. Ways to participate in "Ant Forest".

2.2. Reforestation action of ant forest
Ant Forest is an open and transparent platform, which helped the
users to monitor their low carbon action from the changing carbon ac­
count, and observe the trees they plant virtually on Ant Forest platform
first, then physically in the desert areas by Ant Forest company (Fig. 5).
From specific low-carbon action to the public welfare forest, Ant Forest
closes the intention-action gap and creates a sustainable transformation
mechanism.
2.2.1. From low carbon action to energies
The Fintech company who supports Ant Forest, Alipay, provides
mobile payment services for more than 1.2 billion users worldwide. This
mobile payment is a great asset in the digital age. The Alipay users are
encouraged to record their low-carbon actions through daily low-carbon
activities on Ant Forest, a gamified participatory communication pro­
gram. Many low-carbon activities can reduce resource use and carbon
emissions, even on a small scale. These activities include walking
(smart-phone pedometers record it), riding shared bikes, taking public
transport, paying online, using electronic invoices, E-conferencing, and
declining single-use packages when ordering food deliveries.
The Ant Forest platform converts every low-carbon action of the
users into a computable energy value. The users receive different green
energy points in their carbon account for each activity, and when they
accumulate a certain number of points, a virtual tree is planted on the
platform. Ant Forest designed carbon accounting standards and updated
that according to the latest standards. Alibaba organized an expert
committee and invited authoritative experts to develop a new standard
of carbon accounting in June 2017. Users can harvest their energy points
around 7:30 AM Beijing time each day. If the energy points were not
collected in three days, they would diminish automatically. The users
can steal energy points from their friends on the platform and can also
help their friends harvest the energy points. This gamified approach has
encouraged users to get up early and protect their energy points, and
also acquired more energy points from their friends. When the energy
points of a user reach a certain amount, the user can decide which tree
species to be planted and when and where to plant the real tree. Then,
the Ant Financial services group and its partners will plant a real tree in

Fig. 1. A timeline of major development of Ant Forest.

3
Y. Zhang et al. Land Use Policy 103 (2021) 105306

China according to the users’ choice. After that, the user needs to collect converted to a real tree when the energy points reach a certain amount.
energy points again for planting another tree. The user can select tree species and decide where to plant the tree. When
Here the tree has its specific meaning, as the species selected for the user made such a decision, the Ant Financial company will work
planting in the desert are mostly shrubs, we use the term tree here to be with public welfare organizations, environmental protection enter­
more inclusive, to indicate all the species planted by Ant Forest. The prises, and other ecological partners to plant a real tree in the place
species selected by Ant Forest for planting in desert areas, such as sea- where the user chose. The user will receive a virtual certificate issued by
buckthorns, caragana microphyllas, haloxylon ammodendrons, can China Green Foundation once the tree has been planted. The certificate
well adapt to the local climate and environment, and grow well in the marks when and where the tree was planted, its serial number, and
desert. When these trees grow up, locals can harvest fruits from some of which organization planted it, so that users can get a clear picture of the
the trees for sale. For example, fruit juice produced from sea-buckthorns tree they have planted. It is like a birth certificate of a baby.
is a very popular beverage in China. Ant Forest platform has helped local Ant Forest gives funds for the actual planting and growing of the
people to advertise the product and sell it online. trees, but the real work was carried out by a joint effort of special or­
Different tree species require different amounts of energy point to ganizations, local governments and farmers. In this process, Ant Forest
plant. The energy point needed to plant a tree is equal to the average provides financial and technical support, and local farmers and herders
amount of carbon dioxide that the tree can absorb in their lifetime. For in the tree-planting areas contribute labor to plant and maintain the
instance, the green energy demand for planting a real sea-buckthorn tree trees. Ant Forest investigates the afforestation plots after receiving
is 18.8 kg, which means that a single sea-buckthorn tree can absorb
about 18.8 kg of carbon dioxide on average in its lifetime. The corre­
sponding energy amount of planting different tree species is shown in
Fig. 3, and how specific actions can acquire a certain amount of energy is
shown in Fig. 4.
