PopUP Forests Designed to Ignite Global Change With an unprecedented 1 million animal and plant species threatened with extinction, a global pop-up art/science initiative has been launched to call attention to the looming crisis prior to the 2022 UN biodiversity accord. 

PopUP Forests, a collective of temporary nature installations, is being activated in cities around the world. Its New York-based organizers say they hope to create a groundswell of support and media attention prior to the summit. Afterwards, pieces of the PopUPs will live on as permanent green spaces.

“A movement is growing, calling for a new deal for nature and people, to inject a sense of urgency into the political decision-making process,” the organizers say on their website. “This global effort is mobilizing civic support for urban wild places to drive momentum towards the 2022 UN accord. We need an international spectacle to ignite a grassroots nature movement.

“Most people think nature is only in faraway places, filled with rivers, mountains and polar bears. But nature is also all around us, where we live—in cities. Loss of biodiversity is happening everywhere. Globally. Insects are lost. Wildflowers are disappearing. Species are going extinct.”

PopUP Forest is asking people to support the movement by taking four actions: connecting with nature at least 40 minutes per week; learning to recognize four new wildflowers each month; using a quarter of a window box or garden plot to grow native plants; and sharing the #iwill4wild pledge on Instagram and tagging four friends.

To learn more, visit PopUpForest.org.