Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife Lauren Sanchez Bezos have committed $100 million via the Bezos Earth Fund to help protect some of the world’s most endangered animals and plants, backing a new global initiative designed to prevent species from slipping into extinction. As reported by Fortune, the donation is part of a broader $500 million Species Recovery Alliance, which is a coalition of conservation organisations that was introduced at the COP17 UN biodiversity conference in Yerevan, Armenia. The report further adds that the Earth Fund is contributing $100 million dollars in all. Each organisation committed $100 million, for a total of $200 million. The project aims to recover 100 critically endangered and extinct-in-the-wild species across 30 countries, including Madagascar’s golden-crowned sifaka and Australia’s elusive night parrot. Countries agreed at the 2022 biodiversity summit in Montreal to mobilise $200 billion annually by 2030 for biodiversity protection. Bezos, the Amazon founder, launched the Earth Fund in 2020 with a $10 billion pledge to fight climate change and protect nature by 2030, which Fortune describes as the largest individual philanthropic commitment to climate and nature ever. The fund has granted $2.4 billion so far, a spokesperson said, leaving more than $7 billion to distribute in about four years.
The Bezos Earth Fund is one of nine founding members of the newly launched Species Recovery Alliance, which aims to accelerate efforts to recover species classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as endangered, critically endangered or extinct in the wild, according to a report by Fortune. The alliance builds on the Phoenix Species Project, which the Earth Fund launched in August with Re:wild, the conservation group co-founded by DiCaprio.
Sánchez Bezos said at the time that children fall in love with animals before anyone tells them those animals are disappearing, and that the project is the couple’s answer to what to tell them when species like the night parrot or the sifaka are gone. Fund officials told Bloomberg in May that they remain committed to the target. The managing director of the fund, Cristián Samper made the announcement about the donation by Bezos and Sanchez. The announcement comes amid growing concerns that governments are falling short of global biodiversity funding commitments. However, recent data cited in the report shows global funding levels remain well below that target. Sánchez Bezos, the fund’s vice chair since its early days, has become a more visible face of the couple’s giving.