The news
The Bezos Earth Fund, the climate philanthropy Amazon (AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos launched with a $10 billion pledge in 2020, announced more than $25 million in grants on September 17 to protect Pacific Ocean waters around five island nations.
The fund said the six grants cover more than 625,000 square miles of ocean, an area larger than Alaska. They will help Papua New Guinea create its first large offshore marine protected area through the Wildlife Conservation Society, expand protections in Tonga with TierraMar, and support the Cook Islands' Marae Moana ocean park through BirdLife International. Live & Learn Environmental Education will work on ocean planning in Kiribati and Vanuatu, and the nonprofit Rare will develop protected-area proposals for the high seas.
The money is the second round from a $100 million Pacific pledge the fund announced in December 2023. A first round of $37.5 million went out in 2025, bringing the program's total to $63.3 million, according to the fund.
Why it's trending: on September 30, Fortune set the Pacific grants against the fund's overall promise. It reported that the fund has granted about $2.4 billion of the $10 billion Bezos pledged to spend on climate by 2030, leaving more than $7 billion to give away in about four years. Quartz and other outlets followed on October 1, and Google Trends listed "Jeff Bezos" among U.S. trending searches that day with more than 10,000 searches.
To finish on time, Fortune calculated, the fund would need to average about $1.8 billion in grants a year. It reported $183 million in grantmaking in 2025 and, citing Bloomberg, at least $400 million so far in 2026. Recent announcements include $100 million to turn vacant land into parks in eight U.S. cities, $100 million with the conservation group Re:wild for threatened species, $34 million for sustainable fabrics and $26 million for wildfire detection.
The fund defended its pace to Fortune. Kelly Levin, its chief of science, data and systems change, said the team studies an area first to "make sure we're having the greatest impact." Fortune put Bezos's net worth at about $272 billion.
The numbers
- New Pacific grants (Sept. 17)
- $25M+ across 6 grants
- Ocean area covered
- 625,000+ sq miles
- Pacific pledge awarded so far
- $63.3M of $100M
- Climate pledge granted (Fortune)
- ~$2.4B of $10B
- Annual pace needed by 2030 (Fortune)
- ~$1.8B a year
Why CEOs should care
Why it matters: the gap between a headline pledge and the money actually paid out is now a story in its own right. Boards and CEOs who have announced multi-year climate or community commitments should expect the same arithmetic from reporters, employees and investors: how much has been spent, how much is left, and what pace the deadline requires. If your company has a dated pledge, publish the disbursement figures yourself before someone else calculates them.
For nonprofits, climate-tech founders and suppliers of conservation services such as ocean monitoring and enforcement, the math points the other way. A fund that would need to roughly quadruple its 2026 grantmaking to meet its deadline, based on Fortune's figures, is a large and motivated buyer. The fund's own description of its process suggests that winning grants depends on showing local partnerships and measurable results in a specific place, not on broad promises.
Finance and sustainability leaders can also read the Pacific program as a template: a fixed budget split into tranches, each tied to named partners and specific protected areas. That structure makes progress easy to track, which is exactly what the larger $10 billion pledge has lacked in public reporting.
The bigger picture
The grants arrive as ocean governance changes. The United Nations High Seas Treaty, which lets countries create protected areas beyond national waters, entered into force in January 2026, according to the Pacific Islands News Association, and one of the new grants funds proposals under it. Pacific Ocean Commissioner Filimon Manoni welcomed the funding, the Bezos Earth Fund said.
Bezos is one of several billionaires whose giving pledges are judged on pace as well as size. With roughly four years left on his deadline, the remaining balance is large enough that even $100 million announcements barely move the total.
What’s next
Watch whether the fund's 2026 grant total climbs well past the $400 million Bloomberg reported, and when the remaining roughly $36.7 million of the Pacific pledge (our calculation from the fund's figures) is awarded ahead of the 2030 conservation targets.
What “Fact-checked” means
Fact-checking means testing a story’s facts against the evidence before it is published. This story went through at least two separate checks before this version was published.
- What we checked
- Its names, figures, dates, job titles, quotes and who said what were checked against the story’s sources, including its main source where it could be opened. The headline was checked for accuracy and overstatement.
- How
- A first check reviewed the whole story. If it passed, a second, skeptical check went back to the sources to look for mistakes in the most important facts. If a check flagged the story, it was edited to fix the problems found, and a separate re-check then reviewed the whole story again.
- Who
- The checks are made by our newsroom, as steps kept separate from the writing, under rules set by our editor, Hussein Mukhtar. A story the checks still flag is held for the editor, who decides whether it is fixed, published or dropped.
- If something is wrong
- “Fact-checked” does not mean error-free. If a material error is found after publication, we correct the story and add a note saying what changed. Report an error
