Molly Burhans’ belief in using land for environmental good dates back to her late teens when some of her friends occupied an abandoned home in Buffalo, New York. The struggling city in the “Rust Belt” of the United States of America had experienced decades of decline. Once thriving streets were haunted by abandoned mansions and empty warehouses.
But where others saw urban blight Burhans, an environmentalist and cartographer, saw opportunity. She helped renovate the derelict home and experimented with guerrilla gardening, bringing neglected patches of earth back to life.
“It not only restored the land but it also transformed the entire neighbourhood in a radically beautiful way,” she says. “That was my first experience of really seeing the power of property and the way we use and manage our land.”
Burhans had recently co-founded her first company Gro-Op, a worker-owned indoor vertical farm that still operates in Buffalo, when another important revelation came during a visit to a Benedictine monastery in Pennsylvania.
"If we don't figure out how to engage faith-based actors in climate solutions, in protecting and restoring ecosystems, we simply will not succeed in meeting our targets”
While taking in the views around the monastery, Burhans started thinking about how much property the Catholic Church owned and how it could be used to protect nature, restore fragile ecosystems and fight climate change.
Though the Catholic Church has one of the world’s largest institutional networks of landholdings, it had not mapped its operational jurisdictions and in many places, lacked record keeping systems for its assets. So, in 2015, Burhans founded GoodLands, an organization devoted to helping faith-based communities digitally map and sustainably manage their landholdings.
The Holy See granted Burhans permission to create the first ever comprehensive global digital map of the Catholic Church’s governing jurisdictions.
The asset mapping in the United States of America, for example, uses sources such as public land records and geographic information systems (GIS) technology. Based on the detailed picture that is generated, GoodLands is able to come up with more sustainable land management practices for holdings. This mapping facilitates knowledge sharing amongst Catholic groups and promotes best practices.
“GIS technologies and spatial technologies are as critical to the environment as imaging and scans are to medicine,” says Burhans.
For her pioneering work, Burhans was named a Young Champion of the Earth in 2019, the United Nations’ most prestigious award for environmental action by young people.
Spiritual drive
Burhans estimates that through its parishes, cathedrals, monasteries, farms, forests and other landholdings, the Catholic Church owns or stewards land equivalent to the size of France. Globally, faith-based organizations own much more: 8 per cent of habitable land on the surface of the earth and 5 per cent of all commercial forests.
Stronger collaboration with faith-based organizations to protect the environment and more broadly, achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, is at the heart of the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Faith for Earth Coalition.
“Within faith institutions lies an undeniable power, born from their teachings, their ability to unite communities and their vast economic resources,” says Iyad Abumoghli, Director of UNEP’s Faith for Earth Coalition. “For countless believers, the sacred principle of living harmoniously with nature is not just a belief but a way of life. It is essential that we leverage these profound spiritual connections to confront the triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste.”
That is something Burhans agrees with. “If we don't figure out how to engage faith-based actors in climate solutions, in protecting and restoring ecosystems, we simply will not succeed in meeting our targets.”
Turning the tide
A growing number of faith-based organizations are helping to restore the world’s forests, a major line of defence against climate change. Acting on spiritual teachings that call for nature to be revered, these groups have planted hundreds of millions of trees in the last 20 years, according to research from UNEP and partners.
Critical to the Catholic Church’s 1.2 billion followers was Pope Francis’ landmark paper Laudato Si (Praised Be), published in 2015, around the time Burhans founded GoodLands.
Lamenting Earth’s increasing resemblance to “an immense pile of filth,” the encyclical was a stirring plea to protect the environment, face the dangers of climate change and reduce the use of fossil fuels. In 2023, Pope Francis wrote a follow-up to Laudato Si, reiterating his call for humanity to be better custodians of the planet. Following suit, during the sixth session of the UN Environment Assembly, the Muslim community launched Al-Mizan: Covenant for the Earth as a sibling to Laudato Si.
Meetings at the Vatican
Over the past decade, Burhans has visited Rome on numerous occasions, presenting Pope Francis with a map in 2018 and meeting Vatican officials to discuss her work. She has even put forward a proposal to start a cartography institute. If successful, it would be the first scientific institution founded in the Holy See since the Vatican Observatory in 1930.
“I am hopeful regarding the developments surrounding my work with the Vatican,” says Burhans, who hopes to see a framework created that will allow the institution to scale up its property-related work.
In the short-term, her focus is on automating GoodLands’ services and gaining what is known as “B-Corp” status, which recognizes socially and environmentally conscious firms.
Next-gen environmental leaders
UNEP is again inviting 18 to 30 year-olds with outstanding ideas on how to protect and restore the environment to apply for a new round of Young Champions of the Earth awards. The application period closes on 5 April. Seven winners selected from around the world will receive seed funding, intensive training and tailored mentoring to bring their ambitious environmental ideas to life.
“This award has given a tremendous momentum that has enabled my work to continue moving forward in a way that wouldn’t have been possible,” Burhans says.
The scrutiny that judges bring to the applications is particularly valuable, she adds. “It's really important to have that kind of critical eye on your work, especially when you're young and just getting started, because we have such good ideas and so much energy. But it’s crucial that these ideas are scientifically grounded and financially feasible.”
Young Champions of the Earth is a forward-looking prize designed to breathe life into the ambitions of brilliant young environmentalists. The award is bestowed annually on seven ambitious young people from around the world with outstanding ideas to protect and restore the environment.
