WATCH: Jeff Bezos fund plans to restore 250 million acres of African land

Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos wants to build a coalition with African and European countries to reverse deforestation and land degradation on 100 million hectares in Africa by 2030.

As next month’s COP27 in Egypt approaches, the Bezos Earth Fund chief executive Andrew Steer told Reuters News that restoration goals include reducing carbon in the atmosphere, which translates to “better incomes for farmers, better food security, more resilient soils”.

Reuters reports that developing countries are increasing demands for wealthier, carbon-emitting nations to pay for climate-induced disasters like floods and fires.

Asked how the Bezos Earth Fund viewed such reparations, Steer said: “Rich countries are going to have to play a bigger role in creating resilience on helping poor countries and poor citizens to adapt”.

Bezos’s organisation has pledged 30% of its $10-billion fund toward nature conservation, restoration and food-systems transformation.

A fund spokesperson told Reuters that the substantial grants it has issued total a little over $1.5 billion.

Bezos, estimated to be worth more than $130 billion, is among a growing coterie of magnates seeking to address climate change through some of their wealth.

But Bezos’s fund is distinguished by the same principles guiding the bookseller he built into the world’s largest online retailer.

Frameworks like “be obsessive about results” and “focus on people” resemble language in Amazon’s tenet of “customer obsession”.

Compiled by Narissa Subramoney

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