April is Earth Month, when environmental awareness is raised, and leaders, both of business and government, should raise environmental awareness and create a consciousness about the issues affecting our planet. Salesforce has announced a new Nature Positive Strategy that outlines the actions it intends to undertake to improve its already considerable commitment to environmental issues.
Over the last few years, Salesforce has shown itself as one of the leading organisations worldwide through commitments and action to reach net zero, a nature-positive future rooted in people and climate justice.
Suzanne DiBianca, EVP & Chief Impact Officer of ESG and Sustainability, Salesforce, commented, “For Salesforce, incorporating nature into our decision-making is not only about managing risks and costs, but also about value creation, innovation, and collaboration. We’re excited to bring the full power of Salesforce to our customers, partners, and ecopreneurs so they too can be part of shaping a net zero, nature positive future.”
The new strategy comprises three action areas that complement one another:
Lead on nature restoration at scale
A founder member of 1t.org, Salesforce has continued to back the organisations that aim to restore 1 trillion trees by 2023. Initiatives such as that announced in 2020 at London World Tour showed that Salesforce continues to invest in the organisation, increasing its commitment. To date, Salesforce has funded a total of 45 million trees. The planting initiatives have included supporting trees in urban Texas, at a refugee camp in Uganda, and 10 schools in Gurgaon, India.
In April 2022, Salesforce launched a new initiative to grow sustainable oceans-based (blue) carbon markets. It aims to purchase 1 million tons of high-quality blue carbon credits by the end of 2025.
Other initiatives include the $100 million Ecosystem Restoration & Climate Justice Fund, which it committed to in 2011 and added $11 million in 2022.
Reduce nature impacts
The first stage of reducing the impact of an organisation on climate change is to understand what that impact is. Salesforce is conducting assessments within the business and is part of the Task Force on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD)’s pilot phase ahead of its launch later this year.
The mission of TNFD is “To develop and deliver a risk management and disclosure framework for organisations to report and act on evolving nature-related risks, with the ultimate aim of supporting a shift in global financial flows away from nature-negative outcomes and toward nature-positive outcomes.”
Salesforce has also committed to creating an action plan by 2025 to reduce its impacts and dependencies on nature across its value chain. This will mean that it will benchmark and measure impacts across its data centres, offices, people, products and other areas.
Accelerate customers’ success and the natural positive movement
Salesforce is already helping customers through its leadership in sustainability. It also offers more practical help through Salesforce’s Net Zero Cloud and Net Zero Marketplace.
Last year Salesforce published its Nature Policy Priorities and Ocean-Climate Policy Priorities and will e a key supporter of the UN’s Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform.
Constantino ‘Tino’ Aucca Chutas, UN Champion of the Earth and Peruvian Indigenous leader of the ‘Accion Andina’ restoration movement, commented, “Leadership and collaboration between global companies and local communities in climate and nature is essential as we are now in a race against time. Salesforce has supported Indigenous participation and climate action not only here in the Andes but across many developing countries. We ask everyone to show leadership at this scale and recognize the enormous efforts underway at the local level.”
Salesforce continues to support environment startups and ecopreneurs such as UpLink, Echoing Green, and Elemental Excelerator.
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
Salesforce often leads the way for tech companies on environmental initiatives. With governments making a global commitment at the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) to halt and reverse nature loss, it is the turn of private companies to do the same.
Other organisations need to surpass Salesforce’s initiatives. Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the UN, gave a stark warning at Davos this year: “The commitment to limit global temperature rise to 1.5C is nearly going up in smoke. Without further action, we are headed to a 2.8C increase. The consequences, as we all know, would be devastating. Several parts of our planet would be uninhabitable. And for many, it would mean a death sentence.
“But this is not a surprise. The science has been clear for decades. And I am not talking only about UN scientists. I am talking even about fossil fuel scientists.” (Source edie.net).
Salesforce continues to up its game, will others rise to the challenge to what, as Guterres notes, even the fossil fuel scientists say, is a battle humanity is losing?
