WOBO welcomes the emphasis on nature based projects.

E-commerce giant Amazon has pledged to spend €20m (£17.2m) on nature-based projects across Europe, in a bid to improve carbon sequestration, boost climate resilience and improve biodiversity and wellbeing.

The funding will come from the firm’s €100m ‘Right Now Climate Fund’, which was first unveiled in 2019 and will be used to conserve, restore and create forests, wetlands and peatlands across the world. Amazon said at the time that the fund was set up to take “immediate action” to combat the twin climate and nature crises.

The €20m will be allocated to projects across Europe, in regions where Amazon has operations. The first project to receive funding will be the Parco Italia programme, an urban greening initiative which is planting 22 million trees across 14 metropolitan areas. Amazon’s base for this activity will be Milan, where it has 1,400 employees. Other areas set to receive trees are Bari, Bologna, Cagliari, Catania, Florence, Genoa, Messina, Naples, Palermo, Reggio Calabria, Rome, Turin and Venice.

Parco Italia is supported by a string of organisations across the country, including the Italian Government, the National Research Council, ERP Italia, the Italian Society of Silviculture and Forest Ecology (SISEF) and more than a dozen universities. It will receive a €2m share of Amazon’s Right Now Climate Fund.

Amazon promises €20m for nature-based climate solutions in Europe