In addition to the fixed low-carbon actions to obtain energy points,
the Ant Forest platform also has various online activities to help users
get more energy points quickly. For example, users can get additional
energy points by watering other users’ trees. In this process, users who
have a strong sense of environmental awareness or ownership will try to
get more energy points for growing real trees.

2.2.2. From energies to real trees

The virtual tree on the Ant Forest App grow up from a sapling with
the increasing of collected energy points. The virtual tree can be

Fig. 3. Energy point demand for growing a tree, the amount of carbon dioxide
it can absorb (data from Ant Forest APP). Fig. 5. Flow chart of Ant Forest operation.

Fig. 4. Energy of daily actions.

4
Y. Zhang et al.
applications from villages or herders, then Ant Forest will give the
applicant seven training courses to help them fully understand the
concept of the project and familiar with the tree management method
(Zhang, 2017) Ant Forest also works in partnership with many local
companies, and public service organizations and environmental pro­
tection agencies will carry out the concrete implementation (Wang,
2019). Therefore, the mechanism of Ant Forest can be summarized as
following: users take action on carbon reduction – gather energy points
and grow a virtual tree on the Ant Forest App- decide where, when, and
which tree to be planted, special workers from the local area plant real
trees in the field, converting the virtual tree to a real tree – special
workers monitor and water the tree–users collect energy point to plant
another tree (Li and Peng, 2019).
Transparency is a key to the Ant forest project. Ant Forest provides
satellite images and real-time cameras for users to monitor the tree
plantations and also arranges site visits and spring tree-planting expe­
ditions for the users. Users can view images of their trees via in-situ
cameras. A newly planted tree is only 20 cm high and may not be
visible from the satellite; however, as millions of trees are planted,
noticeable changes can also be detected in satellite images. Ant Forest
work in partnership with Jifei technology, launching a Field Monitor
called FM1 that is an intelligent farmland monitoring system to monitor
the growth of the trees. FM1 has two wide-angle cameras on the front
side, which can capture images and automatically generate high-
resolution images (Fig. 6). On the backside, FM1 has sensors that can
monitor temperature, humidity, and atmospheric pressure. It can also
record light intensity on the top of the device. The FM1 updates the
images and data every 15 min and then transfer them to the cloud via a 4
G wireless network, so the users can have a good understanding of the
growth of their trees. Besides, the Ant Forest combined drones and
multispectral technology, which allows the managers to track the health
of trees. Ant Forest builds a comprehensive ecological database with this
technology, and provide technical references for public welfare projects
around the world.
2.2.3. From real trees to conservation in general
In January 2018, Ant Forest launched its collective planting function
that provides opportunities for users and their friends to water one
planted trees together using their virtual energy. This model has also
gradually extended to many other online chat groups on social network
platforms, attracting more users to participate and enhanced low-carbon
interactions.
Ant Forest further upgraded it for more public benefit, which in­
cludes launching an ecological poverty alleviation initiative in May
2018, and established the first Ant Forest protected area for public
welfare in the Yang county of Shaanxi province in September 2019. Ant
Forest customers can exchange 3.352 kg green energy for ten years
protection right of one square meter public welfare protection area in
Yang county. Through Ant Forest and its supporter Alibaba, the
Fig. 6. FM1 in the field.
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Land Use Policy 103 (2021) 105306
environmentally friendly products produced by Ant Forest public wel­
fare protected area can provide job opportunities and income for people
in impoverished areas. Ant Forest and Alibaba company will promote
advertisements and offer online sales for the products from these pro­
tected areas. In addition, Ant Forest launched the ’Public Welfare For­
est” on June 5, 2019, at the 48th world environment day. Its customers
can use their green energy to water the public forests owned by the
public such as universities and institutions. This initiative mobilizes the
enthusiasm of workers, students, and other groups, bringing new
impetus to the Ant Forest.
Ant Forest had attracted over 200 million users within six months
after it was launched in 2016, and the number of users passed 500
million in April 2019. By August 2019, Ant Forest has planted around
122 million trees that covers an area of 112,000 ha in some of China’ ’s
degraded lands, including the arid regions of Inner Mongolia, Gansu,
Qinghai, and Shaanxi provinces, which offsets 7.9 million tons of carbon
emissions (Rukikaire, 2019). It has become China’s largest private sector
on the tree-planting initiative and has achieved great success as a green
digital innovation in public participation, carbon reduction, and tree
plantings in China.
