The founder and Chief Executive of Amazon, Jeff Bezos announced that he had donated $791 million to 16 organizations to fight climate change. This is part of the Bezos Earth Fund, a $10 billion initiative whereby Bezos has pledged to aid scientists, organizations, and activists combating climate change and global warming.
According to the post shared by Bezos on his Instagram account, the recipients of the grant include The Climate and Clean Energy Equity Fund, ClimateWorks Foundation, Dream Corps Green For All, Eden Reforestation Projects, Energy Foundation, Environmental Defense Fund, The Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice, Natural Resources Defense Council, The Nature Conservancy, NDN Collective, Rocky Mountain Institute, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, The Solutions Project, Union of Concerned Scientists, World Resources Institute, and World Wildlife Fund.
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One of the biggest recipients of the donation was World Wildlife Fund, which received $100 million. The organization said that it would utilize the grand for three purposes: protecting and restoring mangroves, developing new markets for seaweed, and protecting forests and other ecosystems.
Other organizations that received a grant of $100 million are Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, and The Nature Conservancy.
The Environmental Defense Fund said that it would utilize the funds to launch MethaneSAT, a satellite that will help to locate and measure sources of methane pollution around the world.
Bezos, the richest person in the world, had announced the initiation of the Bezos Climate Fund in February 2020. Before this, in September 2019, Bezos announced The Climate Pledge, a commitment to have a net zero carbon footprint across all the businesses of Amazon by 2040, a decade earlier than promised in the Paris Accord. The pledge also commits to Amazon to be 100% powered by renewable energy by 2025.
This is a laudable effort by Jeff Bezos, don’t you think? Let us know your views in the comments section below.
