Google and McKinsey Back Brazil Silvopasture Project in 320,000-Tonne Carbon Removal Deal
Google and McKinsey have agreed to buy 320,000 tonnes of carbon removal from a project that plants trees directly into cattle pastures in Brazil, in a deal that backers say shows how ranching and forest restoration can work together. The Brazil silvopasture carbon removal agreement was announced on 19 October 2026 through the Symbiosis Coalition, a group of corporate buyers of nature-based carbon removal.
According to the Symbiosis Coalition, the offtake agreements with Working Trees run over ten years and will restore 8,700 hectares of degraded and semi-degraded pasture. The land forms part of a wider 50,000-hectare project across Brazil’s southeastern Amazon and central Cerrado regions.
The deal is the coalition’s first silvopasture project. Google said its share of the agreement covers the removal of 270,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide.
What Is Silvopasture and How Does It Work?
Silvopasture is a form of agroforestry that deliberately integrates trees into grazing land. Under the Working Trees model, rows of commercial timber and native trees are planted directly into existing cattle pasture, with space left between the rows for animals to graze, according to Symbiosis.
The coalition says the trees receive enough sunlight to grow while providing shade for cattle. It also says they help restore soil health, improve water retention, increase biodiversity and make pastures and cattle more resilient to drought and disease.
Why Cattle Pasture Matters for the Climate
Cattle grazing covers nearly 3 billion hectares globally and is the leading cause of deforestation and forest fragmentation worldwide, according to Symbiosis. In some regions it is also a primary driver of soil degradation. The coalition cites scientific estimates that silvopasture could remove between 0.3 and 1 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year worldwide.
Despite that potential, Symbiosis says carbon-funded silvopasture has not yet been deployed at scale. It says success depends on secure land tenure, good tree-growing conditions, appropriate species, accessible sites for large-scale planting and strong local expertise. Working Trees has piloted its approach across more than 2,000 hectares, according to the coalition.
Which Trees Will Be Planted?
The project combines native Brazilian species with non-native commercial timber. According to Symbiosis, native species include Cañafístula (Peltophorum dubium), Ingá (Inga spp.), Gonçalo-alves (Astronium fraxinifolium) and Baru (Dipteryx alata). Non-native species include African mahogany (Khaya ivorensis and Khaya senegalensis) and teak (Tectona grandis).
The coalition says African mahogany and teak are non-invasive and grow on a predictable schedule, which makes the carbon they store easier to estimate. Their timber value is also intended to give landowners a long-term reason to keep the trees once carbon payments end. The programme aims to increase the share of native species from a minimum of 25% to 50% by 2030, working with Brazilian research institutes.
“Using a mix of native and non-native tree species can be the right approach for designing projects that are both durable and ecologically positive,” said Daniel Piotto, an associate professor of dendrology at the Federal University of Southern Bahia and a member of the Symbiosis Technical Advisory Board. He said native trees help projects “move beyond a ‘carbon-only’ objective”.
What Do Ranchers Get Out of the Deal?
A central idea behind the project is that ranchers keep farming. Google said silvopasture gives ranchers an opportunity to diversify their income through timber and carbon revenues, while the trees provide shade for cattle and improve soil health and drought resilience, which can boost land and livestock productivity.
According to Symbiosis, the native species planted also enrich the soil with nitrogen, provide nuts for domestic markets and offer alternative forage for cattle. The coalition says the overall aim is “better cattle outcomes on fewer hectares of land”, which could in theory reduce pressure to clear new forest for grazing.
Working Trees’ leadership has experience in sustainable agriculture and in scaling agricultural products across millions of farmers in emerging markets, supported by locally based teams, according to Symbiosis. The coalition says the model was chosen partly because it is designed to fit the local social and ecological context of the Cerrado and southeastern Amazon.
Why the Cerrado and Southeastern Amazon?
