Amazon and USAID Launch Effort to Boost Climate Funding for Women

Amazon and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) are launching a public-private partnership to tackle the gender inequities that exist for ladies within the local weather finance ecosystem and help feminine entrepreneurs with the sources they want to speed up local weather change improvements.

Amazon will commit a complete of $53 million to assist speed up ladies’s local weather options, together with $3 million towards the USAID partnership and $50 million for Amazon to make investments straight in local weather tech corporations run by ladies.

Amazon will function a founding companion of USAID’s Climate Gender Equity Fund, a brand new local weather finance facility designed to take away systemic market boundaries that stop ladies and ladies from accessing local weather finance. USAID will even match Amazon’s $3 million funding to assist launch the fund.

The Climate Gender Equity Fund could have a world focus and present grants for companies, NGOs, accelerators, incubators, and grassroots organizations engaged on women-led local weather options. It additionally will fund efforts to assist ladies entry the networks and technical abilities they want to speed up the event of their local weather change applied sciences.

As a co-founder of The Climate Pledge, a dedication to attain net-zero carbon emissions by 2040, Amazon will work with Pledge signatories and different corporations to encourage their extra help and company funding on this new fund. The partnership will assist advance mutual objectives round ladies’s local weather management and gender fairness, together with Amazon’s sustainability objectives, the work of The Climate Pledge, and the Biden administration’s National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality.

Additionally, Amazon is allocating $50 million from its Climate Pledge Fund to put money into women-founded and women-led local weather tech corporations, in addition to incubators and accelerators that prioritize women-led entities. The Climate Pledge Fund–Amazon’s enterprise capital program that invests in corporations pioneering decarbonizing applied sciences and options–will collaborate with USAID and the Climate Gender Equity Fund to supply new funding alternatives and broaden its pipeline of feminine candidates.

“As an important step in solving climate change, we must address the gender inequalities that persist in climate finance, and ensure female entrepreneurs have an equal seat at the table and access to the funding, networks, and technical support they need to scale climate solutions,” mentioned Kara Hurst, vp of Worldwide Sustainability at Amazon. “We’re proud to collaborate with USAID and the Biden administration to help scale women-led climate solutions globally. This is just one part of our broader Climate Pledge goal to reach net-zero carbon by 2040, and we encourage other companies to join us in this effort.”

Female-founded corporations usually obtain a fraction of world enterprise capital, and that share fell through the pandemic. However, analysis reveals that feminine entrepreneurs are extra possible than their male counterparts to innovate to tackle social wants. Women-led corporations additionally generate extra income per greenback invested and produce larger ROI for traders.

Amazon has just lately taken a number of extra steps to advance gender equality throughout its worth chain, together with:

• Committing to the United Nations Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs), which provide companies steering on methods to promote gender fairness and empower ladies within the office, market, and neighborhood.
• Granting $1 million to the Resilience Fund for Women in Global Value Chains, which is investing in organizations supporting ladies in world worth chains, together with manufacturing, attire, and agriculture, with a give attention to gender-based violence and reproductive well being.
• Partnering with BSR’s HERproject to fight gender-based discrimination in China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and India by participating suppliers, manufacturing unit employees, and administration. These efforts have reached practically 10,000 ladies.
• Investing within the Elevate Future Fund, which will increase funding to ladies and different underrepresented founders engaged on local weather tech options, in addition to companies creating financial alternative for distressed and deprived communities. This funding is a part of the brand new Amazon Catalytic Capital initiative to present underrepresented entrepreneurs with entry to capital.
• Collaborating with Greentown Labs, North America’s largest local weather tech incubator, to supply and interact with new startups. The Climate Pledge Fund participates in pitch occasions, together with “Access to Success,” a neighborhood occasion for various founders. Amazon additionally serves on Greentown Labs’ Industry Leadership Council.
• Working with Elemental Excelerator, a local weather tech startup accelerator that could be a chief in selling range, fairness, and inclusion ideas in local weather tech. Elemental Excelerator just lately launched an Equity & Access program that helps startup founders construct fairness into their organizations’ groups and actions.
  
   

Learn extra about Amazon’s sustainability efforts.

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