Customer relationship management firm Salesforce on Wednesday announced a total $4 million in nature-related grants and accelerator funding for nine companies and organisation.
On the sidelines of COP15 in Montreal, Salesforce said it had identified five initiatives that will share $3 mln in grants and a further $1 mln to four companies that will be the first recipients of funds under Salesforce’s recently launched Accelerator for Nature.
“In the fight against climate change, we can’t afford to leave anything on the table. The Accelerator for Nature provides non-profits with comprehensive funding and support to make big bets and test the bold solutions that our planet needs,” said Naomi Morenzoni, Salesforce’s senior vice president of philantrophy.
The Accelerator’s first contributions went to groups that harness technology to pursue nature-based climate ambitions.
They included Global Forest Generation, which will spend the funds to build a programme management, governance and a reporting system for Indigenous and locally-led restoration efforts in the High Andes, the announcement said.
GreenWave, an ocean restoration initiative building a scalable data collection infrastructure for ocean farmers, and non-profit Island Conservation, setting up an interactive remote sensing and modelling system to monitor island forest carbon, were also chosen.
The last initiative to receive funds through the Accelerator was Rainforest Connection, which aims to develop a scalable and real-time monitoring system for protecting and studying biodiversity across remote ecosystems.
Meanwhile, the $3 mln in grants went to organisations involved in forest protection and restoration as well as wildlife enhancement.
Plant-for-the-Planet, American Forests, one Tree Planted, CIFOR-ICRAF, and National Fish and Wildlife Foundation were the grant recipients named in the Salesforce release.
In addition, the company announced a set of new climate justice policy priorities, which included committing to allocating 40% or more of Salesforce’s clean energy and climate investments toward vulnerable communities and building infrastructure to help communities prepare for the impacts of climate change.
news@carbon-pulse.com
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