AstraZeneca pledges to plant and maintain 200m trees globally by 2030

Drugmaker's $4oom offsetting scheme aims to combat climate change and biodiversity loss caused by deforestation

The boss of Britain's biggest drugmaker, Pascal Soriot, has warned that the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss are damaging the planet and human health, as it announced a $400m (310m) plan to plant 200m trees by 2030.

The offsetting scheme is one of the biggest tree-planting programmes globally. In 2020, AstraZeneca pledged to plant and maintain more than 50m trees by the end of 2025, with 10.5m trees of 300 different species planted so far across Australia (in collaboration with Aboriginal people), Indonesia, Ghana, the UK, the US and France.