With great impact comes great responsibility. Across their value chains, companies play a critical role in safeguarding and restoring the nature and biodiversity on which we all depend. This series features international companies setting the pace – companies that are part of the solution. This edition highlights Salesforce and their efforts.
Salesforce is globally recognised for advancing cloud-based digital transformation, but alongside its technological reach, the company is now shaping an equally ambitious agenda: contributing to a net zero, nature positive future, guided by its long-term strategic framework, the Nature Positive Strategy.
As Tim Christophersen, Vice President for Climate Action, explains, Salesforce’s strategy is grounded in a holistic understanding of nature and climate as inseparable challenges that must be addressed together.
“Our strategy is called the Nature Positive Strategy. It is an evolving strategy that articulates our company’s role in realizing our commitment to a net zero, nature positive future rooted in people and climate justice. At the heart of this strategy is the understanding that nature and climate are inextricably linked; we simply cannot address one crisis without the other. Our Nature Positive Strategy builds on and supports our existing Climate Action Plan.”
From Reduction to Restoration
Salesforce’s strategy is structured around three interconnected areas of action, progressing beyond traditional reduction models into large-scale nature restoration and global ecosystem support.
“We have structured the strategy around three mutually reinforcing areas of action. The first is to reduce our nature impacts, which includes reducing our freshwater. Freshwater is our most material nature impact and dependency. We just launched a Water Action Plan as part of our Nature Positive Strategy.”
Nature as Essential Infrastructure
Salesforce views nature not as a passive externality, but as critical infrastructure for future societal and economic stability.
“Our strategy focuses on treating ecosystems as essential infrastructure, providing the diversity that allows nature’s flywheel to run beautifully and produce abundance. We don’t consider nature solutions as an offsetting strategy. It is a scaling of nature restoration activities globally and it is rooted in the importance of biodiversity and Indigenous and local peoples’ rights and knowledge systems.”
Salesforce has committed to funding 100 million trees by 2030 and supports global reforestation through its co-founding role in 1t.org. The company has already funded over 56 million trees across 23 countries.
Coastal ecosystems are equally central to the strategy, with Salesforce aiming to contract one million tons of high-quality blue carbon credits by 2030, including mangrove restoration.
”We aim to contract for one million tons of high-quality blue carbon credits by 2030, such as those from mangrove forests. These are some of the most biodiverse and carbon-dense ecosystems on the planet, which store vast amounts of carbon, safeguard biodiversity, and provide resilience for coastal communities.”
And the company couples restoration with community value:
“Our third commitment is to distribute US$100 million for ecosystem restoration solutions that deliver co-benefits for people and communities, ensuring equity is prioritized in the race toward a nature positive world.”
Integration Into Business Operations
Salesforce’s Nature Positive Strategy is fully integrated into business governance, operations, risk management and investment.
“Our strategy is not just a high-level goal; it is integrated into the operational reality of Salesforce.”
The company utilises TNFD-aligned assessments to identify nature-related impacts and dependencies across its entire value chain.
“We conducted assessments aligned with frameworks like the Task Force on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) to evaluate our impacts and dependencies on nature across our entire value chain, including data centers and key spend categories.”
Technology and digital infrastructure form core components of Salesforce’s nature strategy, with Net Zero Cloud positioned as a scaling tool for ecosystem transparency and action.
“We leverage our unique strength as a technology company — our ‘superpower’ — to support the broader movement.”
Motivation and Commitment
Salesforce announced its comprehensive Nature Positive Strategy in April 2023 and updated the strategy, including a Water Action Plan, in November 2025.
“Nature loss presents real economic impacts and is a business imperative. Ultimately, there’s no economy without ecosystems.”
Christophersen also highlights the potential positive macroeconomic effects of nature-positive policies, noting that they could generate trillions in new annual business value and create millions of jobs.
“Implementing nature-positive policies could generate more than $10 trillion USD in new annual business value by 2030 and create 395 million jobs.”
Challenges and Required Mindset Shift
According to Tim Christophersen, the greatest challenge for Salesforce is not lack of knowing what to do, but the inertia of existing systems and the necessary mindset shifts required to repair the fractured relationship with nature.
“Ecosystems take years to mature, and our supply chains are complex. In addition, only about 10 percent of the estimated required need for nature-based solutions is currently being met”, as he explains.
Advice to Other Companies
- Do not treat nature as a separate, subsequent agenda item.
- Start assessing your impacts on nature, not stopping at your own operations but also including products, services, and influence.
- Prioritize collaboration and high-quality nature-based solutions, partnering with Indigenous Peoples and local communities.
Conclusion
Salesforce’s journey is ongoing, iterative and deliberately long-term. But it is guided by a clear vision: the belief that digital infrastructure, nature repair and a just transition must evolve together. As Christophersen concludes,
“This transition is not a cost, but an opportunity.”
You can read more on Tim Christophersen newly published book ”Generation Restoration”.
