What Would it Take for Jeff Bezos to be a Positive Force in Climate Philanthropy?

It’s hard not to be at least somewhat cynical about Jeff Bezos’ philanthropy. Few living donors exemplify the staggering inequality underlying the sector as Bezos does, with his current net worth of $130 billion.

When philanthropy reaches the scale of Bezos’s recent $10 billion pledge to address climate change, it always feels to me like far too little and far too much at the same time—too little of his accumulated wealth and too much potential influence.

Add to that Amazon’s huge carbon footprint, the tech services it provides for oil and gas extraction, and the fact that the company managed to pay zero federal corporate income taxes in 2018, and the mixed reaction to this week’s announcement of the Bezos Earth Fund is completely understandable.

We also know almost zero details about where this $10 billion is headed, so there’s good reason for apprehension. Who will decide where it goes? What exactly will it support? What does climate change grantmaking look like at that scale? (It has been confirmed that the fund will make donations and not investments.) We don’t even know if it will form an endowed foundation or just crank out $10 billion through some other mechanism.

Still, this kind of announcement from someone as powerful as Bezos is an undeniably big deal, another indicator of how the tide has turned on the issue. For that reason alone, it should be considered a victory for activists, and particularly for the Amazon employees who have been pressuring Bezos to get serious about climate change.

And of course, it’s also just a lot of sorely needed funding for this most important and time-sensitive cause. For comparison, if the Bezos Earth Fund were to become an endowed foundation, its minimum annual payout would be $500 million, nearly five times what the Hewlett Foundation, the field leader, granted for climate in 2018. Even as folks rightly point out that it’s a relatively small chunk of his net worth (7.7%), or that he should be bearing a greater burden based on his contribution to the problem, this is still game-changing money coming into climate philanthropy.

So at the risk of wild speculation, the announcement presents us with an opportunity to ask what guiding principles might put such a windfall to proper use. How should this money be used? Taking it a bit more broadly than that, now that Jeff Bezos wants to be a climate leader, here’s what I think it would take for him to be a good ally in the fight:

1. Align Amazon with his climate philanthropy

First things first, and I know this doesn’t seem like a recommendation for his philanthropy. But really, it is. Bezos is a huge societal actor, and his impact on the world is immense, reaching far beyond his emerging giving. If there is one element of philanthropy that we consistently rail against, it’s when one hand makes grants while the other works directly against the effort being funded. It’s hypocritical and undermines the good that may come about from the former.

This was pointed out with swift clarity in response to Bezos’s announcement by the group of Amazon employees who have been organizing within the company to demand greater climate action.

“As history has taught us, true visionaries stand up against entrenched systems, often at great cost to themselves. We applaud Jeff Bezos’ philanthropy, but one hand cannot give what the other is taking away,” the group said in a statement. “Will Jeff Bezos show us true leadership, or will he continue to be complicit in the acceleration of the climate crisis, while supposedly trying to help?"

So for one, there’s the company’s carbon footprint—44.4 million metric tons of CO2, which puts Amazon alongside oil and gas producers and industrial manufacturers as corporate polluters, emitting as much as some small nations. Under pressure from activists, Bezos has said the company will get to net zero emissions by 2040.

But employee organizers and others are also calling for the company to stop contracting with oil and gas companies, providing them with tech services to maximize the extraction of fossil fuels. They’re also demanding an end to Amazon’s contributions to groups and politicians responsible for climate denial and delay.

Before we view this new philanthropic endeavor as climate leadership, we should expect Bezos and his company to meet the standards his employees are calling for.

Oh, and in case it needs to be said, yes, Bezos and Amazon should also be paying way, way more in taxes.

2. Take a backseat in decision-making

Here’s an idea for the fund—make it not so much about Jeff Bezos. There are many people out there who know better than the donor where this money is needed. One of the biggest pitfalls of big philanthropy is when donors assume they know best, attempting to apply business expertise to problems they don’t understand. They often seek short-term ROI for deep, entrenched societal problems. They treat grantees like contractors.

