A new $200-million US initiative backed by the Bezos Earth Fund and Leonardo DiCaprio's Re:wild promises to help recover 100 threatened species, including pink iguanas, lemurs, wild pigs and pangolins.
The Phoenix Species Project could provide sustained funding for breeding programs, habitat restoration and locally led conservation work. But it also raises a broader question: Can billionaire-backed philanthropy help the environment, while improving donors' green image, despite the environmental records of the businesses that made them rich?
The question is becoming more urgent as governments pull back from climate and biodiversity commitments, leaving private funders to fill in the gaps.
The Bezos Earth Fund has committed $100 million US to the project. Re:wild and other partners will provide the rest.
The fund was founded by Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder and executive chair. Amazon has faced criticism over plastic pollution, deforestation and excessive water use by its data centres.
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Wren Montgomery, a researcher with the Greenwash Action Lab and a sustainability professor at Queen's University's Smith School of Business, defines greenwashing as companies "giving an overly positive impression" of an organization's environmental record.
After reviewing the project's website, she raised concerns about selective disclosure — highlighting positive work while distracting from harmful activities elsewhere.
"They may actually be doing the good thing, but we like to think on balance," Montgomery said.
"Even if it's credible and they're doing it, but they're hiding a lot of bad stuff, then we'd still think of it as greenwashing."
She called Bezos's contribution "a very, very small drop in the bucket" compared with Amazon's environmental impact and "nowhere close to balancing the harm he's doing to the planet in other ways."
Montgomery's larger concern is that philanthropy can distract from the need for governments and corporations to address biodiversity loss and climate change.
"We cannot be expecting a few philanthropists, a few billionaires to donate a little bit of money here and there and then do what they want in terms of data centres, other types of environmental destruction, fossil fuel emissions."
The Bezos Earth Fund declined to answer CBC News's questions about greenwashing. Instead, it provided an emailed statement from Cristián Samper, its managing director and leader for nature solutions.
Samper said the species were selected based on whether local partners were ready to carry out recovery work.