3. The effectiveness of ant forest
3.1. Land restoration effect
Ant Forest can have a significant impact on the environment where
the trees grow up, especially for controlling desertification. Ant Forests
choose drought-tolerant and water-efficient species and plant them in
degraded lands in Inner Mongolia, Gansu, and other provinces (Fig. 8).
Here we take Inner Mongolia as an example to understand the pattern of
planted trees. In Inner Mongolia, the tree planting area has reached
91,846 ha, among which Scoparium, haloxylon ammodendron, and Sea
Buckthorn reached 7,767.44, 46,375, and 34,426 ha, respectively (data
from Ant Forest APP). Scoparium has very low evaporation, it is one
kind of xerophytic wood suitable for growing on the high dunes in the
desert. It can be used as materials for building houses nearby. Haloxylon
ammodendron and Sea Buckthorn are also prevalent plant species used
in the desert for preventing wind and fixing sand, it plays an important
role in reducing dust storms.
Shrubs are more pest-resistant, drought-resist, and need less
administrative tasks. Besides, shrubs have a deep root system, having
better windbreak and sand fixation efficiency than trees(Chuzhou
Meteorological Bureau, 2020).The data and photos of Ant Forest App
explains that most of the species planted by Ant Forests are not trees, but
shrubs, such as sea buckthorn, caragana microphylla, scoparium, sal­
ixmongolica, except Pinus sylvestris, and populusdiversifolia, and Hal­
oxylon ammodendron which are trees.
Fig. 7 shows that Ant Forest distributed in Inner Mongolia, Gansu,
Qinghai Shanxi, Sichuan, Hebei, and Zhejiang provinces of China. The
light green areas in the map are the municipalities where there are Ant
Forests, and the dark green areas are the municipalities where nature
reserves are located. The triangles with different color show different
kind of plants planted in the areas. The pictures around the map are
remote sensing images of different years and ground pictures taken in
Bayannur, Xinzhou, Minqin, Jiuquan, Alxa League, and Ordos. It can be
seen from the remote images before and after 2015 in the same area that
the trees planted there appear as clear lines, and the trees in the plan­
tation are one single species, similar in height, and sparsely distributed.
It is also interesting to see from the pictures of Xinzhou and Alxa that
each Ant Forest planting area has its own brand, which indicates the
number and location of the forest, as well as the organization which
manage it.
The Ant Forest project potentially has a positive impact on the
environment of the growing areas which are mostly arid and semi-arid.
Most species selected by Ant Forest have developed a deep root system
and vigorous growth ability and can tolerate severe drought, cold and
Y. Zhang et al.
Fig. 7. Planting distribution and remote image of Ant Forest.
Fig. 8. The top four provinces which planted Ant Forest in China.
mild salinity, which can survive in arid and semi-arid areas. The current
selected trees are dominant vegetation in arid regions and can effec­
tively slow down soil degradation, increase water retention, improve
soil quality, promote plant growth, and finally change the environment
in the desert areas.
For example, Alxa League possesses three deserts named Badain
Jaran Desert, Tengger Desert, and Ulan Buh Desert, with a total of
80,000 km2. Ant Forest intended to prevent the merging of the three
deserts and began to plant haloxylon ammodendron in the region. This
region is now one of the main Ant Forest planting areas in west Inner
Mongolia. Forest No.1 was set in the center of Alxa League. Ant Forest
combines trees, shrubs, and grass, a management approach that was
widely applied in the grain for green project, to increase the vegetation
coverage and reduce the occurrence of sandstorms (Wang and Liu,
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Land Use Policy 103 (2021) 105306
2019). By the end of 2018, Alxa had restored 106.66 km2 of degraded
lands and planted an average of 10.25 million trees in one year, effec­
tively controlled the growing desert.
