Politico — Op Ed

September 21, 2022
Hansjörg Wyss is a Swiss businessman and philanthropist, and the co-owner of Chelsea FC.

Solving the crisis facing nature is daunting. Over the next few months, we will see whether governments are truly up to the task.

I, for one, am optimistic that we will meet the challenge, but leaders must actually commit to accelerating the pace of conservation this year and invest significant and meaningful public resources. Promises alone can’t save nature — it’s time for governments to take action.

Inspired by the wonders of nature — and motivated by the fear of losing the wild places I love — I’ve pledged a significant portion of my fortune to protect at least 30 percent of the world’s land and oceans by 2030.

This commitment is a promise to future generations that I’m going to do everything I can to leave them a world that’s as alive and glorious as the one I was born into.

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E&E News

September 22, 2021
A coalition of nine charitable groups announced today that they will jointly commit $5 billion toward an aggressive pledge that aims to conserve 30% of the world’s lands and waters by 2030.

The pledge includes Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos’ commitment on Monday to direct $1 billion — 10 percent of his $10 billion effort to address climate change — to the global conservation goal commonly known as 30×30 (Greenwire, Sept. 21).

Both the Rainforest Trust and the Wyss Foundation will likewise provide $500 million to the "Protecting Our Planet Challenge."

Additional funds come from the charitable fund Arcadia; Bloomberg Philanthropies; the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; the Rob and Melani Walton Foundation; the indigenous rights nonprofit Nia Tero; and Re:wild, a group founded by conservation scientists and actor Leonardo DiCaprio.

“We can solve the crisis facing nature,” philanthropist Hansjörg Wyss said in a statement announcing the pledge. “But it’s going to take the wealthiest nations and the wealthiest individuals committing to reinvest our enormous bounties here on Earth, safeguarding nature and protecting our lands, waters, and wildlife.”

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PR Newswire

June 8, 2021
The Wyss Foundation today announced a commitment of up to $108M to African Parks, a South African based conservation NGO that manages protected areas on behalf of governments across the continent. This transformational commitment is part of Mr. Hansjorg Wyss's visionary Wyss Campaign for Nature, a $1B investment in helping nations, NGO's and indigenous communities conserve 30% of the planet by 2030 and is one of the largest single gifts ever made to the conservation of Protected Areas in Africa.

The Foundation's commitment will be made over an initial five-year period to support up to half of the annual budgets of nine existing parks currently under African Parks' management in Angola, Benin, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe; as well as support the addition of five new parks (which are yet to be identified) and up to two-thirds of their annual budgets. The funding for these new parks will come with a matching requirement with the goal of enticing new and diversified funders to provide needed stability for these landscapes. The grant overall serves a critical need in long-term and sustainable, multi-year financing, providing critical support for a park's operating budget, which can vary between $1.5M to $4M per year.

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LesEchos

May 5, 2021
À l'époque, il fallait neuf heures pour aller de Denver à Aspen en voiture et vous traversiez des espaces infinis et merveilleux ! », confiait Hansjörg Wyss au magazine National Geographic en se remémorant sa découverte des montagnes Rocheuses, dans les années 1950. Le jeune Suisse avait décroché un job d'été au sein du Colorado Highway Department et tomba dès lors et pour toujours amoureux de la beauté sauvage de l'Ouest américain. Il vit aujourd'hui dans le Wyoming, le moins peuplé des Etats américains, qui comptent parmi ses trésors les parcs nationaux de Yellowstone et de Grand Teton.

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The Nature Conservancy

April 22, 2021
From above, the emerald shades of the Selva Maya hint at the diversity of life teeming under mahogany and gum species, barely betraying that much of it is post-colonial regrowth, rivaled in tenure by the ancient stone ruins that rise above the treetops. In withstanding hundreds of years of threats, this Mesoamerican ecosystem is now the largest contiguous block of rainforest north of the Amazon, safeguarding treasures of incalculable value.

But aerial images from recent decades also show this forest receding at the edges, where it is increasingly logged for timber or slashed and burned for agriculture. Yet the true, underrecognized value of places like these, so globally rare they are known as “last-chance ecosystems,” is in the collective power of the intact system.

Wildlife habitat. Water security. Clean air. Climate mitigation and adaptation. In other words, $125 trillion in ecosystem services every year without which, we simply cannot survive.

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