UK – The Bezos Earth Fund has pledged to offer a cash injection of US$2 billion toward landscape restoration and improving food systems.
The pledge was made during the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP26, that is currently underway in Glasgow, the United Kingdom.
The Bezos Earth Fund is a US$10 billion commitment launched by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in February 2020, to support scientists, NGOs, activists and other important figures to help produce positive climate and nature-based solutions.
These funds will be allocated between now and 2030, the year in which the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals must be met.
Part of the US$2 billion fund will go towards investments aimed at increasing crop yields in ways that decrease levels of food loss and waste and encourage people to eat diets richer in plant-based foods.
“We must conserve what we still have, we must restore what we’ve lost, and we must grow what we need to live without degrading the planet for future generations to come,” Bezos remarked.
Bezos Earth Fund is also planning to join up with Africa-owned partners AFR100 to help restore African landscapes by planting trees, strengthening grasslands and bringing more trees into farmland.
The new pledge, adds onto Bezos Earth Fund’s previous US$1 billion commitment announced in September at Climate Week NYC, to help communities protect and preserve nature in areas that are important for biodiversity and carbon stocks.
“Together this US$3 billion in pledges will drive a new three-fold nature agenda for the Bezos Earth Fund, focused simultaneously on conservation, restoration and food transformation,” says Bezos.
Bezos’ support for resilient food systems follows a campaign by the UN World Food Programme for billionaires to fund more of its activities.
Responding to WFP’s call, Tesla CEO Elon Musk stated that he will donate US$6 billion to the UN’s anti-famine division if it can reasonably map out how it will “end world hunger.”
The landmark investment by Bezos comes two weeks after Innova Market Insights crowned “Shared Planet” as its Top Trend for 2022.
World leaders at COP26 mirrored this trend by stressing how failure to tackle global warming – keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees – will inevitably lead to increased global competition for resources such as food and water.
The concern for the environment also led to the US and EU announcing a new global partnership to slash methane emissions by 2030.
Known as the Global Methane Pledge, the new partnership aims to limit methane emissions by 30%, compared to 2020 levels.
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