3.2. Carbon emission reduction effect
Ant Forests have a significant effect on reducing carbon emissions. It
promotes the low carbon behavior change of users, which reduced
carbon emission in many areas, especially cities that own the most Ant
Forest users. if one user can walk 1 km every day instead of using a
private car, and make online payments instead of offline ones five times
a week, the user will reduce 142 g carbon emission on average every day
(Wu, 2018). Thanks to more than 350 million users, Ant Forest had
reduced 2.83 million tons carbon emissions by the end of May 2018
(Huang and Hu, 2019), which equivalents to 4/5 of the total carbon
emissions of Iceland in 2017 (https://stats.oecd.org). Ant Forest also
contributes to carbon sequestration when the tree grows. According to
the 2017 China carbon market research report, Ant Forest has a signif­
icant role in the global carbon market (UNDP, 2017). Ant Forest initiates
the world’s first large-scale individual low-carbon behavior and carbon
management project, and applies information technology to the field of
personal carbon management. It is a product of great significance to
enhance the contribution of individuals in tackling climate change
Ant Forest integrates personal carbon account in China, advocates
the low-carbon behaviors of users, and encourages enterprises and in­
dividuals with social responsibilities to participate, which helps improve
the carbon account mechanism. The carbon account of Ant Forest is the
first to be included in China’s voluntary emission reduction enterprise
project and could be used for participating in the future carbon trading
market investment. A total of 8.943 million tons of carbon quota was
traded in 2018 by Beijing Environment Exchange, with a year-on-year
increase of 18.83 percent, which fully demonstrates the feasibility of
the future carbon trading market in China (Pan, 2019). The carbon bank
Y. Zhang et al.
managed by Ant Forest will take the lead in investment and develop­
ment in the carbon quota market.
3.3. Socio-economic impact
Ant Forest also contributes to local socio-economic development
(Fig. 9). First, Ant Forest helps to improve human health. It has found
that globally people walk 4961 steps a day on average, while the Chinese
walk 6189 steps a day, making them the world’s most active walkers
(Althoff et al., 2017). The mobile phone-based game Pokeman Go en­
courages the user to walk more and has contributed to reducing obesity
and diabetes for users in some countries (Alomar et al., 2019; Ghosh and
Misra, 2016). A similar behavior changed by Ant Forest also promoted
users’ health and quality of life. Second, Ant Forest encourages the users
to get up early to collect more energy points for themselves, and to avoid
their energy being stolen by their friends, which also contributes to
changing users’ behaviors and enjoying healthy habits. Besides, Ant
Forest has started to plant sea buckthorn since November 19, 2018,
which is claimed to produce the first edible product by Ant Forest. By
selling the sea buckthorn juice produced by these sea buckthorns, local
farmers can obtain certain economic benefits. Afterwards, the money
obtained from the sale of sea buckthorn juice was donated to the China
foundation for protecting the environment in western provinces of China
and lifting the local families out of poverty.
4. Discussion
4.1. The success of ant forest
The success of Ant Forest is a combination of the development of
digital technology, a gamified participatory approach, transparency of
the process, and users’ growing environmental and health awareness.
Digital technology, especially the development of mobile phone-based
APPs and payment, has contributed to the development of Alipay and
Ant Forest. Ant Forest takes advantage of its huge Alipay user group and
introduces them a new APP, which is the first and most important step.
Its gamified participatory communication approach makes it interesting
to plant trees and interact with friends on the APP. Interpersonal rela­
tionship could be built through the game of collecting energy points and
Fig. 9. Socio-economic impact of Ant Forest.
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Land Use Policy 103 (2021) 105306
maintained that in the two-way interaction as many friends participate
in the game, which can help maintaining friends’ relationship and
facilitate users’ low-carbon behaviors (Wang and Tian, 2018). The
transparency of the carbon account and the real effects of tree growth
give the users a sense of fulfillment. The freedom to choose what and
where to plant the trees makes the users a sense of ownership, which
helps to attract more and more participants. Finally, the increasing
awareness of the environment and health also contributes to the
long-term affiliation of the users to the Ant Forest program. The Ant
Forest encourages users to take more low-carbon activity with a gami­
fied approach, which attracts more people to participate and makes it
easy to maintain. According to the Public Low-carbon Lifestyle Research
Report Under the Background of Internet Platform, 500 million people
have involved in Ant Forest project by the end of 2019. Its ecological and
socioeconomic effect is beyond the Pokeman Go app and will have
profound impacts across the world (Karami et al., 2018).
