Dear Leonardo,

You stood there, on that podium at the UN, and you hit the nail on the head with a passion we hear too rarely. It was the powerful finale of your documentary Before the Flood. And it was also the starting gun for your Bonn Challenge, 150 million hectares of restored land, a billion trees. That call was what drove me to write you a letter. You have the reach, the means, the voice. And you asked for action, for stories.

I received a polite, standard acknowledgement from your team. It left me with nothing. Understandable. Who was I to think my proposal could trigger a response from you?

Yet, I’m writing to you again. Not really for you anymore, actually. For that one student from class 2B back then. And for everyone who thinks their tree doesn’t matter.

You made a new documentary: Don’t Look Up!. Well, dear Leonardo, will you please look up this time? Let this idea pass through your hands for once.

I have a story. I have the Butterfly Forest. Not a billion trees, but one spade’s turn in the place where it matters. The beginning of a chance for a single tree to grow for a lifetime, to form the genesis of a forest. It didn’t start in a childhood bed staring at a plastered ceiling, but with a question from that one student. He looked at me and asked, “Sir, is it okay if I only save up for one tree? It’s not much.” His question floored me. “Of course that’s okay,” I said. “Every tree is a beginning. Every tree has the chance to start that butterfly effect.”

But my story didn’t reach you. It vanished into an inbox. And I was left with that boy’s question, and with your call to action. Was my story not compelling enough? Was the problem too big for one tree, one forest, one teacher with a dream?

So, I did what a teacher does when the answer isn’t in the textbooks: I started my own investigation. That search became a journey through the desert of our time. I named the obstacles The Ten Plagues. Overpopulation, pollution, water scarcity, the algorithm that thinks it knows us, climate confusion, energy addiction. And ultimately, the untouchable force of the Earth itself, reminding us of our insignificance.

I thought I was writing a book about problems. But somewhere, floating between all those plagues, I realized: I wasn’t writing an analysis. I was writing the answer to my own letter to you.

Before the Flood ended with a question. The Ten Plagues ends with a compass. Not with one solution, but with ten guiding principles, drawn from thousands of places where people are already doing it differently. From the ‘sponge cities’ in China dancing with the rain, to the Estonians making their algorithms transparent. From the energy cooperatives in Portugal to the water tribunals in Valencia where farmers have made collective rules since the Middle Ages.

My answer is this: we don’t have a shortage of problems. We have a shortage of imagination. And imagination doesn’t grow from fear, but from concrete examples of what is possible. From the realization that power doesn’t lie in central funding or central policy, but in proximity. In the soil you till, the neighbourhood you strengthen, the data you reclaim, the river you restore.

So, Leonardo, this is my final attempt. Not to reach you, but to close the circle. Your film was the question. My book is my answer. And that answer isn’t for you. It’s for that boy from 2B. And for everyone who thinks their tree, their action, their idea is not enough.

It is enough. It’s the only thing that has ever been enough. A billion trees begins with one. A new world begins with one story.

This one is mine.

Sincerely,

Marc Bellinkx
Author of The Ten Plagues – A Compass for a World in Overdrive

P.S. The Butterfly Forest launches on my own birthday, Valentine’s Day 2026. It is my answer to that one student’s question. That is where this tree shall grow. That is all that matters.