Although there are still people who claim that global warming is a hoax, it is essential that actions to counteract its effects are taken seriously; Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon, wants to do his bit.
Last week, the billionaire owner of Amazon announced a $ 2 billion plan to restore landscapes in Africa and the United States. Nonetheless, Bezos’s proposal raised red flags for some experts and activists.
Jeff Bezos Vs. global warming
During the United Nations high-profile climate summit in Glasgow, the Bezos Earth Fund announced its latest round of funding which plans to allocate $ 1 billion to tree planting in Africa and landscape restoration in the United States.
The Bezos foundation’s plans are centered on its previous commitment to spend $ 1 billion to create and manage protected areas. Likewise, Bezos believes that it is important that local communities and indigenous peoples place themselves within the conservation programs.
The debates at the moment center on how to conserve and restore ecosystems, this is due to the new and extravagant projects to tackle climate change, which often lack analysis.
One example was the rejection of the World Economic Forum’s proposal to plant one billion trees. Forestry and conservation experts cautioned that aggressive tree planting campaigns sometimes incentivize monoculture of a single tree species.
Susanne Vetter, an ecologist at the University of Rhodes, told The Verge “Many believe that nothing bad can come out of planting trees, but planting trees in grasslands and savannas does irreversible damage to grasslands and savannas.”
Actions such as the one undertaken by Bezos Earth Found require more dedicated work where attention is paid to each individual landscape over the speed and scale approach if what is really sought is to reverse the current situation due to global warming.