Discover How Salesforce is Taking Action with Nature-Based Solutions

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Explain why Salesforce supports trees as a part of nature-based solutions.
Describe the contribution Salesforce is making toward its goal to support and mobilize the conservation and restoration of 100 million trees over the next decade.

Salesforce Takes a Values-Driven Approach

A set of core values guides the work at Salesforce — earning the trust of all our stakeholders, driving customer success, delivering constant innovation, fostering the equality of every human being, and leading boldly to address the climate emergency. Salesforce added sustainability as a fifth value in 2022 to reinforce our responsibility to our stakeholders, including the planet, to use our full power to limit global warming to 1.5° C or less through a transition to a low-carbon economy.

At Salesforce we seek to use our influence for the greatest good in the high-stakes climate emergency. We challenge and encourage our customers and partners to join us on the path to net zero.

Salesforce Engages Stakeholders to Reduce Emissions

Rapidly reducing sources of greenhouse gas emissions and improving carbon sinks (nature-based solutions to absorb carbon emissions) are two key solutions to the climate emergency. It’s important to protect and restore natural resources in a way that is based on sound ecological principles and involves local communities who depend on these resources.

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals help frame Salesforce’s global strategy. Salesforce has net zero emissions today across our full value chain, and achieved 100% renewable energy for our operations.

Focusing on achieving net zero emissions at one company isn’t enough, however. In order to stop climate change, the world needs a much larger global transition that includes engaging and empowering our stakeholders, such as lawmakers, other companies, and individuals.

As one way to engage stakeholders, Salesforce has been investing directly in emissions reductions and removals outside of our value chain since 2017. Salesforce has invested in projects that conserve or restore natural carbon sinks to draw down atmospheric carbon into biomass. (Read Salesforce's Step Up Commitments in the Resources section of this unit.)

Salesforce Set a Goal to Conserve, Restore, and Grow 100 Million Trees

In January 2020, Salesforce was a founding partner of 1t.org, and in support of its mission, Salesforce announced our own goal to support and mobilize the conservation, restoration, and growth of 100 million trees by the end of 2030. (Learn more about the Salesforce pledge in the Resources.)

The methodology for reaching our goal continues to evolve, but it must be done in a socially and ecologically responsible way with a sense of urgency. Being socially responsible means meaningfully engaging with Indigenous people and local communities on this journey. Restoration of our ecosystems is only sustainable when local communities reap social, economic, and ecological benefits.

Ecological responsibility means no shortcuts when it comes to supporting healthy ecosystems that are resilient and provide the most benefits in addressing climate change. For example, a monoculture plantation might store more carbon in the short-term, but a biodiverse forest provides better long-term carbon storage, and superior habitat, flood protection, and other ecosystem services such as water purification and pollination.

The goal of 100 million trees is new for Salesforce, and builds on our experience supporting natural climate solutions as demonstrated by these examples. (Learn more about each of these projects in Resources.)

Contributing Salesforce technology in the form of UpLink, a new, global digital platform that crowdsources innovations to accelerate the delivery of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. UpLink is helping find ecopreneurs who can help solve the huge 1t.org challenge—to grow, conserve, and restore 1 trillion trees.
Advocating for low-carbon economy policies in the geographies where Salesforce operates, and supporting measures to halt and reverse ecosystem degradation.
Investing dollars directly in forests around the world, including restoring mangrove forests in Myanmar, conserving tropical forests in Brazil, and protecting peat-lands in Indonesia.

Join Salesforce in Taking Action on Climate Change

Customers want to buy from values-driven companies that are making the planet a better place. Employees want to work for an organization that offers opportunities for them to tap into their values and make an impact. Business professionals who say their company positively impacts the community are three times more likely to feel proud to work there. (Learn more about the impact of values-driven business in the Resources.) Salesforce employs multiple ways to engage our team, customers, and partners on sustainability initiatives in support of trees, including these best practices.

Offering matching donations to double the impact of employee gifts to tree organizations.
Hosting events with give-back components to deliver unique experiences for employees, customers, or partners.
Organizing company-wide volunteer events where team members can contribute to tree projects in their local communities.
Using our Salesforce superpowers—our people and our technology—to deliver climate action products such as Salesforce Net Zero Cloud, UpLink, and 1t.org.

Discover your company’s own unique superpowers and use them to enable your business teams to take climate action. In the next unit, you learn how individuals can act to protect and restore trees worldwide and make a huge difference in fighting climate change.