From Observer, February 10:
Jeff Bezos’ $10B Climate Fund Undergoes Shakeups in the Wake of Trump Policies
The Bezos Earth Fund has quietly removed a page about an environmental commitment after President Trump revoked a Biden-era initiative.
In 2020, Jeff Bezos established the Bezos Earth Fund with a pledge to dole out $10 billion in grants by the end of the decade. One of the organization’s core investments is environmental justice. It has committed hundreds of millions of dollars to support Justice40, a Biden-era initiative that earmarked 40 percent of federal environmental investments to disadvantaged communities. In January, however, the federal initiative was revoked by an executive order from President Donald Trump. Since then, a page on the Bezos Earth Fund’s website highlighting the Justice40 initiative as one of the fund’s “big ideas” has been taken down.
Archived pages show that the Bezos Earth Fund had pledged $200 million to help communities access Justice40 funds as of last September, with grantees including the NDN Collective, an Indigenous-led advocacy organization, and Emerald Cities Collaborative, a nonprofit focused on climate justice. The Bezos Earth Fund has helped various community-led projects secure $43 million worth of federal and state funding since 2021, according to a January 2024 post from the organization. The Bezos Earth Fund declined requests for comment regarding the initiative.
Despite Trump slashing numerous federal environmental justice programs, the Bezos Earth Fund says it will continue to support investments in the area. In 2023, for example, it launched its Greening America’s Cities Initiative, giving $50 million to an initial cohort of organizations and promising to award a total of $400 million to community environmental justice groups through 2030 via annual grants....
....MUCH MORE
More on Federal government environmental justice grants tomorrow, it's a lot of money.
