RoadFree – Defending Earth’s Last Intact Areas
RoadFree is a global initiative committed to protecting the planet’s last remaining roadless areas—vast, undisturbed ecosystems essential for biodiversity, climate resilience, and Indigenous sovereignty. Since its founding, RoadFree has led efforts to prevent destructive road development, drive international policy change, and promote a new vision for Earth’s wildest places. In 2024, RoadFree joined ReLife Earth, entering a new phase of integrated action within a global regeneration movement.
RoadFree was born at the Rio+20 Summit, where it launched the world’s first global maps of roadfree areas, developed in collaboration with Google Earth and the European Environment Agency. The maps were unveiled at a high-level side event, supported by UNEP, IUCN, the Society for Conservation Biology, and the Indigenous Peoples' International Centre for Policy Research and Education, setting the foundation for a global effort to protect Earth’s last intact ecosystems.
RoadFree has played a pivotal role in shaping international and European environmental policy. It presented the first updated maps of roadfree areas to global environmental conventions, co-organized high-level side events with the European Commission, and contributed to the formal recognition of roadless area protection in European Parliament resolutions. It also helped catalyze the development of EU-funded research and global mapping tools, while co-signing international calls with leading conservation organizations including Conservation International, Greenpeace, Global Witness, and the Rainforest Foundation.
In Greece, RoadFree supported a historic advancement: the formal recognition and protection of roadless areas in national legislation. This breakthrough safeguarded some of the country’s most ecologically valuable forests and mountain ecosystems from unregulated road development—marking a milestone in European environmental governance and a powerful model for other nations.
RoadFree is actively supporting civil society in Madagascar in its advocacy to protect the country’s largest remaining primary forest corridor, which is threatened by the proposed Antananarivo–Toamasina highway. If built through this roadless landscape, the highway would fragment habitats, accelerate deforestation, and put irreplaceable biodiversity at risk. RoadFree works alongside local organizations to raise international awareness, propose ecologically sound alternatives, and ensure that development respects both nature and local communities.
Now under the umbrella of ReLife Earth, RoadFree continues its mission to defend the last untouched places on Earth—because once a road enters, true wilderness may never return.
