While technology has contributed significantly to climate change, it could soon help offset the damage done to our planet since the industrial age.

In September 2018, a project in Myanmar used drones to fire “seed rockets” into remote areas where no trees grew. Less than a year later, thousands of those seeds have grown into 50-centimeter-tall mangrove seedlings, demonstrating how technology can lead to innovative solutions to the climate crisis.

“We now have confirmation of which species we can plant and under what conditions,” says Irina Fedorenko, co-founder of Biocarbon engineeringsaid Fast Company. “We are now ready to expand our plantings and repeat this success.”

According to Fedorenko, two operators could already deploy a drone fleet capable of planting 400,000 trees a day, making significant progress in the fight against climate change.

The drones, developed by a former NASA engineer, are designed to replant an area the size of Rhode Island in Myanmar. Bremley Lyngdoh, founder and CEO of World Impact, believes this could ultimately lead to a billion new trees.

“It’s obvious that planting a billion trees without the help of drones is going to take a very long time,” Lyngdoh told Fast Company.

With this powerful new ally, they are making rapid progress. By comparison, the Worldview Foundation needed seven years to plant six million trees in Myanmar. With the drones, they plan to plant another four million trees by the end of 2019.

Myanmar is an excellent case study for the project. In addition to the available land for the drone project, the country has been particularly affected by the early impacts of climate change in recent years. Rising sea levels have a measurable impact on the population. Healthy trees can not only remove CO2 from the atmosphere, but also help to consolidate the soil, which can reduce soil erosion suffered by the local population in Myanmar.

In the future, technologies like seed-sowing drones could help stem the tide of catastrophic climate change, while our governments and societies work to change the consumer and corporate habits that are driving the problem. Our endless hunger for new technologies may be the driving force behind climate change and deforestation, but it could also end up being the solution to a problem.

This article originally appeared on April 17, 2019.

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