Jeff Bezos’ $800 Million Missed Opportunity To Transform The Climate Movement

Challenging the environment movement is almost considered blasphemy. Yet, there is no independent oversight body for how effective their environmental interventions are, or a well resourced discussion space to explore alternative ways to have an impact on climate and environmental issues.

This lack of innovation, diversity and oversight is what has hampered progress among the modern environment movement. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ $791 million gift three weeks ago further entrenches existing inequalities and biases within the modern environment movement.

Few progressive groups dispute the causes that many environment groups stand for. But with budgets of several hundred million dollars a year (WWF’s global spending is $900 million a year), their methods, leadership and talent have not kept up with the times.

It is clear that more ambitious approaches are needed to alter course of human’s environmental footprint on the planet. Especially so in a year that is seeing record rates of deforestation in the Amazon, wildfires, greenhouse gas emissions, industrial overfishing, international oil spill damage and Arctic heatwaves.

The current approaches by mainstream environmental organizations are largely risk adverse, and not scalable to keep pace with the growing complexity of global environmental challenges. More money into the same efforts is not the answer, but smarter interventions are.

Environmental activists are facing more dangers than they have ever faced in the past. In 2019 alone, over 212 environmental activists were killed according to Global Witness (over four a week, with 40% being indigenous people), an untold number more were targeted, as more authoritarian Governments have risen around the world. Environmental crime (including fossil fuel projects) are increasingly linked to large international networks of organized crime, with access to powerful cyber security tools including the use of cryptocurrency and the dark web to avoid detection. Even Bezos himself was subject to a Whatsapp hack in 2018, five months prior to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a writer for the Washington Post which Bezos owns, showing the sorts of resources that are now available.

Organizations that are causing industrial level harm to the planet have access to strongly incentivized and resourceful executives, the latest technologies and advanced marketing tools. The mainstream environmental movement is woefully underprepared to take on this battle.

Jeff Bezos’ recent philanthropic gift of $791 million – of which $100 million each went to five mainstream environmental organizations – was a missed opportunity to address the ‘system change’ the environment movement needs.

Just look at the leadership, mindset and technologies that are funded for similar amounts in fast-growing technology companies who, within a decade, have disrupted many established industries (e.g., Tesla, Space X, Impossible Foods, Amazon, Slack, Uber
UBER
, AirBnB). It is not just that they are technology companies, but organizationally, look at the average age of their leaders, how these companies are run and performance managed, and the rapid experimentation which inform how decisions are taken. Such internal rigor is lacking in the mainstream environmental movement.

What are the shortcomings with modern philanthropy and the climate movement, and how could these funds have been more effectively spent to make an impact?

Bezos and Amazon’s climate commitment

The almost $800 million disbursement is part of a $12 billion environment and climate commitment from Bezos’ personal funds and Amazon’s own commitments.

Both Jeff Bezos and the company he founded in 1994, Amazon, have been attacked in recent years for the environmental footprint they are having on the planet and their slow response to the climate crisis.

Excessive packaging, additional carbon emissions for small deliveries, and no accounting for the full carbon footprint of products sold on their platform are just some of the environmental criticisms levied at Amazon. Amazon’s other software business, Amazon Web Services (AWS), has now made a commitment to ensure its data centers are carbon neutral by 2040 through the purchase of energy from renewable sources, but AWS has also been in the firing line for pursuing large contracts with oil and gas firms.

In response to protests by Amazon employees last year and facing a barrage of criticism from environmental NGOs, Amazon announced a $2 billion climate fund in June 2020. Jeff Bezos – the richest person on the planet with a personal wealth estimated at $185 billion – announced an additional $10 billion personal commitment to climate causes.

The almost $800 million grant to 16 environmental groups three weeks ago is the first disbursement of these funds.

Bezos funding more of the same?

The climate crisis is just one of several major environmental challenges the planet is facing.

Pollution (air, land and water), harmful production processes (both agricultural and manufacturing) and an over-exploitation of nature (e.g., via wildlife trafficking, overfishing, coastal developments and widespread deforestation) is leading to a large scale biological collapse on the planet, what has been termed the ‘Sixth Mass Extinction.’

