THE PILOT
The Szent Tamás Project
High in the Székely Carpathians of eastern Romania, the village of Szent Tamás lies surrounded by forests that local families have managed for generations. They possess a deep, practical understanding of this ecosystem—knowing which slopes hold vital water tables, where wildlife shelters in the winter, and exactly when to harvest timber or leave the canopy untouched. Yet, this vital ecological care has historically gone completely uncompensated.
Global carbon markets promised to change this, but the traditional model failed. Most carbon credit programs operate from a distance, treating vast landscapes as data abstractions and local communities as an afterthought. Consequently, funding rarely reaches the people actually doing the work on the ground.
The AirtoTree Foundation was created to fix this broken system.
We reverse the equation by starting directly with the community. By combining ancestral local knowledge with advanced, verifiable tracking technology, we create a transparent bridge between global climate capital and local action. We ensure that funding flows directly to the people executing the restoration work.
Szent Tamás is our inaugural project. Protecting 220 hectares of community forest, it represents a real place, a named community, and fully verifiable environmental outcomes. It is the baseline for a new infrastructure of trust—a commitment to local landscapes and the people who protect them, built to last as long as the trees themselves.
THE PROBLEM
A gap between two groups who need each other
Europe has committed to ambitious climate goals. Achieving them requires removing carbon from the atmosphere at scale — not just reducing emissions.
At the same time, millions of hectares of European land sit underinvested, fragmented, and ecologically degraded. The people who steward that land want to restore it. But they lack access to capital, expertise, and trusted markets.
On the other side, corporations increasingly need high-integrity climate action — and struggle to find projects they can actually trust.
AirToTree exists to close that gap.
THE SOLUTION
Our origin
AirToTree began with a simple observation: land stewards create enormous environmental value and receive little in return. Over time, that observation evolved into a bigger question — how do we create long-term economic incentives for stewardship at scale?
As we explored it, emerging carbon removal markets, biodiversity markets, and the EU’s Carbon Removal Certification Framework (CRCF) started to look like the answer. Not just another project developer. Infrastructure.
WHAT WE BUILD
Not credits. Infrastructure.
We sit at the intersection of project development, aggregation, monitoring, verification, buyer engagement, and digital infrastructure. Our role is to connect land stewards with the markets that can reward them.
-
Identify restoration opportunities
We work with municipalities, cooperatives, and landowners to identify land suitable for long-term ecological restoration — degraded forests, fragmented holdings, under-managed land. -
Support communities to steward
Local stewards receive guidance, ecological support, and access to environmental markets. We prioritise communities that have historically cared for the land with little economic recognition. -
Monitor with rigour and transparency
Satellite data, LiDAR, AI biomass modelling, and field surveys generate auditable evidence of carbon removal — designed for alignment with EU CRCF standards.
-
Connect stewards to buyers
We bridge the gap between land stewards who create environmental value and the corporate and institutional buyers who need high-integrity climate contributions they can trust.
WHY EUROPE. WHY ROMANIA.
A global laboratory, starting in the Carpathians
Many restoration programmes focus on the Global South. We believe those projects are vital and deserve continued investment. But Europe presents something distinct: strong institutions, sophisticated buyers, advanced monitoring, and the emerging CRCF — a high-trust environment where integrity can actually be demonstrated and rewarded.
Our initial projects are in Romania’s Carpathian region — not accidentally. Romania combines significant ecological potential, extensive forest resources, strong stewardship traditions, and fragmented land ownership that benefits from aggregation. Our deep local relationships here give us both an operational foundation and a genuine learning environment.
OUR THEORY OF CHANGE
Three conditions. One outcome.
WHAT MAKES US DIFFERENT
We’re building trust, not just credits
The carbon removal market is still young. We believe the organizations that define it long-term are those that earn trust — from stewards, from buyers, from regulators.
THE TEAM
