Bezos pledges $2B to landscape restoration, food systems

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has pledged $2 billion to restore landscapes and transform food systems.  

The pledge was originally announced on Monday by Bezos’s climate initiative, the Bezos Earth Fund.

The billionaire also announced the pledge in an address to the 26th United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP26) in Glasglow, Scotland, on Tuesday. Bezos said “we must all stand together” to protect the world.

“We must conserve what we still have. We must restore what we’ve lost,” Bezos said. “And we must grow what we need to live without degrading the planet for future generations to come.” 

The pledge comes after the Bezos Earth Fund committed $1 billion to creating, expanding, managing and monitoring conserved areas during Climate Week in New York City in late September.

Overall, the Bezos Earth Fund aims to commit $10 billion to fund scientists, activists and other organizations that will drive climate change and nature solutions 

Of the $2 billion pledge announced this week, $1 billion will go toward supporting landscape restoration, with an initial focus on landscapes in the United States and Africa, the organization said in Monday’s statement.

The fund said it would collaborate with Africa-owned partners on efforts such as planting trees on degraded landscapes, revitalizing grasslands and integrating trees into farmland.

In the U.S., the effort will help restore over 20 landscapes that sequester high levels of carbon, protect biodiversity and deliver community benefits.

The other $1 billion will be used to transform food and agricultural systems by supporting a range of initiatives, such as raising crop yields, reducing food waste and making agricultural supply chains more sustainable, the fund said. 

Bezos has primarily been focused on his space venture Blue Origin since stepping down as Amazon CEO in February.

After traveling to space in July, Bezos told MSNBC that his trip “reinforces my commitment to climate change.”  

“When you get up and there you see it, you see how tiny it is and how fragile it is, we need to take all heavy industry, all polluting industry and move it into space, and keep Earth as this beautiful gem of a planet that it is,” he said at the time.