The climate crisis is the highest profile of these challenges. Greenhouse gas emissions are continuing to rise to record levels above the 350 parts per million safety level that was breached in 1988. Doing more of the same will not work within the timeframes needed, even with a new Biden-Harris administration in the White House.

Whole industries like the aviation and shipping industries, whose carbon dioxide emissions are greater than France and Germany combined, continue to avoid any form of robust emission regulation, and enjoy the support of Government delegates who continue to grant these organizations the power to have lower emission standards. Even the EU has faced heavy criticisms for voting for an agriculture deal that would rapidly increase carbon dioxide emissions. Most mainstream NGOs have avoided taking on these issues, with several continuing to focus on plastic straws instead.

Under a ‘business as usual’ scenario, shareholders in the fossil fuel industry are set to earn $40 trillion over the next three decades. This is even higher, when associated industries such as car manufacturers, shipping companies, aviation firms, and power station equipment providers are taken into account.

Less than 2% of all philanthropic giving is devoted to the climate crisis. With U.S. individual and corporate philanthropy estimated at $400 billion. Climate-related donations are estimated at less than $8 billion a year, and much of this is unaccountable or not publicly assessible to truly understand what the funds are being spent on (it is hard to see where $8 billion a year in climate advocacy has gone).

Endless climate summits, policy papers, ‘public-private partnerships’ have acted as diversions and delaying tactics from the real work that needs to get done. A new model for environmental philanthropy is needed. For example, just fraction of this funding could have been devoted toward building features in existing consumer products that would have had a much more transformative impact (e.g., on climate and carbon transparency on ecommerce platforms), especially among a younger, millennial, tech-savvy consumer base who will dominate retail expenditure over the next decade, as banks like UBS are forecasting.

‘Systems change not climate change’

The $791 million disbursed from the personal funds of Jeff Bezos, went to 16 environmental organizations. Five of them received $100 million each.

WWF – which was associated this year with a major human rights scandal – received $100 million. The Nature Conservancy – whose CEO resigned last year around issues associated with systemic gender discrimination in the organization – also received $100 million. World Resources Institute – whose work has been criticized for greenwashing – received $100 million. Other U.S. based environmental groups, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) also received $100 million each. The Union of Concerned Scientists, who received $15 million, is facing strong criticism about racial bias in the environmental sector following the resignation of a high profile staff member this summer.

A review of any survey of millennials show that brand following and trust among these traditional environmental NGOs are at an all time low among the under 35 age category. Unless these groups are prepared to make very radical shifts in their organizations, they may soon find they do not represent the future of the environment movement.

This is why disruptive new environmental movements like 350.org, Extinction Rebellion, Ocean Rebellion and the Sunrise Movement have emerged in recent years as a reaction to the lack of innovation by mainstream environmental groups.

What system-change shifts could the large Bezos grants have demanded?

Here are five examples.

Creating systems change within the environmental movement

1. Underrepresentation from Global South

The battle against climate change will be won or lost in lower income, non-OECD countries. This is where 80% of the global footprint will be felt in the next 30 years as 3 billion enter the middle classes, driving consumption to $60 trillion a year over the next 20 years (double that of today’s middle classes).

Aspiring to a U.S. lifestyle and consumption pattern will push the planet to exceed it’s planetary boundaries by four times, given the per capita footprint of the U.S. households.

Dell and the Institute of the Future estimate that 85% of the jobs in 2030 have not been invented yet. This means there is a huge opportunity to define new environmental and economic growth models that have a lower carbon footprint but are value-creating, job-generating, and restore biodiversity to healthy levels.

Yet, almost every major environmental NGO has failed on this front, where the economic growth models being pushed by most environmental NGOs to poorer countries are limited to ‘sustainable eco-tourism’ or ‘sustainable artisanal fishing.’ These are not sustainable economic or environmental models, and force greater dependency for these countries on Western tourists.

Hiring leaders from the Global South at senior levels, would start to shift biases within environmental organizations to look outside the box at more innovative job-creation solutions that are climate positive. It will also start to reframe the global environmental agenda into other key and connected issues (e.g., corruption in energy procurement processes), that do not receive the attention they need by major NGOs who are more focused on agendas that are set by executives disconnected from the needs of the Global South.

