Jeff Bezos at Amazon Spheres
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos speaks at the Amazon Spheres in 2018. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)

Jeff Bezos on Monday announced the 16 environmental organizations that will receive $791 million as the first round of grantees for his $10 billion Bezos Earth Fund.

The list is dominated by well-funded, long-standing organizations working to protect the climate and wildlife, including the Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, The Nature Conservancy, World Resources Institute and World Wildlife Fund. Each will receive $100 million, while 11 others landed grants between $5 and $50 million.

The fund was initially announced in February. The CEO of Amazon shared the news on the grantees via an Instagram post, in which he wrote: “I’ve spent the past several months learning from a group of incredibly smart people who’ve made it their life’s work to fight climate change and its impact on communities around the world. I’m inspired by what they’re doing, and excited to help them scale.”

While many of the groups on the list are international and national organizations, some of the dollars will flow to the Pacific Northwest, home of Amazon’s headquarters.

The Nature Conservancy will be using some of its grant money to support programs that benefit temperate rainforests stretching from the Washington coast to Southeast Alaska.

“These vast forests are globally critical for carbon capture, and our conservation strategy prioritizes Indigenous and local communities,” said Eric Delvin, a program director for The Nature Conservancy. “In direct collaboration with Indigenous peoples across the rainforest’s diverse regions, we support sovereign authority and supporting sustainable economies.”

Climate experts agree that every minute counts when taking action to slow climate change, whose harmful effects include warmer temperatures, more severe wildfires and flooding, and more destructive storms.

While there’s an urgency in addressing climate change, Bezos faces an interesting challenge with his philanthropy. The $10 billion Earth Fund pledge to support climate-related organizations greatly outweighs the total amount spent on climate by American philanthropists in recent years, according to The Atlantic.

That means there are few organizations capable of managing and spending such huge cash infusions. It leaves Bezos with limited options for grantees, pushing him toward established nonprofits who might not be on the cutting edge of climate innovation. It also possibly slows his ability to give the money away. The first round of grantees are receiving only 8% of the total fund.

The entire fund itself is only 5% of Bezos’ worth, which is currently about $184 billion. (Bezos also has his Day One Fund, a $2 billion effort to promote innovations in preschool education and affordable housing.)

Amazon as a company has likewise engaged on climate change. The tech giant vowed to become net-zero carbon in 20 years and urges others to join its Climate Pledge, first announced last year, to do the same. In June, the company announced its Climate Pledge Fund, a $2 billion initiative to support innovations that will help the Seattle-based cloud computing and online shopping behemoth reduce its carbon emissions. This fall it shared its first recipients.

Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, an advocacy group formed by some of the employees, took the lead in publicly pushing the company to address climate issues beginning in 2018.

While Bezos and Amazon have public initiatives to combat climate change, recent reporting revealed that those measures could be undermined by their political giving.

Over the past four years, most of Bezos’ personal political donations have gone to Senate Republicans, who have fought against legislation to control planet-warming pollutants, according to E&E News. An analysis of federal campaign finance data by the media outlet also found that between January 2019 and this August, Amazon’s political action committee spent 70% of its political contributions to Republican senators and their PACs.

Many climate experts highlight the essential role that legislation, executive action and a push toward conservative court justices play in worsening or improving the planet’s climate outlook.

In his Instagram post, Bezos said that this round of grants was “just the beginning of my $10 billion commitment to fund scientists, activists, NGOs, and others. We can all protect Earth’s future by taking bold action now.”

The amount allocated to each grantee, according to a Bezos Earth Fund representative:

  • Environmental Defense Fund, $100 million
  • Natural Resources Defense Council, $100 million
  • The Nature Conservancy, $100 million
  • World Resources Institute, $100 million
  • World Wildlife Fund, $100 million
  • ClimateWorks Foundation, $50 million
  • The Climate and Clean Energy Equity Fund, $43 million
  • The Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice, $43 million
  • The Solutions Project, $43 million
  • Energy Foundation, $30 million
  • Salk Institute for Biological Studies, $30 million
  • Union of Concerned Scientists, $15 million
  • NDN Collective, $12 million
  • Dream Corps Green For All, $10 million
  • Rocky Mountain Institute, $10 million
  • Eden Reforestation Projects, $5 million
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