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We didn’t record in a forest this time. Instead, I sat across from Tim Christophersen in a café just outside the EARTHED Summit in Hackney, London. The espresso machine hissed, chairs scraped, conversations bled into the mic. Hardly a sound studio—but somehow fitting. Restoration is rarely quiet. It’s messy, noisy, human.
Tim had just opened the summit with a keynote on Generation Restoration—also the title of his new book, released October 14 (you can find it here). With a foreword by Jane Goodall, written shortly before her passing, and endorsements from Christiana Figueres (Founding Partner, Global Optimism) and Jennifer Morris (CEO, The Nature Conservancy), the book is already making waves. But I wanted to hear more than the polished keynote—I wanted to meet the person who has moved between the worlds of policy, the private sector, and philosophy.
Tim’s first memory of nature was walking as a toddler with his grandfather, a forester. “I remember feeling the life force of an ecosystem,” he said. It’s that intuition—so strong in childhood, often dulled in adulthood—that he believes we urgently need to tap into again.
From those early forests, Tim studied forestry, spent years at the UN Environment Programme co-founding the Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, and today holds a role he never imagined: Vice President of Climate Action at Salesforce.
“Never dreamed I’d end up working for a global tech company,” he laughed. But the reach is undeniable: Salesforce is wired into nearly every Fortune 500 company. With a pledge to plant and conserve 100 million trees by 2030, and a “nature positive strategy” tying restoration directly to business resilience, Tim sees corporate action as essential.
Big pledges, of course, invite accusations of greenwashing. I asked how he handles it. “The fear of being accused of greenwashing keeps many companies on the fence. Doing nothing carries less risk than trying and failing. But if all companies did as much as Salesforce, the world would be a better place. We need integrity—but we also need action.”
I’ve seen that paralysis of perfection derail promising projects again and again. Waiting until we “get it right” is often just a recipe for never getting started.
A philosophical autopilot
What struck me most in our conversation wasn’t corporate strategy, but philosophy. Tim argues our ecological collapse isn’t just about emissions or policy—it’s about worldview.
“We’re on a philosophical autopilot that was programmed 300 years ago by Descartes and others,” he said. “Humans above nature, nature as commodity. That shaped our extractive economy. So the issues we face are more relational than transactional. We don’t just need to change what we do—we need to change the way we see nature. Because we are nature.”
That landed hard. The Enlightenment gave us science and progress—but also a story of separation. If the Enlightenment made us forget we are part of ecosystems, Generation Restoration has to remember it, and live like it.
Tim’s examples brought it home. New York Harbor once held 300 billion oysters—filtering water, buffering storm surges, creating marine nurseries. “That abundance can come back,” he insisted. “We have the tools, the money, the knowledge. What we need is inspiration.”
Listening to him, I felt that familiar mix of awe and grief. Awe that such abundance once existed; grief that we’ve normalized its absence.
Can AI make us all ecologists?
At a summit buzzing with climate tech demos, I expected Tim to be cautious about AI. Instead, he leaned in.
“Ecology is complex,” he said. “But with AI, everyone can become an ecologist.”
Already, Salesforce is piloting “agentic AI” with smallholder farmers in Colombia—tools that don’t just analyze soil or suggest crops, but help schedule certification visits and even negotiate fairer prices. It’s Shazam for birdsong, ChatGPT for soil microbes, but with real-world stakes: livelihoods, food security, resilience.
Like any tool, it depends on how we use it. But there’s something powerful in the idea that the same force reshaping our work lives could also help us see—and act on—the ecosystems around us.
The most important tool: imagination
We spoke of carbon credits, soil health, and the trillion-dollar financing gap for restoration. But when I asked what tool mattered most, Tim didn’t hesitate.
“The most important tool we need is imagination,” he said. Art, music, poetry, philosophy—all of it. “We need a new narrative as humanity. Our dictionary still defines nature as everything opposed to humans. Imagine that. We need inspiration that creates the political will to restore nature at a planetary scale.”
It reminded me of what I try to do with the Internet of Nature: build feedback loops of curiosity, connection, and story. Fear can paralyze; imagination multiplies.
Toward the end, I asked him about legacy. He didn’t talk about titles or targets. He talked about people. He wants Generation Restoration to reach beyond experts—to the proverbial “well-read dentist” who picks up the book and joins the movement.
“Nature isn’t a luxury,” Tim told me as we drained our coffees. “It’s our home. And it’s waiting. It’s time to come home.”
Generation Restoration came out on October 14 — order on Tim's website or get a copy at your local bookstore.Happy trails,
Nadina