The transparent process makes the users see their achievement in
real-time, and also gives the users an opportunity to supervisor the ac­
tion of the Ant Forest platform, which results in mutual trust between
the users and the platform, and also brings positive feedback to the
sustainable development of the program. This transparency is achieved
by combining remote sensing images, local cameras, and the in-situ
participation of the volunteers, which also leads to a healthy competi­
tion between friends as they can see each other’s achievements on the
platform and self-motivates the users to take more actions on emissions.
Transparency makes the users believe that their efforts can make a dif­
ference, which leads to an upward spiral for contributing to planting
trees.
Ant Forest has its own official social media account where users can
leave comments to express their wishes to plant other new tree species.
The Ant Forest takes these suggestions into account and actively im­
proves itself to facilitate the interaction with customers. By doing this,
Ant Forest plays a leading role in planting trees, but it also respects
customers’ choices and advices, so that customers can actually partici­
pate in the land restoration initiative. Humans have become a dominant
factor in the Anthropocene (Crutzen, 2002). Climate change has brought
many challenges for society and raised the awareness of the importance
of sustainable development. Chinese government also launched an
ecological civilization movement, which put ecology and environment
Y. Zhang et al.
as a priority in development (Bryan et al., 2018). The success of Ant
Forests demonstrates the human capacity to shift to a better environ­
ment in the digit age, which is a seed of good Anthropocene (Bennett
et al., 2016). Summarization and promotion of the success of Ant Forest
are indispensable to develop more environmentally friendly programs
and applications. Furthermore, Ant Forest shows the public can be
mobilized to achieve public good.
4.2. Leveraging the potential of Fintech to green actions
Fintech can play important role in achieving sustainable develop­
ment goals, which should not be underestimated. The Fintech com­
panies, such as Alibaba and Amazon, are developing rapidly and have
very large market in many countries. Compares to traditional com­
panies, they have more chances to influence their customers. More than
half Chinese people have Alipay accounts, and many of these people’s
everyday activities are depend on Alipay that belongs to Alibaba, like
buying train and flight tickets, and taking public transport. The
emerging big data technologies enable the platform to fully understand
people’s carbon footprint. Fintech uses green credit to guide the flow of
capital and provides loan support to environmentally relevant in­
dustries. Moreover, Fintech pays attention to the development of the
environmental protection industry, ecological industry, and other in­
dustries, and provides financing for them to promote the virtuous circle
of ecological restoration. The Ant Forest, relied on fintech, has set up
personal carbon accounts that directly connects the users to environ­
mental protection, raising the enthusiasm of individuals and stimulating
the potential for transformative change of the masses (Luan and Li,
2018).
Ant Forest has indeed reduced desertification and increased vege­
tation cover via Fintech-lead public participation. It can be scaled-up
and brings benefits to the whole world. For example, Philippine has
developed a GCash Forest that sets up a goal of planting 365 thousand
trees in 365 days on its Philippine version of Alibaba on June 25, 2019,
rapidly attracting 700 thousand users in Philippine in one month (www.
gcash.com/).
Fintech has great potential for dealing with complex environmental
challenges as billions of people can take part in through their mobile
phones and computers. Wherever these users are located, they can make
positive change to the places they are interested in. Mobile phone Apps
have telecoupled the distant stakeholders and contributed to carbon
reduction and social-economic benefit not only in cities where the users
located but also in regions where collective actions can make a differ­
ence. For example, the areas facing the risk of desertification and other
types of environmental issues (Hull and Liu, 2018; Liu et al., 2015;
Newig et al., 2019). The Fintech that connects the users and the land
degrading or degraded places can significantly help to achieve land
restoration.