2. Poor Diversity in leadership

The lack of racial and gender diversity has long been identified as a major unaddressed issue by leaders such as Dorceta Taylor, the gender issues highlighted by the TNC saga last year, and the resignation letter in June by Ruth Tyson from the Union of Concerned Scientists who accused the environment movement of paying lip service to diversity issues.

Five years ago, most of the highest profile major multi-million dollar environmental NGOs (WWF, TNC, Conservation International, Ocean Conservancy, WRI, EDF, National Geographic Society, TED) were headed by older, white male executives. In the last 3 years, there have been changes at TNC, Ocean Conservancy and National Geographic Society to address the gender gap. Much more needs to be done to increase diversity at the Board and Senior Leadership levels of all these environmental NGOs on all these fronts.

These organizations’ reliance on large Executive Search firms who use traditional approaches and outdated criteria have been a large part of the reason why many diverse leaders with breakthrough ideas have been overlooked in the environment movement. It is rare to find an industry disruptor stuck in a large, bureaucratic organization that search firms rely on to tap future talent. More innovative recruiting approaches are needed to find truly disruptive talent. It is not just diversity for diversity’s sake that is lacking, but the diversity of thinking that comes from hiring those with very different backgrounds, that could unleash new energy into the environmental movement.

The under-representation of people of color at the Board and Executive Leadership level of most large environmental NGOs has been a major oversight that has been highlighted by the incoming Biden-Harris Presidential team, as well as many of the newer and younger environmental movements.

It is not just among environmental NGO leadership ranks where there is a diversity and gender gap, but also in terms of who receives grants from philanthropic foundations. Very few foundations publish (or even collect) such data on the racial diversity profiles of recipient organizations. This lack of transparency is a major failing of modern philanthropy, especially in the context of large racial justice protests around the world, including Black Lives Matter movement in the United States.

Many leading minority executives have chosen to leave mainstream organizations over what is seen as diversity ‘window dressing,’ meaning the mainstream environmental movement is missing out on big opportunities as their talent pipeline narrows.

The Bezos grants, as well as other philanthropic grants, could have made linked funding disbursement to achievement of key diversity metrics, and changed the system. Hopefully, these will be an important consideration for other parts of Bezos’ philanthropy going forward.

3. Weak innovation ecosystem

The lack of innovation from the environment movement has also been astounding.

What passes for innovation appears to be tokenistic projects that throw in buzzwords like ‘satellite tracking,’ ‘artificial intelligence,’ ‘data science’ with no real understanding of sustainably scalable economic models or models for impact using these technologies. In technology terms, there have been a lack of Product Managers to understand which features to prioritize and add the greatest value, including revenue models that break the philanthropic dependencies. Innovation initiatives in major environmental NGOs are little more than marketing exercises, with fringe, under-funded projects that are not led by executives with a track record of spinning out industry-changing innovations.

High profile projects like Global Forest Watch and Global Fishing Watch have pushed ‘satellite tracking’ as a solution, but without a clear understanding of the economic ecosystem or model for impact (aside from a fervent belief that just putting data in the public domain will change public behavior). Despite tens of millions of dollars being poured into such large engineering projects, rates of deforestation and industrial overfishing are at record highs. The approach of both projects to take in large amounts of philanthropic funding without connecting impact to user adoption and behavior change, has ended up killing the vibrant markets that existed in this sector just a decade earlier by dozens of startups working on a range of solutions. This market was killed by a ‘supply-first’ approach of large NGOs with access to wealthy funders and several degrees removed from its users, rather than a ‘demand-led’ approach that most successful ventures are built around. Creating environmental monopolies is not how innovation should work in this field, as growing the market is more important than picking winners.

Other efforts by traditional environmental NGOs have focused on efforts that are several decades old (e.g., Debt-for-Nature Swaps known as Blue Bonds in the ocean field) which risks encouraging countries to take on more debt to protect nature. There should have been a greater focus on raising the equity value from nature rather than debt.

There are dozens of innovative ideas that the traditional, mainstream environmental movement is disconnected from. For example, launching a Green Fintech movement, harnessing the power of the Bio-economy, building automated models of radical climate transparency for climate reporting as required by TCFD, exploring the role of faith leaders in the environment movement.

