The Symbiosis Coalition: A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing?

An ESG case study for Boer Maak 'n Plan

AI-generated background image. Source

In May 2024, tech giants Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Salesforce, launched the Symbiosis Coalition. According to their press release, Symbiosis is a groundbreaking effort to catalyse high-quality nature restoration carbon credit projects. With a pledge to purchase up to 20 million tons of carbon removal credits by 2030, Symbiosis aims to create a robust market for “nature-based solutions” and drive significant investment into projects that protect and restore vital ecosystems. On the surface, this appears to be a commendable step towards addressing the urgent crises of climate change and biodiversity loss.

However, a closer examination of the Symbiosis model reveals troubling parallels to the critiques levelled against the broader Stakeholder Capitalism agenda. (Stakeholder Capitalism is strongly supported by Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Salesforce, the Big Four accounting firms, McKinsey, and many more.)

While wrapped in the language of sustainability and inclusivity, Symbiosis may in fact represent a sophisticated enactment of the same centralising, financialising forces that have eroded local sovereignty and resilience in the name of "green growth."

At its core, Symbiosis perpetuates the reductivist paradigm of the financialisation of Nature. By abstracting the intrinsic, multi-faceted value of ecosystems into tradable carbon commodities, the Coalition risks subordinating the complex, place-based rhythms of the natural world to the speculative whims of global capital markets. Just as initiatives like GREEN+ have been criticized for transforming sovereign ecological resources into internationalised financial instruments, Symbiosis may pave the way for a similar displacement of stewardship from the hands of Indigenous peoples and local communities to those of distant investors and technocrats. (Their first RFP will only be released “later this year”—the angle they take remains to be seen.)

Moreover, the centralised, top-down approach embodied by Symbiosis—in which a small cadre of corporate giants wields outsized influence to shape the terms of the Nature restoration market—mirrors the dangerous consolidation of power characteristic of Stakeholder Capitalism. By setting universal quality criteria and metrics, however well-intentioned, the Coalition imposes a homogenising framework that fails to account for the beautifully diverse, context-specific ways in which communities around the world have cultivated harmonious relationships with their local ecologies. This one-size-fits-all imposition of "best practices" threatens to erase the pluriverse of place-based knowledge systems in favour of a monoculture of the mind.

Furthermore, the tech giants making up the Symbiosis Coalition ultimately operate within the confines of a voluntary carbon market predicated on the endless growth imperative of global capitalism. By failing to interrogate the root causes of ecological destruction—namely, the relentless pursuit of economic expansion at the expense of planetary boundaries—the Coalition risks perpetuating the very paradigm that has brought us to the brink of collapse. Without a fundamental reimagining of our relationship to growth and a willingness to embrace the regenerative principles of sufficiency and circularity, initiatives like Symbiosis amount to little more than rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Perhaps most concerningly, by abstracting Nature restoration into a globalised market mechanism, Symbiosis threatens to sever the vital cords of reciprocity and responsibility that bind communities to their local bioregions. When the fate of an ecosystem is determined by the fluctuations of an international carbon market rather than the stewardship of those who depend on it for their material and spiritual sustenance, something essential has been lost. The commodification of Nature inevitably entails its disenchantment, a tragic unravelling of the sacred web of relationships that has sustained life on this planet for millennia.

Rather than uncritically embracing the siren song of Stakeholder Capitalism, we must have the courage to question its underlying assumptions and architect alternative models that genuinely empower our communities. This means shifting our focus from globalised market mechanisms to deeply place-based, bioregionally-focused economic paradigms that restore resilience and agency to the grassroots. It means organisations like Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Salesforce partnering instead with Indigenous wisdom-keepers, small-scale farmers, and local enterprises to co-create regenerative systems that honour the sanctity of land and the dignity of all people. And it means leveraging our resources and influence to support the emergence of decentralised, locally adapted solutions that build true resilience from the ground up. These solutions focus on the hard work of restoring hydrological cycles, greening deserts, and revitalising soil.

Initiatives like Symbiosis, with its alluring promises of "win-win" solutions that leave the underlying logic of extraction and exploitation intact is a fool’s game. The alternative is a radically different story, one in which business becomes a regenerative force for the healing of our land and the empowerment of our communities.