Bezos climate fund faces reckoning with Amazon pollution

As soon as he leaves the post of CEO of Amazon later this year, Jeff Bezos will have more time to focus on his “passions”, including his $ 10 billion Earth Fund focused on climate change. It is a huge sum that could have a disproportionate impact on climate action, but vulnerable communities – including those affected by Amazon’s warehouses – say they have been excluded.

So far, Bezos has allocated only $ 791 million – just under 8% of the total fund – to 16 environmental organizations. This injection of money is still huge. Its donations, announced in November, have already fattened the budgets of some important defense groups, such as the Environmental Defense Fund. Most of their donations went to larger organizations with less diverse leadership. Smaller, popular groups representing black communities say they have been left out. They are asking for recognition and funding. And they want Bezos to do more for communities living with pollution from Amazon deposits.

In February 2020, Bezos pledged to give part of his personal fortune to “scientists, activists, [and] NGOs ”dealing with climate change. Since the pandemic broke out in March, Bezos’ personal wealth has grown by more than $ 75 billion. While many other companies closed during stay-at-home orders, Amazon’s business boomed because more people were buying online. Amazon’s greenhouse gas emissions have also continued to grow, despite Bezos’ “passion” for climate action and his company’s commitment in 2019 to controlling climate pollution.

“I am really very frustrated with this. He has the opportunity to do a lot with the funds he provided there, although I still consider it a bullshit compared to the wealth he has accumulated on the backs of our people, ”said Gabriela Mendez, a community organizer at the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice (CCAEJ), non-profit. The CCAEJ struggled to clear the air from California’s Inner Empire, a region with one of the country’s worst air pollution. It is a community increasingly dominated by e-commerce warehouses, and a lot of pollution comes from vehicles that transport goods to and from these facilities. Amazon is the largest private employer in the region, so CCAEJ and other local groups pressured the company to ensure stronger protection for workers and to switch to zero-emission electric trucks.

Mendez says there has been a violent attack of truck traffic in his neighborhood since an Amazon depot was opened nearby. “He really needs to take a look at this and prioritize these communities,” she says.

The five established “big green” groups that benefited the most from the Bezos Land Fund received $ 100 million each in November, or nearly two-thirds of Bezos’ first round of financing. They are the Environmental Defense Fund, Nature Conservation, the World Wildlife Fund, the World Resources Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council. These organizations have traditionally been more influential in politics; for example, former executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, Gina McCarthy, is now Joe Biden’s domestic climate czar. They are also groups that historically have worked more closely with companies on sustainability initiatives, such as the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).

EDF says The Verge has already received its $ 100 million grant. This is equivalent to about half of your normal operating budget for a year, although you plan to spend the money in three years. Most of the spending will go towards launching a satellite in 2022 to monitor emissions of methane, a super greenhouse gas, and to build a platform to make this data publicly available. (When asked whether Bezos’ Blue Origin would play a role, EDF said it had already signed a contract with SpaceX to launch the satellite before receiving a grant from Earth Fund).

A smaller portion of EDF’s donation will go to efforts to examine so-called “nature-based solutions”. They are popular with companies that want to compensate for pollution by investing in things like forest conservation. Many of these projects do not permanently trap greenhouse gases, research has found on these carbon offset schemes. One one Bloomberg investigation, was even focused on one of Bezos’ grantees, Nature Conservation. However, companies buy them and claim they are canceling their carbon footprint. EDF says that is why funding your efforts to examine these projects is important.

Several other beneficiaries plan to focus their work on similar “nature-based solutions”. Separately, Amazon and other technology companies have channeled money to technologies that have not yet been proven to remove carbon dioxide that warms the planet from the atmosphere. Microsoft has pledged $ 1 billion and Stripe has pledged $ 1 million a year to develop the technology. Until this technology is deployed on a scale – and there are still doubts as to whether it is very expensive and consumes a lot of energy to do so – we will not know whether these investments will succeed in permanently retaining and storing carbon dioxide. In the meantime, the planet continues to heat up.

