More than 50 Agoda employees, including CEO John Brown, recently worked alongside the local Chiang Mai community to kick-start the planting of 6,000 trees, as part of its CSR sustainability initiative in collaboration with World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Thailand.
In what was its first venture with WWF, Agoda pledged to plant trees on behalf of its hotel partners in Thailand and China. Agodans, some of its hotel partners, alongside local community volunteers, and students from the School of Forest Industry Organization No. 13 pitched in to plant some of the 6,000 trees on August 14.
The teams prepared the fertilisers and planted seedlings, as part of the WWF effort which also incentivises ten farming families that manage this land to shift from mono-agriculture farming to the ‘three forests, four benefits’ way of managing the land – an agroforestry strategy by Thailand’s late King Bhumibol Adulyadej referring to how trees will produce wood, firewood, fruit, and construction materials. By following that principle, the farmers can help restore the environment and stop topsoil destruction.
The project is part of WWF’s Forest Landscape Restoration Fund 349, based on the ‘three forests, four benefits’ principle. Its mission is to restore the ecosystem, and create a sustainable food system to help farmers escape the debt cycle arisen from monoculture, while conserving the soil, watersheds, and natural forest which helps in flood mitigation.
