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Global Citizen Festival Brought A+ List Music Acts to Central Park… and Generated 20,000+ Petition Signatures for TREES Act
New York – An estimated 60,000 concertgoers flocked to Central Park’s Great Lawn for the annual Global Citizen Festival on Saturday. Attendees saw international acts such as Post Malone, Doja Cat, LISA, Rauw Alejandro, and Jelly Roll perform, while calling for urgent action on climate change, the global hunger crisis, and extreme poverty. Global Citizen Ambassador Hugh Jackman hosted.
This year, Global Citizen included Environmental Advocates NY as an NGO partner of the festival, and highlighted New York’s Tropical Rainforest Economic & Environmental Sustainability (TREES) Act as part of its campaigning. Global Citizen’s petition urging the Governor to sign the TREES Act has garnered more than 20,000 signatures.
The TREES Act, which would stop taxpayer money from being used to destroy tropical rainforests, has passed both chambers of the state legislature and will become law if Governor Kathy Hochul signs it.
Governor Hochul was invited to make a commitment to sign the bill into law during the festival, but she did not appear.
Hochul vetoed similar legislation in 2023; however, changes have been made to the bill in order to address her concerns. If the Governor signs the TREES Act, New York will become the first U.S. state to prohibit public funds from contributing to tropical deforestation in the Amazon, helping to preserve critically important forest lands that remove carbon from the atmosphere.
“I would like to give a huge thanks to the Global Citizen Festival–what an incredible event to raise awareness and action around creating a better future for our planet. Environmental Advocates NY is grateful to partner with the festival and its work to uplift legislation like the NY TREES Act,” said Vanessa Fajans-Turner, executive director of EANY. “However, we are disappointed that Gov. Hochul didn’t accept our invitation to sign the TREES Act at the festival. New York has the chance to be a leader in saving the tropical forests that the ENTIRE planet counts on. We hope Governor Hochul will sign this landmark legislation, make New York a national climate leader, and protect our irreplaceable natural resources.”
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