Innovative organizations like San Francisco-based Pachama, Good Machine, Revive and Restore, OhmConnect, Sphaera are just some of the groups breaking through traditional models and are now at the forefront of disruptive innovation for a regenerative environmental movement. These are the sort of breakthroughs that a Bezos-Amazon initiative could have supported to scale up rapidly.

4. Unsustainable Financing Models

Most NGOs take a very traditional approach to how their operations are financed. They largely depend on grant-giving from wealthy donors, with supplementary income for providing Government services in other parts of the world.

Donations work well in the U.S. for various historic tax and philanthropy reasons, and has resulted in U.S. Non-profits dominating global Civil Society. However, those on the receiving end of U.S. NGOs have often felt a democratic deficit.

Most NGOs are beholden to wealthy donors, rather than the needs of communities they serve (if the funders are not supporting such programs, many NGOs would not be able to survive). This means the biases of funders (both in themes and geographies) are reflected in programs supported by the NGOs, with few of the communities being affected ever sitting on the Boards of the NGOs. Program evaluations are almost always internal and used for self promotion. This is how scandals such as Oxfam, WWF, and UN Peacekeepers could have taken place amid a lack of external scrutiny.

New models of financing environmental NGOs that break the dependency on grant-giving by wealthy donors, are needed. Models such as fees from Governments to independently audit corporate and public environmental initiatives, investing in fast-growing regenerative environmental groups, or looking at models that increase revenues based on environmental and economic activity increasing in an area, could have been models that Bezos and other philanthropists invested in to disrupt the current funding models of environmental NGOs.

No-one knew what was truly possible with different funding models until venture-backed companies like Uber, Lyft, AirBnB, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Amazon, Ant Group disrupted their respective markets and economic models, and even then through rapid experimentation and refinement to get the model right. That is the sort of economic-environmental leadership that the modern environment movement needs for 2020 to financially scale up at the levels required to meet the climate challenges of the next decade, especially in the Global South.

5. Addressing Greenwashing

As environmental groups have tried to scale up their efforts against climate change, they are becoming outpaced by the many large industrial groups who have invested in more sophisticated and nuanced methods to sway public opinion.

Several of these companies have funded or joined ‘Public Private Platforms,’ or are sponsors for groups that present ‘Awards’ each year. Rather than building concrete solutions with the urgency they deserve, these groups have allowed particular issues to drift on for another several years to attempt to dissipate the need for change.

Such ‘platform’ organizations that are sponsored by large corporate interests produce mountains of policy papers that are so watered down by sponsors that they rarely have any impact. This more sophisticated form of greenwashing is what needs to be called out, and many of the Big International Non-Governmental Organizations (BINGOs) have become too bureaucratic or reliant on funds from large companies, to now effectively play this ‘green watchdog’ role.

Organizations like Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd, Extinction Rebellion and Ocean Rebellion have attracted attention precisely because they have been able to call out environmental damage and pinpoint those responsible. Other groups such as the Carbon Disclosure Project and 350.org are pushing the frontiers with new models for the environment movement by calling for shareholder divestment from all fossil fuel projects.

New models of success

The last decade has seen several major successes in the climate movement, that are equally important to highlight.

However few of these successes can directly trace their progress directly to the support of large traditional NGOs (aside from raising awareness about the issue, and even then, this should be subjected to rigorous scrutiny of the true marketing impact of many traditional NGOs campaigns).

Here are some of the areas of where significant progress has been made against climate change in the last few years.

Electric Vehicles

It can be argued that Tesla
TSLA
has done more for the environment movement than many of the widely circulated policy papers. By designing and reliably building an aspirational and sustainable product (the range of Tesla electric vehicles), Tesla transformed the mindset of policymakers around the world.

Whereas other interventions could have had a higher impact on climate (e.g., agriculture reform, retrofitting buildings or electricity generation and upgrading distribution grids) many world leaders started talking about introducing Electric Vehicle programs soon after the Paris Climate Agreement was signed, largely because of the awareness and brand value Tesla had created around the issue of electric vehicles.

It took patient capital and courage to take on the world’s biggest and most traditional auto-makers. It was not an easy ride with several brushes with bankruptcy and high profile confrontations with regulators, before Tesla assumed its position as most valuable automobile manufacturer.