Groups like the Climate Justice Alliance, a group of organizations focused on combating environmental racism, see these market-based solutions as an excuse for corporate polluters. By financing these kinds of things, companies can say that they are facing climate change. But if they are not switching off fossil fuels at the same time, they are still contributing to the crisis and potentially delaying the transition to cleaner energy. “This reinforces the practices that caused the crisis in the first place, perpetuating the zones of sacrifice and doing nothing to reduce emissions at source,” said CJA by email.

That is why CJA wants to see more funding in the hands of grassroots groups that pressure companies to stop burning fossil fuels in the first place. They also want to stop pollution at the source because greenhouse gas emissions are often accompanied by soot or other toxins. The capture of greenhouse gases alone does not exempt companies like Amazon from the health threats posed by these other pollutants.

“No amount of greenwashing will absolve Jeff Bezos or Amazon of the damage they have inflicted on communities and frontline workers, or on our planet,” said CJA. “If the Earth Fund wants to save the planet, they must send funds directly to the grassroots communities that are least responsible and most affected by climate disasters and the types of greedy commercial practices in which Bezos engages.”

Image: Justine Calma / The Verge

There is another problem – people of color are more likely than whites to live in polluted areas. Both ClimateWorks and the Union of Concerned Scientists also faced criticism for lack of diversity, because the people most affected by pollution are not getting a seat at the table. Both groups pledged to include environmental and racial justice in their work.

“We know we can always do more to include the voices of groups working on the front lines,” said Shawn Reifsteck, vice president of ClimateWorks, in an email.

In December, the Climate Justice Alliance asked groups that received funding from Bezos to redirect 10 to 25 percent of that money to a common fund. The fund would be managed by grassroots organizers from the communities most affected by pollution and climate change. The CJA says that “several” grantees have agreed to consider it. ClimateWorks says it is communicating with CJA. But others may have their hands tied. EDF says the funds it received from Bezos are restricted to its two methane projects and nature-based solutions.

“The reason we are done with these two projects is that Jeff [Bezos], when he called us for the first time to talk about what he was doing, we talked about a number of things that are important – and those were some of the ideas he was interested in, ”said EDF President Fred Krupp.

Since less than 2% of global philanthropy is devoted to solving the climate crisis, Bezos’ money has a disproportionate effect. Very little of the existing philanthropy addresses environmental and racial inequalities, according to ClimateWorks. So far, Bezos’ donations continue this practice.

“In all measures, the Bezos Earth Fund’s $ 10 billion commitment is a game changer,” says Reifsteck of ClimateWorks. Bezos did not say how long it will take to distribute all of the $ 10 billion. Still, that amount is ten times what foundations normally give in a year. And Bezos’ first round of financing included some minor donations to scrappier groups. This includes the NDN Collective, founded by a diverse group of Native American activists in 2018 to support indigenous-led campaigns and sustainability initiatives, and the Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice, launched in 2019 to raise money for women from black organizations.

“The first round of donations from the Bezos Earth Fund included a total of $ 151 million in funding for five organizations with deep roots and experience in environmental justice,” said a representative of the Bezos Earth Fund by email. “Groups are using this money to make their own donations to hundreds of smaller-scale organizations that do critical climate justice work in communities across the United States and to build and scale their own infrastructure and impact.

Still, the Inland Empire, where Mendez lives, has seen nothing “change the game” since Bezos’ bottom took off. Instead, they are battling a more polluting infrastructure that is growing across the region. For example, Amazon plans to move to an air cargo logistics center. And while their communities could use the funding, they are concerned about Bezos’ outsized influence. Will climate groups avoid pressure on Amazon to keep Bezos’ donations coming?

“If these organizations are receiving these Earth Fund dollars, will there be restrictions?” says Faraz Rizvi, special projects coordinator who works alongside Mendez at CCAEJ. “Overall, I remain somewhat pessimistic about the ability of these funds to continue to hold Amazon accountable.”