The Internet and 4 G/5G technology have tremendously transformed
our lives and could be taken advantage to protect our environment. Ant
Forest shows how technology can change our world by encouraging
global users to participate in environment protection. Although the
world is facing many environmental challenges, the new technology and
knowledge can help to overcome them and fundamentally reform how
we interact with the nature, which can be reflected from the increasing
amount and total area of the Ant Forest. However, the greatest value of
the Ant Forest is that it has changed people’s way of life and promoted
low-carbon awareness and social responsibility, which is a long-term
success.
4.3. Future research priorities
Here we examined the success of Ant Forest, its mechanism, func­
tions, and impacts on society. On September 26, 2020, the world’s
largest and oldest global non-profit environmental protection agency,
the world conservation union IUCN released the Interim Results of Ants
8
Land Use Policy 103 (2021) 105306
Forest Ecological Afforestation Valuation Project, it shows that Ant
Forest has planted more than 223 million trees on an area of 204,000 ha
from 2016 to 2019. When these plants grow up, the cumulative carbon
reduction exceeds 12 million tons and the gross ecosystem product
provided by the ant forest can reach 11.18 billion yuan. In addition, Ant
Forest has created 730 thousand jobs in Inner Mongolia, Gansu and
other provinces, and contributed to an increase of over 100 million yuan
in labor services. However, due to data scarcity of detailed users’
behavior, many issues need to be examined further. In the future, we
may focus more on specific questions such as the cost and benefit of the
Ant Forest, the users’ participation behavior on the App, and how do the
local conditions affect the results of planting trees. Also, a quantitative
assessment of social, economic, ecological benefits of Ant Forest can be
conducted to understand its contributions, especially the ecosystem
services of the Ant Forest projects. How to make the initiative more
sustainable is also important, as shown in many games, when people are
familiar with a game they tend to lose motivation. So the initiative itself
should consider how to maintain people’s interest and keep their
participation enthusiasm. The platform can add more benefits for the
users, such as exchanging daily walks for medical insurance.
5. Conclusion
Fintech has great potential for socio-economic development and
environmental improvement. However, their role is not fully explored in
existing literature. Here taking the Ant Forest program as an example,
based on several official reports from the Ant Financial platform of
Alibaba, remote sensing images, and data collated through social media,
we illustrated the development history and operating mechanism of Ant
Forest. Then we discussed its effectiveness by examining its socio-
economic and environmental effects. We found that the Ant Forest has
achieved great progress in land restoration, carbon reduction, and socio-
economic improvement in northern China. Its success depends on multi
factors, such as technological advance, process transparency, and its
capacity to encourage public participation. It also contributes to
enhancing the individual and industry’s social responsibility, changing
people’s way of life, and strengthening their low-carbon awareness.
As a new attempt of Fintech, Ant Forest shows its potential for
connecting various stakeholders and promoting sustainable develop­
ment in the telecoupled world. Wherever the people are located, they
can make a difference in a place they are interested in the digital age.
With the rapid development of Fintech, its potential to mobile the so­
ciety at large and contribute to sustainable development should not be
underestimated. The success of Ant Forest that combing business with
environmental protection and conservation at the same time could
provide reference in developing similar applications and implementing
ecological restoration project in China and beyond. Ant forest should
also keep updating its function and improve users’ experience to sustain
the platform, and, ultimately achieves socio-economic and environ­
mental improvement.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Yufei Zhang: Methodology, Formal analysis, Data curation, Visual­
ization, Writing - original draft. Jiayin Chen: Methodology, Formal
analysis, Data curation, Visualization. Yi Han: Methodology, Formal
analysis, Data curation, Visualization. Mengxi Qian: Methodology,
Formal analysis, Data curation, Visualization. Xiaona Guo: Writing -
review & editing. Ruishan Chen: Conceptualization, Funding acquisi­
tion, Investigation, Project administration, Supervision, Writing - review
& editing. Di Xu: Validation, Writing - review & editing. Yi Chen:
Validation, Writing - review & editing.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
Y. Zhang et al.
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
This study was conducted with the support of the National Natural
Science Foundation of China [grant number 41771119, 41701388 &
41701186], the Research Fund of the Geological Mineral Resources and
Environmental Exploration Program [DD20190427], and funding from
Institute of Eco-Chongming (IEC).
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