🌱 Environment

Freetown the Treetown Mobile Token System

Freetown lost about 70% of its tree cover to unplanned development. Since 2020, the city has paid community growers via mobile money to plant and nurture replacements, verified through Greenstand's TreeTracker app with geotagged photos — 950,000+ trees planted so far, funded by carbon-market 'impact tokens', targeting 5 million by 2030.

Live 📅 since 2020

🤖 AI-generated summary of the sources below — how this works · 🔎 Last verified 2026-08-02

🌱 Environment Air quality

📊 Impact

80%+ of tracked trees have survived, according to city-reported TreeTracker figures — well above typical urban tree-planting survival rates.

Evidence🏛️ Official

Scale🏙️ City-wide

📖 Terms in this entry: Bus rapid transit (BRT) · Low-emission zone · Plate-number rationing

Sources

↗ Freetown City Council (authority)Official municipal management database showcasing local climate solutions.

↗ C40 Knowledge Hub (research)Further information on the project.

↗ Earthshot Prize (recognition)Further information on the project.

This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed above and checked against them before publication. It has not had a complete human fact-check — treat it as a starting point and follow the sources.

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Compare this project

🇦🇺 Urban Forest Visual & Email-a-Tree · Melbourne Two tree registries: Melbourne maps 70,000+ existing street trees; Freetown pays growers via mobile money to plant 950,000+ new ones. 🇹🇭 Bangkok's Million-Tree Register · Bangkok Both audit a tree-planting headline: Bangkok found only 35% of its 'million trees' were trees; Freetown claims 80%+ survival. 🇦🇺 Melbourne's Microclimate Sensor Network · Melbourne Related through Air quality.

Explore the wider context

📟 A Reading Is Not a Decision 🌫️ Air quality guide 🏙️ Freetown city profile 🌱 Environment projects

📎 Cite this project

1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Freetown the Treetown Mobile Token System” — Freetown, Sierra Leone. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/freetown-tree-tracker/ (last verified 2026-08-02). Data: CC BY 4.0.

The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.

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