The conference entitled 'The Importance of Trees for People and Planet' was held in two online sessions on 21 and 22 January, 2021.  The event was organised jointly by the Schumacher Institute (UK), Social Change and Development (SCAD, India) and GreenDependent Institute (Hungary). Participants of the online conference where mainly from the UK, Hungary and from India. Participants came from very different backgrounds, including treeplanting related organisations, environmentalists, academics and individuals interested in tree planting.

The first day was opened by Ian Roderick (The Schumacher Institute) who presented about 'Trees, Climate and Livelihoods: Introduction to the project, partners and this event and links with Convergence'. Ian's presentation was followed by a group discussion moderated by the Tree Circles team where participants had a chance to shortly introduce themselves and start a discussion about their thoughts related to the issue of trees.

After the breakout groups, Veronika Kiss and Ágnes Zólyomi (from Ecosystem Evaluation) talked in their presentation about the importance of trees from an ecological perspectives, including but not limited to climate change. They discussed how trees are important from an ecosystems perspective, what other significant services they provide, and how they can be integrated even into our built environment. Veronika shared the results of two interesting studies carried out in Hungary in the field ecosystem services.