Forests: Reasons to be Hopeful

by Bill Liao, Tutu Desmond (Foreword)

This captivating book simply and engagingly captures the vital role forests play in combating the effects of climate change. The reasons for the current and historical demise of the forest are clearly outlined, followed by a fascinating insight into how a forest works to help the local and global environment. There is a solution to global warming which is realistic, attainable and beneficial to the Earth and her inhabitants. Bill Liao and WeForest's laudable goals of making the earth cooler, alleviating poverty and restoring eco-systems are enshrined in case studies from around the world, vividly demonstrating reasons to be hopeful. All the profits from the book immediately go to WeForest.org to plant trees.

212 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 1, 2014

About the author

Bill Liao (born William Fu Wei Liao, 1967) is an Australian entrepreneur. He is a general partner with SOSventures and listed as an influential investor on Twitter.[1] He is married with three children and lives in Cork, Ireland.
Liao is a social networking pioneer,[2] author,[3] speaker,[4] and is engaged in not for profit work.[5] Among his non-profit endeavors he is a CoderDojo Co-Founder and champion and he has participated as an investor and volunteer in The Hunger Project in Uganda, New York and Mexico. He is Co-Founder of WeForest.org which has planted tens of millions of trees to reverse global warming. WeForest also lifts people out of poverty while restoring eco systems. [6]
He has also been appointed as a special diplomatic envoy for St Kitts and Nevis for sustainable development and the environment. Liao has contributed to the St Kitts and Nevis recovery fund for the sugar cane industry there.[7]
He is also a regular attendee at the TED conferences[8] and also the World Economic Forum New Champions conference.[9]
Liao was also the Director of Operations (DOO) of telecommunications company Davnet, which achieved the fastest capital value growth in the history of the Australian Stock exchange[10] and which aggregated Internet access in the riser space[11] of office buildings. Davnet was acquired by Japanese telecommunications carrier Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) in 1996. Liao left Davnet after the acquisition, turning his attention to other IT endeavors.
He was the first external investor in XING.com, then called openBC.com, which was founded by Lars Hinrichs in Germany in 2003. Later, Liao became a supervisory board member.[12]
In 2009, he founded WeForest.org, an organisation promoting reforestation as a way to combat global warming.[13] WeForest.org continues, with a stated goal of planting two trillion trees by 2020 and is run from Belgium by its current CEO Marie-Noelle Keijzer. Liao is still involved with WeForest and spoke at TED Long Beach 2011 about it.
He was an official part of the delegation of St Kitts and Nevis to the COP15 UN climate change summit in Copenhagen where he also promoted the science and concepts behind WeForest.org.[14]
In 2011, Liao joined SOSventures as their European Venture Partner specialising in Internet and social media. He has invested in Mark Little's Storyful[15] venture, and Silicon Republic.[16]
Bill Liao and James Whelton founded CoderDojo,[17] a not-for-profit organisation that teaches children how to code. It aims to teach children creative problem-solving skills and practical creative skills and was launched in Ireland in mid-2011. Liao and Whelton also hope to provide an outlet for children who know how to code to meet other children with similar interests and work on projects in an environment with their peers, similar to a co-working space but less formal.