The Cerrado is a vast tropical savanna in central Brazil, and together with the southern and eastern edges of the Amazon it contains large areas of land that have been converted to pasture. Symbiosis says the project targets degraded and semi-degraded pasture in these regions, rather than intact forest, which is why restoration on working farmland is seen as a potential opportunity for carbon removal.
How Will the Carbon Be Measured?
Measuring and verifying carbon removal is one of the most scrutinised parts of the voluntary carbon market. Working Trees uses a smartphone-based system that allows landowners and field workers to record tree location, size and species with their phone cameras, according to Symbiosis.
The coalition says the technology has been peer-reviewed and independently validated against manual measurements, and that each record includes photos, GPS coordinates and timestamps to create an auditable trail. Timber harvest cycles are built into ongoing carbon accounting, it says. Google described the platform as a way for ranchers “to track every single tree planted”.
The Leakage Question
A common criticism of reforestation projects is “leakage”, where farming or other land uses simply move elsewhere, potentially causing deforestation in another place. Symbiosis says the silvopasture model aims to avoid leakage by design, because ranching stays in place rather than being displaced. Independent monitoring over the life of the project is likely to be important in testing that claim.
What Do the Companies Say?
“Silvopasture is one of the most underused tools we have for nature-based carbon removal,” said Julia Strong, executive director of the Symbiosis Coalition. She said the project was “sequestering carbon while also improving the land that communities rely on”.
Leif Gonzales-Kramer, chief executive of Working Trees, said the company aims to deploy silvopasture “at the million-hectare scale”, adding that “landscape-level change is not built on one-off transactions”.
Randy Spock, head of carbon removal at Google, said the approach shows “we don’t have to choose between food production and ecological restoration”. Isabelle Schuhmann, global director of environmental sustainability at McKinsey & Company, described it as “a replicable approach to sustainable land use”.
Why Buyers Are Signing Long-Term Deals
Symbiosis says it aims to do for nature what power purchase agreements did for clean energy, by pooling corporate demand into long-term offtake agreements that give project developers and investors more certainty. The coalition identifies projects, carries out due diligence and facilitates the agreements for buyers.
Its previous deals include reforestation projects with Living Carbon and Mombak, and an agroforestry project with Thryve.Earth, according to the coalition. Long-term contracts like these are part of a broader shift in how companies approach emissions targets, alongside cleaner energy and emerging technologies aimed at cutting carbon emissions.
Caveats Around Carbon Credits
Nature-based carbon credits have faced scrutiny in recent years over whether claimed removals are real, permanent and additional to what would have happened anyway. Buyers such as Google and McKinsey say they apply strict quality criteria, but the long-term credibility of projects like this one will depend on transparent monitoring and on trees remaining in the ground for decades.
The deal comes as Brazil’s economy faces other policy shifts, including a consumption tax overhaul that airlines warn could push up Brazil’s airfares by around 16%.
What to Watch Next
- Planting progress: how quickly the 8,700 hectares covered by the agreements are restored.
- Verification: independent results from the smartphone-based monitoring system.
- Native species share: progress towards the target of 50% native species by 2030.
- Scale: Symbiosis says the model could potentially scale to between 5 million and 10 million hectares of pastureland in the Cerrado and southeastern Amazon.
- More buyers: whether other companies sign similar long-term silvopasture deals.
If the model works as its backers hope, it could offer Brazilian ranchers a new income stream from timber and carbon without asking them to give up cattle farming. Its success will ultimately be judged on whether the carbon removals can be measured reliably and sustained over the long term.
Sources
- Symbiosis Coalition — Symbiosis Announces New Carbon Offtake Agreements with Working Trees (19 October 2026).
- Google — We’re supporting nature restoration through sustainable farming in Brazil (19 October 2026).
- Investing.com (Reuters) — Google, McKinsey strike Brazil carbon removal deal with silvopasture project (19 October 2026).
- U.S. News & World Report (Reuters) — Google, McKinsey Strike Brazil Carbon Removal Deal With Silvopasture Project (19 October 2026).
