Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, has pledged more than £700 million for the Africa land restoration. It was reported on November 1, 2021, that Jeff Bezos is set to commit exactly £732 million for the land restoration of Africa, which is about a billion-dollar converted. At the Cop26 event in Glasgow, the billionaire has stated that he matched the previous contribution made through the Bezos Earth Fund and funded the Africa Land restoration as well.
The said event was also attended by the Prince of Wales, French President Emmanuel Macron, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, president of Nigeria, the president of Mauritania, and representatives of the World Bank and African Development Bank. The event is about the Great Green Wall initiative, which intends to plant 20 million trees across 8,000 kilometers that encompass the width of Africa to counter the current desertification on Africa.
RELATED: Evergrande Crisis: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, And Warren Buffett, Among Others To Lose Over $26 Billion
Bezos added that specific action must be taken so that the next decade will still be full of trees and livable for future generations. He also said that he wants the next decade to be decisive. He pointed out that the current decade is decisive, and they cannot let the next decade be indecisive. If he does not do things now, the next decade will be undecisive.
Just last month, he committed a billion-dollar in grants to support nature conservation and will be starting with the tropical Andes and the Congo basin countries.
Earlier this year, Bezos was in the hot seat with the climate activists after funding a project to go into space. However, he said that he does not want an enemy and consider him as an ally. Bezos will be the second billionaire space jockey following Richard Branson when he rode Virgin Galactic spacecraft on July 11. If everything goes exactly as planned, Bezos will spend about four minutes suspended weightless on the lowest rung of the suborbital space. For someone as rich as Bezos, who has funded the space venture called Blue Origin with at least $5.5 billion, that would be about $1.38 billion spent per minute.
Bezos said that he wants to focus on the commitment to the landscape restoration that is currently focused on Africa. Bezos also wants to work with different significant platforms already established and can scale, including the Africa 100 and Great Green Wall.
Sources: Kent Online UK, Standard UK, Echo News UK, Fortune