Google and McKinsey have signed long-term agreements to buy 320,000 carbon removal credits from Working Trees, a company restoring degraded cattle pasture in Brazil using silvopasture. The project will plant native and commercial timber trees across 8,700 hectares within a larger 50,000 hectare area in the southeastern Amazon and Cerrado. The credits will be delivered over 10 years under an advance market commitment led by the Symbiosis Coalition, which is aiming for up to 20 million tons of nature-based removal credits by 2030. The deal is notable because it links carbon finance to working farmland rather than taking land out of production. Silvopasture keeps cattle grazing while trees provide shade, improve soil, and create long-term timber revenue. Buyers like Google and McKinsey are betting that this model can scale. The article also notes that scientists estimate silvopasture could remove 300 million to 1 billion tons of CO2 annually, though actual delivery will depend on verification, permanence, and landowner incentives.
