Jeff Bezos fund to push for Africa land restoration around U.N. climate summit

Record ID: 1691468

  • Title: Jeff Bezos fund to push for Africa land restoration around U.N. climate summit
  • Date: 3rd October 2022
  • Summary: NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (SEPTEMBER 27, 2022) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) PRESIDENT AND CEO OF THE JEFF BEZOS EARTH FUND, ANDREW STEER, SAYING: "Rich countries are going to have to play a bigger role in creating resilience on helping poor countries and poor citizens to adapt. What we've done for the last 25 years is we've tended to say - and by the way the environmental
  • Embargoed: 17th October 2022 16:18
  • Keywords: Africa COP27 Climate Change Earth Fund Environmental Fund Jeff Bezos
  • Location: VARIOUS
  • City: VARIOUS
  • Country: US
  • Topics: Climate Change,Climate Finance,Environment,General News,United States
  • Reuters ID: LVA007964603102022RP1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: PART QUALITY AS INCOMING
    Amazon.com Inc., founder Jeff Bezos' environmental fund is seeking to build a coalition of African and European countries around this year's U.N. climate summit to add heft to land restoration efforts, the philanthropy's top official told Reuters.
    Ahead of COP27, taking place this November in Egypt, the Bezos Earth Fund is pushing plans to reverse deforestation and land degradation on 100 million hectares in Africa by 2030, said Andrew Steer, the philanthropy's chief executive. The so-called AFR100 initiative is led by African Union countries.
    "African farmers are suffering appallingly from climate change," Steer said during the Reuters Impact conference in a session recorded last week. Restoration's goal would be carbon capture and "better incomes for farmers, better food security, more resilient soils."
    Developing countries meanwhile are increasing demands for wealthier, carbon-emitting nations to pay for climate-induced disasters like floods, fires or famine.
    Asked how the Bezos Earth Fund viewed such reparations, Steer said, "rich countries are going to have to play a bigger role on creating resilience on helping poor countries and poor citizens to adapt."
    Bezos' philanthropy so far has pledged 30% of its $10-billion fund toward nature conservation, restoration and food-systems transformation.
    The actual grants it has issued total to a little over $1.5 billion, a fund spokesperson said.
    Bezos, who Forbes estimates to be worth more than $130 billion, is among a growing cadre of magnates seeking to address climate change through some of their wealth.
    Patagonia's founder Yvon Chouinard recently said he would hand over the apparel brand to a trust that would dedicate profits to the crisis.
    What partly distinguishes Bezos's fund are principles for its operation, much like those guiding the bookseller he built into the world's largest online retailer.
    Frameworks like "be obsessive about results" and "focus on people" resemble language in Amazon's tenet of "customer obsession."
    Bezos and partner Lauren Sanchez meet with the fund's team monthly, according to Steer.
    The Amazon founder has prodded the fund to finance well-articulated ideas for combating climate change, rather than focus on issues or targets generally, Steer said.
    (Production: Jeffrey Dastin, Seham Eloraby)
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