World Wildlife Fund receives USD 100 million from the Bezos Earth Fund

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has received USD 100 million (EUR 84.4 million) from the Bezos Earth Fund, a fund created by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in February that has committed to giving USD 10 billion (EUR 8.4 billion) in grants to help fight climate change.

The funding, according to the WWF, will go toward protecting and restoring coastal mangroves and will also enable the WWF to create new markets for seaweed as an alternative to fossil-fuel based products. The projects are intended to be solutions for climate change beyond preventing pollution to nature-based solutions that enhance the environment’s resilience.

“By investing in the power of nature-based climate solutions, these projects aim to deliver substantial emissions reductions, conserve nature in areas greater than the state of California, and improve the resilience of more than 14 million people around the world,” WWF-U.S. President and CEO Carter Roberts said.

Climate change and ocean acidification both imperil fisheries, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Coastal communities are also some of the most vulnerable locations to climate change, with sea-level rise potentially leaving some areas uninhabitable in the future.

“Our best solutions both lower global emissions and strengthen the climate resilience for people in some of the world’s most vulnerable communities. Now we have the resources to put those solutions to work across the globe,” Roberts said.

The new funding will go to three initiatives: Protecting and restoring mangroves in Columbia, Fiji, Madagascar, and Mexico; scaling up sustainable seaweed farming in the North Atlantic Rim; and restoring and protecting forests and critical ecosystems in the Amazon, Africa, and Central America.

“With generous support from the Bezos Earth Fund, and our expected ability to leverage an additional USD 850 million [EUR 717 million] from other partners, we believe we can bring nearly USD 1 billion [EUR 844 million] of investments to these efforts,” Roberts said.  

Photo courtesy of lev radin/Shutterstock