The roots of Face the Future go back to 1990, when the Face Foundation  (Forest Absorbing Carbon dioxide Emissions) was established. Between 1990 and 2000 Face established over 50.000 hectares of (rehabilitated) forest, worldwide resulting in the sequestration of over 2 million tons of CO2. Many valuable lessons have been learned from the projects, not only for Face herself, but for scientific knowledge, other projects and organizations as well. In 1998 the Dutch government awarded the Face projects in Uganda and Malaysia as best practices for the project based emission reduction mechanisms of the Kyoto protocol.

From 2000 onwards, Face Foundation became one of the first organizations in the world to have her projects certified and verified according to international carbon & forest protocols. This enabled the reliable quantification of the amount of carbon sequestered in forests and at the same time ensured the sustainability and quality of the projects.

In 2009 the activities of the Face Foundation evolved into Face the Future, an organization established to mitigate environmental issues such as climate change, through a new approach: that of valuing the services provided by ecosystems. Face the Future continues the project activities of Face Foundation and aims to expanding the methodologies to other ecosystems (for instance peatlands) and other ecosystem services.