Fourteen-year-old Ellyanne Wanjiku Chlystun remembers the first time she planted a tree.

“I remember at the time eating either an orange or lemon and I took the seed…and put it in the soil and then it started growing and sprouting,” Ellyanne told the BBC. “I fell in love with what I was doing, so I planted more.” Since then, Ellyanne estimates, she has helped get 1.3 million trees planted in her home country of Kenya and beyond. Trees not only absorb excess carbon dioxide but also help reduce the flow of floodwater.

“I feel so sad when it rains and nobody thinks of planting a tree,” Ellyanne told Nation. “When I see water going down the drain in residential areas, thereby causing flooding simply because there is no tree cover, it hurts me to the core,” she explained. Her newest goal is to get one trillion trees planted before she turns 18.

“I was brought up to believe that everything is possible, especially for me as a young person,” Ellyanne told the BBC. 

Ellyanne’s tree-planting campaign has grown into a larger effort to take on climate change and its effects. She has attended several climate change conferences around the globe, giving speeches and meeting world leaders. In a speech at the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai, she pointed out that climate change brings on weather patterns that increase the spread of diseases such as malaria.

Ellyanne has also appeared in documentaries, including Save Our Wildlife, which features children from all over the world talking about how climate change affects wildlife. Ellyanne speaks about how droughts are threatening the survival of elephants.

Ellyanne says climate change affects everyone—and everyone can be part of the solution.

“[Environmental matters] are universal,” Ellyanne told Nation. “It doesn’t matter where you come from. We can all come together and make this planet a better place to live in than what we found.”