Moore Foundation Pledges $100 Million for Amazon Conservation

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, already one of the largest supporters of conservation in the Amazon region, will commit an additional $100 million over five years to protect rainforests in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, the foundation said Monday.

Since 2001, the grant maker has pumped nearly $359 million into Amazon projects that have helped conserve land totaling four times the size of California, according to the foundation.

Once established, conservation land is costly to maintain. In addition to creating new conservation areas, the pledge will be used to secure national and local government support for national park systems and to develop financing to make sure parkland is protected well into the future. Moore wants to make conservation a hallmark of all future land use, including areas inhabited by indigenous people.

“The idea is to elevate the importance of protected areas in the development process” so that local residents and regional and national policy makers view biodiversity and the climate impact of the forest as valuable as new roads and industrial plants, said Avecita Chicchón, director of the foundation’s Andes-Amazon Initiative.

From 2011 to 2013, Moore supported projects in the Amazon aimed at the sources of deforestation, particularly agricultural development, Ms. Chicchón said. Those efforts will continue in another set of projects to be announced soon, she added.

Already, Moore is the biggest private supporter of conservation in the Amazon basin, according to a report it commissioned. And no other U.S. grant maker provides as much money to conservation globally, says the Environmental Grantmakers Association.

The $100 million earmarked for the Amazon follows a number of similar commitments.

In October, the Global Environment Facility Council, a consortium of international development organizations and nonprofits, announced it would commit $113 million over five years to the region. The plan, which the World Bank, the World Wildlife Fund, and the United Nations Development Program are managing, is designed to maintain forestland in Brazil, Colombia and Peru and help reduce CO2 emissions by 300 million tons by 2030.

Shortly after that, at the Paris climate talks in November, the governments of Britain, Germany, and Norway pledged a combined $5 billion over five years to prevent deforestation globally.

Coming out of Paris, says Ms. Chicchón, “there is a large recognition of the importance of the Amazon and the importance of standing forests.”