GLASGOW, Scotland — A coalition of governments and private funders announced plans at COP26 Monday to invest $1.7 billion to aid Indigenous communities and protect biodiverse tropical forests in the next four years.
Governments from the United States, United Kingdom, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands and 17 other private funders said the money will support “activities to secure, strengthen and protect Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ land and resource rights,” and provide other kinds of aid, including for group activities.
“We call on other donors to significantly increase their support to this important agenda,” the donors said in a statement. It did not specify which communities would get the funding.
A spokesperson for The Ford Foundation, one of the funders, told The Associated Press the governments are providing approximately $1 billion, while the rest will come from the philanthropies. In addition to the Ford Foundation, funders include Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Bezos Earth Fund and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s Bloomberg Philanthropies.
The Bezos Earth Fund pledged $2 billion to fight climate change through landscape restoration and the transformation of agricultural systems.
“Our commitment today supports a three-fold imperative — we must conserve what we have, restore what we’ve lost, and grow what we need in harmony with nature,” the fund’s founder, Jeff Bezos, said in a statement.
The $2 billion pledge at COP26 is part of $10 billion that the Amazon founder committed earlier this year to spend by 2030 in an effort to battle climate change.