This new endeavor could avoid that pitfall by handing over control, not only to activists, researchers, and policy experts, but also human beings on the ground dealing with the problem. A participatory board or boards of diverse decision-makers would be one way to make these decisions in a democratic manner, but even without going that far, the fund could establish a humble, bottom-up process.

There’s a counterargument here that Bezos is clearly a brilliant person who knows about risk-taking and getting operations to scale. Why not tap into his skill set? While he no doubt has insights to offer to the endeavor, the funds at play here are so significant that there’s a real danger of one person’s dominance distorting an entire field. That needs to be avoided.

3. Don’t lock into one strategy

A lot of the debate over the Bezos pledge so far has been about which category ought to receive funds. But one of the biggest criticisms of earlier large philanthropic pushes to combat climate change is that they created monocultures in approach and expertise. The first phase of ClimateWorks Foundation, for example, developed a highly specific approach, with measurable goals and technical and policy solutions, including a grid of planned emission reductions that became known as “the Sudoku.”

As one commenter noted in an outside evaluation of ClimateWorks from 2016, “The Sudoku was a classic reductionist approach to a complex problem. Climate change is a systems problem requiring social/political and biological aspects.” Another had a similar assessment: “There was an overly deterministic mindset at CWF that singularly focused on policy… The Sudoku ruled; it was a straitjacket.”

When an initiative has a prescriptive and outsized presence in a field, it tends to suck the air out of the room and edge out other ideas and leadership. A problem as complex as climate change has countless potential solutions. And the strength of philanthropy is that it can (in theory) be flexible, take risks, and support a diversity of ideas.

Some philanthropy experts will likely say the opposite—that this new initiative needs to be highly strategic and targeted to maximize impact. But that not only doesn’t play to philanthropy’s strengths, it’s potentially dangerous for a sum this large coming into a field from one source. A successful, responsible $10 billion initiative would call upon a wide range of opinions, diverse decision-makers and multiple, flexible strategies.

4. Support impacted people on the ground

I know I just said it’s a bad idea to focus on one strategy, but a particularly underfunded and undervalued climate solution is supporting local, grassroots leadership within the most vulnerable communities. That could mean people in low-income communities and communities of color in the U.S., or in nations at the greatest risk in the Global South.

The advantage is that such funding fuels new knowledge and solutions that are appropriate for the people who have to live with them, and otherwise may be overlooked. Meanwhile, it can build up into a powerful, ground-up climate movement of people deeply connected to the issue.

Some will say that moving such large sums to local grassroots groups is too difficult. But internal obstacles can be removed, such as bureaucratic application and reporting. Also, there are many existing entities that can move large amounts to other groups closer to the ground, including a growing list of intermediaries and climate justice networks connecting local groups in just about every region of the country.

5. Let grantees run with the money

One thing that I’m sure has many people in philanthropy scratching their heads is just how this new entity will move all this money. While not unheard of (the Gates Foundation granted $5 billion in 2018), it’s actually logistically challenging to disburse funding at that scale.

Networks and intermediaries offer one solution. But one way to reduce the burden—and to maximize the speed and impact of the funding—is for the fund to get out of its own way as much as possible. Resist that grip of control and give overwhelmingly with multi-year, unrestricted grants and limited application and reporting requirements. Trust the people who know and let them do what they do.

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So there’s my armchair quarterbacking on the big announcement. Am I in fantasyland? Yeah, for sure. There’s a very good chance we end up with a big top-down operation or with big chunks of money going to the same large, global NGOs that dominate green giving.

Are there other approaches that might make this behemoth work? Certainly, and we’ll be hearing a lot more ideas in coming months. One that keeps coming up is that Bezos would be better off putting that money toward politics to elect climate-friendly legislators. That’s a whole other kind of donating, and scary in its own way, but intriguing.

Regardless, Bezos’s funding should be greeted with scrutiny, and until we know a lot more, we can withhold both our cynicism and our applause.

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