How could the environmental movement have more effectively supported such an effort a decade ago, and what are today’s lessons for the sustainable industries of the future?

Plant based diets

One of the surprising successes of the past three years has been how rapidly plant-based diets have reached a tipping point of customer adoption. Until the impact of Covid-19, several mainstream fast food chains such as Burger King, McDonalds and even Kentucky Fried Chicken, had started to introduce plant-based alternatives to meat.

The performance of leading companies in this space, such as Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, have all performed at higher rates than that of Uber and Lyft.

The impact of transforming the world to vegetarianism (even for several days a week) would make a material difference. The food system accounts for a quarter of annual carbon dioxide emissions, over half of which is linked to meat production. The impact of a lower protein diet on restoring biodiversity could be even greater, with high per capita protein consumption associated with industrial levels of overfishing, and deforestation to make space for cattle ranching and poultry farms. Wastage along the food and agriculture supply chain chain is another area where carbon footprints could be significantly shrunk and where Amazon’s logistics experience could make a significant impact.

The plant-based diet revolution was an overnight success, a decade in the making. It took years of patient capital to fund the entrepreneurs who brought about the transformation in food technologies that are changing our behavior. These are the sort of value-shifting initiatives that a philanthropist like Bezos could back to have a bigger impact on the climate movement, especially among aspiring middle classes in rapidly industrializing nations.

Fossil Fuel Divestment

Groups like 350.org and the Carbon Disclosure Project have exerted pressure on shareholders to divest from fossil fuel projects.

CEO of 350.org, May Boeve, describes the impact of this campaign over the past ten years. “So far funds worth over $14 trillion have pledged to divest from fossil fuels, partially thanks to relentless campaigning by activists all over the world.”

She also explains the role of carbon disclosure and divestment in achieving ‘systems change’ in the environment movement. “In the beginning divestment was created as a political tool to weaken the fossil fuel stronghold on our political systems. However, after its enormous success and with the absence of much needed regulations to limit that industry, the divestment is now one piece of a much bigger picture of a campaign to stop the flow of money to the fossil fuel industry.”

These were initiatives incubated outside of the mainstream environmental movements, and now has built successful momentum.

Emergence of new environment movements e.g., Extinction Rebellion

Almost as a reaction to the traditional environmental groups not achieving the impact demanded of them, new faces and leaders have emerged among the climate movement in the last few years.

One of the highest profile names in the climate movement is Swedish activist, Greta Thunberg, who at age 15, started a movement built around school strikes for climate in 2018.

In last three years, offshoots of the movement, called ‘Fridays for Future,’ have emerged around the world, and reflect a younger, more diverse set of leaders than traditional environmental NGOs. Vanessa Nekate from Uganda attracted particular attention in Davos this year for journalists at the World Economic Forum event appearing to ‘whitewash’ photographs with her in. She has continued to champion the fight against climate change in her home country of Uganda.

Other groups like Extinction Rebellion, Ocean Rebellion, the Sunrise Movement have also emerged around the world, to urge greater urgency and action and urgency against climate change.

Systems Leadership

Despite the criticism, there is still a need for philanthropy in the environment movement. However, in order to make an impact, patient capital has to be combined to take higher risk, bolder actions. This is some of the lessons seen with how rapidly the vaccines were developed against the coronavirus.

Although there are several initiatives who claim to be incubating such efforts, it is important to have the right, diverse talent, driving these new models for philanthropy, and robust scrutiny of any incubator, accelerator or venture program working in the environment sector. It takes a new form of systems leadership, which has been lacking globally.

There is no shortage of ‘systems-change’ ideas that can be scaled up – several of which are higher risk than others. What is needed is a smart ecosystem that is a safe home for diverse talent to come together, easily partner with other like-minded organizations seeking to scale up, and jointly build innovative products and services that will define the economies of 2030.

Through the various business divisions of Amazon, Jeff Bezos has taken an unconventional approach to disrupting several major industries. This is the sort of mindset that could have been a powerful force for change for the climate.

With the bulk of his climate commitment fund still not yet disbursed, it will be interesting to see how boldly he would like to take on the climate crisis, or whether he will continue to follow the mold of other philanthropists who give blindly to individual projects without really intending to seriously change the system.