Bezos Earth Fund’s August Grants Include $127 Million to Protect Nature and Fight Climate Change

As Climate Week NYC kicks-off, the Bezos Earth Fund announced that its August grants include $127 million to protect nature and fight climate change.  Working with our partners, these grants will help: 

1. Create the largest multi-country marine protected area in the world.
   The Earth Fund grants totaling $30 million will support organizations working to protect the waters, coasts, and islands of Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Panama strengthening the Eastern Tropical Marine Corridor. 

2. Advance the 30x30 vision of protecting 30 percent of land and sea by 2030 in the Central and Western Pacific with National Geographic Society’s Pristine Seas. The Earth Fund’s $20 million grant will help Pristine Seas explore, document, and conduct research in the central and western Pacific Ocean over the next five years.
3. Extend clean, reliable renewable energy in six African countries and support the just transition toward renewable energy in South Africa with the Global Energy Alliance. As an anchor partner, we are granting $50M to speed up an equitable energy transition with developing countries around the world, from demand aggregation for renewable technologies in Nigeria, to metro grid deployments in the DRC, to a just transition from coal in South Africa’s Mpumalanga province.   
4. ‍Advance the application of new technologies to decarbonize some of the world’s highest-emitting industries with the Mission Possible Partnership. The Bezos Earth Fund is granting $24 million in funding to the Mission Possible Partnership to help drive industrial decarbonization projects to commercial reality. The funding will be put to work in green industrial "hubs" to secure agreements and financing for commercial projects such as plants to produce green hydrogen, sustainable aviation and shipping fuel, and low-carbon steel. This first-of-its-kind effort will bring bankable demand commitments together with green industrial suppliers, financing, and supportive policies to deliver commercial projects. 

5. ‍Create research on positive “tipping points” for the systems changes required in this decisive decade. The tipping points research, a collaboration between the Bezos Earth Fund, the Systems Change Lab, the University of Exeter and Systemiq, will produce a first “state of tipping points” report to improve the assessment, forecasting and activation of positive tipping points. 

6. ‍Support the design of an environmental justice screening tool in the U.S

“The Bezos Earth Fund is proud to support a growing number of incredible partners in their work to protect nature and fight the effects of climate change,” said Bezos Earth Fund President and CEO Andrew Steer. “We must protect and restore nature while simultaneously transforming our energy systems and carbon-intensive industries sectors like cement, trucking and steel to create an equitable energy transition around the world.”  

"The Bezos Earth Fund is committed to creating transformative systems change across sectors and identifying positive tipping points is a critical piece of the puzzle," said Kelly Levin, Chief of Science, Data and Systems Change at the Bezos Earth Fund and Founding Director of the Systems Change Lab. “We hope this first-of-its-kind assessment will provide critical information to tackle the climate crisis. The goal is to identify key tipping points across the roughly 50 transitions that are needed in this decisive decade."