Salesforce unveiled its Nature Positive Strategy that integrates with its broader climate action plans to help build "a net-zero, nature positive future rooted in people and climate justice," Salesforce's Tim Christophersen, VP of climate action, told SDxCentral.

According to the sustainability leader, Salesforce aims to use its entire platform to "better serve the planet," Christophersen said. "Business is the greatest platform for change," and "the environment is one of our most important stakeholders," he added.

While the enterprise software provider has supported nature conservation in the past by partnering with 1t.org to plant 100 million trees and developing an ocean sustainability program, "we recognized a programmatic need to build a dedicated, cohesive nature positive strategy," he said.

Salesforce's impacts and dependencies on nature

The software giant's strategy focuses on reducing its impacts and dependencies on the natural environment. While Salesforce claims its direct impacts on nature are "not as substantial compared to sectors with value chains directly dependent on natural resources, we recognize that every company has a role to play," Christophersen said.

Salesforce began building its Nature Positive Strategy by conducting an initial nature impact assessment aligned with the Task Force on Nature-related Financial Disclosures' (TNFD) beta framework to give the vendor a clear picture of its risks, opportunities, impacts and dependencies.

The framework helped analyze Salesforce's value chain at a high level, assess its nature-specific materiality and dig into priority sites within the enterprise's direct operations. The enterprise's assessment found the majority of the company's material risks and opportunities fell within its upstream and downstream value chain. That "critical assessment" offered a roadmap to identify actions the vendor can take internally and externally that will "influence stakeholders on nature in meaningful ways," Christophersen said.

"With this information in hand, we are now committed to understanding, managing and developing a plan to reduce our impacts and dependencies on nature across our business, including data centers, offices, value chain, people and products," he added.

Measuring business influence on the environment

Although scientific frameworks for nature assessments like TNFD continue to evolve, Salesforce says it actively supports the development and improvement of those frameworks. The vendor joined the TNFD Forum late last year and is participating in the framework's pilot phase before it launches later this year.

"High-quality, global standards for nature-related disclosures are critical for achieving a net-zero, nature positive future," Christophersen stressed. "Now, more than ever, leaders need to urgently understand our collective impact and reliance on nature, communicate that information to stakeholders and prioritize action on the most material issues across all business operations."

Underpinning this strategy are the company's intentions to measure, manage and develop a strategy to reduce nature impacts and dependencies by 2025; buy 1 million tons of high-quality blue carbon credits by 2025; support the conservation, restoration and growth of 100 million tress by 2030; and allocate $100 million via its ecosystem restoration and climate justice fund by 2031.

Even though the scope of Salesforce's Nature Positive Strategy is likely to change as the landscape matures, "we’re hoping to continue integrating nature into our existing climate work wherever possible, whether that means engaging and educating our suppliers or providing tools to assist our customers."

Empowering local, Indigenous communities

In a nod to the connections between environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives, Christophersen argued that climate action needs to be centered around equity.

"We recognize local communities and Indigenous peoples as leaders for conservation and restoration," he said. "Their voices must be heard on policy, and investments into nature-based solutions must place indigenous livelihoods, values and goals at the center of planning and execution."

To that point, Salesforce says it advocates for global policies that preserve natural ecosystems and develop local community resilience to reach "a more just and equitable world," Christophersen added.