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Jeff Bezos has named 16 environmental organizations that will receive the first part of his $ 10 billion climate action fund on Instagram today. Collectively, they will receive $ 791 million from the richest man on Earth, though Bezos did not specify how much each group would go.
“I’ve spent the past few months learning from a group of incredibly intelligent people who have made their life’s work to combat climate change and its impact on communities around the world,” Bezos said on Instagram. “I am inspired by what they are doing and excited to help them grow.” Amazon’s CEO announced the creation of his personal $ 10 billion Bezos Earth Fund in February.
Its fund is equivalent to over 7% of its net assets. It is also 10 times as much as philanthropic foundations gave globally in 2018 to efforts to slow climate change. For his first round of funding, Bezos chose to support a handful of legacy organizations with an established history of advocating on behalf of the planet. Its choice of recipients so far indicates support for leading environmental groups mobilizing for new policies and research on climate change.
It’s also a bit of a departure from the contributions Amazon and other giants have recently made to climate tech startups. Amazon, Microsoft and Stripe, unlike Bezos, have all pledged to funnel money into developing new technologies to reduce and capture their industries’ greenhouse gas emissions. Much of the first round of funding from Amazon’s $ 2 billion climate fund will go to circulating more electric vehicles and capturing carbon emissions, the company announced in September. Microsoft said in January that it would spend $ 1 billion over four years on technologies that remove the carbon dioxide that warms the planet from the atmosphere.
But the carbon capture technology preferred by tech companies is still in its infancy. Conversely, some of the advocacy groups Bezos pledged to fund today have been fighting for environmental protection since the birth of the modern environmental movement in the United States in the 1960s. This includes the non-profit Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), headed by Gina McCarthy, an Obama-era Environmental Protection Agency administrator and vocal critic of Trump’s environmental rollbacks. “This generous gift from the Bezos Earth Fund allows NRDC to move even faster in achieving the climate solutions we need at the federal, state and local levels to protect people’s health, strengthen nature’s ability to help fight change. and growing the clean energy sector and all the jobs that go with it, ”McCarthy said in a statement.
Bezos also named the Environmental Defense Fund, which tends to take a more business-friendly approach to its defense. He has worked with companies like Walmart and McDonald’s on their sustainability goals. “The needs are huge,” said Environmental Defense Fund president Fred Krupp The Verge after the Bezos fund was announced in February. “Regardless of the organization receiving this funding, the important thing is that the money is used.” Krupp’s and McCarthy’s organizations will each receive $ 100 million, according to each group’s statements.
Some of the big green groups Bezos chose, however, have been hit by scandals lately. Human rights violations came to light in 2019 BuzzFeed News investigation into the nearly 60-year-old conservation charity World Wildlife Fund. The organization’s anti-poaching efforts have supported paramilitary groups that have captured, tortured and killed villagers and indigenous peoples in Asia and Africa, BuzzFeed reported.
Two other groups that Bezos will fund have had recent changes in leadership as part of a wider showdown with systemic racism and sexism in the fields of science and environmentalism. The CEO of the Nature Conservancy group decided to leave his position in June 2019 following allegations of gender discrimination within the organization. Union of Concerned Scientists president Ken Kimmell said he will step down at the end of the year. Kimmell’s decision follows the high-profile resignation of the organization’s former coalition coordinator, Ruth Tyson, who wrote a public letter saying, “It was really stressful and traumatic for me to work. [at the Union of Concerned Scientists] and I hope that no other people of color should ever share this pain. “The World Wildlife Fund and Nature Conservancy said they will each receive $ 100 million from the Bezos fund, while the Union of Interested Scientists said they were given $ 15 million.
Among established organizations, Bezos has also decided to fund a newly formed group that focuses racial equity in its work, the collective NDN. It was founded by a diverse group of Native American activists in 2018 to fund and support indigenous-led movements and sustainability initiatives. Bezos will also fund the new Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice, launched in 2019 with the aim of supporting women in the Southeastern United States. Bezos is also funding research groups, such as the non-profit Rocky Mountain Institute and the World Resources Institute.
Bezos has so far shunned major activist groups who criticized him and Amazon, such as the Sunrise Movement, which spearheaded campaigns for a Green New Deal. “A reminder that Jeff Bezos made over $ 48 billion during the pandemic, while over 40 million Americans filed for unemployment. Imagine if he actually had to pay taxes and what that money could help finance, “Sunrise Movement he tweeted in September.
However, Sunrise Movement has not necessarily ruled out accepting funding from Bezos to promote its campaigns. “It’s better that his extreme wealth resides in organizations like the Climate Justice Alliance and Sunrise than in some offshore tax haven,” said Stephen O’Hanlon, communications director of the Sunrise Movement. The Verge in an email following the announcement of the Bezos fund in February.
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