Jeff Bezos pledges $1 billion to conservation efforts

Jeff Bezos on Monday pledged to present away $1 billion in grants this 12 months with a concentrate on conservation efforts.

The pledge comes via the Bezos Earth Fund, which the Amazon founder and chairman began in 2020 to execute his $10 billion commitment to combat local weather change. The Bezos Earth Fund has pledged to donate about $1 billion a 12 months to activists, scientists and different teams working to handle the globe’s local weather disaster, with a purpose of spending $10 billion by 2030.

Following this 12 months’s concentrate on conservation, the fund mentioned that within the coming years it intends to assist efforts round panorama restoration and meals system transportation.

The most recent spherical of grants will likely be used to “create, develop, handle and monitor protected and conserved areas,” the Bezos Earth Fund mentioned in a launch. To start out, the fund plans to concentrate on Central Africa’s Congo Basin, the tropical Andes area and the tropical Pacific Ocean, all of that are key areas for biodiversity and carbon shares, or the quantity of carbon saved in issues equivalent to vegetation, soils and oceans.

“The pure world shouldn’t be higher at present than it was 500 years in the past, after we loved unspoiled forests, clear rivers and the pristine air of the pre-industrial age,” Bezos mentioned in a press release. “We will and should reverse this anomaly.”

It’s not but identified which organizations will obtain the grants. The presents will likely be prioritized in areas the place native communities and Indigenous peoples are a primary focus of conservation applications, amongst different issues, the Bezos Earth Fund mentioned.

Earlier this month, the fund said it could give away $203.7 million by the tip of the 12 months to organizations advancing local weather justice, amongst different causes. That is after it awarded $791 million in grants final 12 months to 16 organizations, together with the World Wildlife Fund, the Pure Sources Protection Council and the Nature Conservancy.