Five takeaways from the AI for Nature Forum

At the AI for Nature Forum, leaders explored how to navigate the intersection of sustainable AI, corporate climate leadership, and widely accessible earth observation data to restore nature at scale.

The inaugural AI for Nature Forum, hosted by Pachama and Salesforce during San Francisco Climate Week, brought together sustainability leaders, AI innovators, and carbon market pioneers to explore how artificial intelligence can support and scale nature-based climate solutions. Across panels, roundtables, and tech demos, a few clear themes emerged. 

1. AI is a double-edged sword for climate – and we’re not waiting to address it.

AI’s explosive growth brings real tension: it has the potential to accelerate climate solutions, but it also significantly increases energy consumption. Leaders from Salesforce, Meta, Amazon, Autodesk, and Google emphasized the need to tackle this by: first, gaining transparency into AI’s environmental footprint through solutions like the AI Energy Score; second, aggressively developing strategies to design more sustainable, responsible AI models; and third, ensuring AI’s energy demands are matched with clean and renewable sources. As the energy demands grow, so can the scale and commitment to renewable energy.

“We believe that autonomous AI applications, like Agentforce, are going to transform the market, creating a new digital labor force with agents and humans working hand-in-hand. With that, we have the responsibility to figure out what responsible, sustainable, ethical AI is, including AI’s impact on natural resources like water, carbon, and the climate. It’s even more critical today to build nature into our broader business strategy, especially around our data center infrastructure that powers all that we bring to our customers.”

Sunya Norman, Senior Vice President of Impact, Salesforce

2. Big tech continues investment by integrating nature into business strategy.

Leading companies shared that investing in nature isn’t just ethical, it’s strategic. Even without regulatory mandates, these companies are directing significant funding toward forest restoration, biodiversity, nature-based carbon credits, and more.

Why? As Salesforce’s Sunya Norman put it, “We know for businesses to thrive, our planet needs to thrive.” Across panels and roundtables throughout the event, leaders discussed how to integrate nature into existing commitments and embed it deeply into business strategy.

“As technology companies, we are at the forefront of innovation. We have the ability to affect huge, scalable change. And we have to take that responsibility seriously, which means investing in the right solutions, despite the fact that they might be costlier.”

Joe Speicher, Chief Sustainability Officer, Autodesk

Action is taking many forms: from nonprofit accelerators, carbon markets, in-house R&D, coalitions and partnerships like Symbiosis Coalition, Beyond Alliance, work with incredible organizations like Moore Foundation, World Resources Institute, and the National Geographic Society. Corporate leaders are finding ways to not only continue to support thriving ecosystems, all tailored to the unique commitments and core values within the walls of their own organization.

“We have a net zero commitment to reach net zero emissions in our value chain in 2030. A portion will be met with high-quality carbon removals. That’s an opportunity to take an existing commitment and make sure that it’s really serving our commitment to nature.”

Devon Lake, Head of Net Zero Strategy, Meta

3. New AI tools are revolutionizing how we restore and monitor nature.

From decoding dolphin communication to tracking forest growth from space, the conversations were wide-ranging. AI is transforming the pace and precision of the science driving our investments in nature. These tools make it possible to map, monitor, and manage ecosystems at planetary scale—capabilities that were impossible just a decade ago. AI is also helping restore degraded coral reefs, identify illegal logging via audio recognition, and support species conservation through bioacoustics and computer vision.

4. AI and geospatial data are actively transforming the carbon market

Carbon markets are one of the largest vehicles to drive nature-based finance. Innovators like Chloris Geospatial, Isometric, CNaught, and Pachama are using remote sensing, machine learning, and digital tools to improve accuracy, reduce uncertainty, and streamline verification. Chloris, for example, directly measures forest biomass over time, capturing degradation as well as deforestation. Isometric is using software to cut project registration from 18 months to under a month and enable monthly credit issuance. CNaught is finding new ways to make these technical insights more understandable by all, inviting more players into the market. But challenges remain: the proliferation of standards and a lack of unified benchmarks risk sowing confusion. As Alexia Kelly of the High Tide Foundation noted, convergence around shared norms and uncertainty reporting is key to scaling a trustworthy, high-integrity market. Technology can play a vital role to catalyze action by providing an objective truth with transparent model uncertainty, as Pachama shared while unveiling its new role as an insights platform.

5. There’s real optimism about scaling nature investments—with the right tools and ecosystem.

The Forum ended with a shared conviction to act, moving forward despite headwinds. Despite the complexity of carbon markets and the urgency of climate threats, there’s growing confidence in the tools and players pushing the space forward. Platforms like Pachama, CTrees, and Chloris are bringing scientific rigor to nature-based projects using geospatial data. Biodiversity tracking from Map of Life and insights into water risk from Waterplan are expanding the frontier. Digital-first registries like Isometric and intuitive high-integrity portfolios like CNaught are making it easier to buy with confidence. An ever-growing ecosystem of solutions is proliferating. The common thread between the leaders? Speed, transparency, integrity, and usability. 

We all inherently know we must protect nature. And now we have the tools to do it effectively at scale.