Gates-, Bezos-backed organizations support US climate justice efforts

Philanthropic and venture capital organizations backed by two of the world’s wealthiest men — Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos — are trying to balance their efforts to push industries to quickly adopt clean energy technologies with their goals to support marginalized communities impacted by climate change. Climate and environmental philanthropists have entered a “new frontier” where they are shifting from the idea of “stopping things” such as pollution and deforestation toward increasing investments in the development of technological solutions to those issues, according to Aliya Haq, vice president of U.S. policy and advocacy at Breakthrough Energy, a conglomerate of organizations started by Gates in 2015 to invest in the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy. “It is now about how do we build clean technologies and clean energy as quickly as we can in ways that include community input in ways that are still building society in a way that is healthy across multiple metrics,” she said. “That’s a huge challenge. And it’s a big pivot for philanthropy, and it’s a big pivot for a lot of the groups that would work on this issue traditionally,” she added. Haq spoke Tuesday during a virtual event for The Economist’s Sustainability Week where much of the discussion focused on how philanthropists could support the implementation of a recently-enacted U.S. law that will increase federal investment in clean energy and promote environmental justice. Haq and the Bezos Earth Fund’s Cecilia Martinez talked about how their organizations can help work with the U.S. government and increase philanthropic spending in those areas. Building equity into the climate agenda is “a historic moment” because it recognizes the need to consider marginalized communities who are often “bearing the cost” of development, Martinez, who is the Bezos Earth Fund’s chief of environmental and climate justice, said at the event. The “very young” Bezos Earth Fund philanthropy, which launched in 2020, wants to make equity central to all of its work both in the U.S. and abroad in places such as South America and the Congo Basin, she said. “A key question that we are building into all of our work is “what are the equity metrics and equity implications for us investing in this area?” Martinez said.