Overview
- The Bezos Earth Fund announced a second Pacific grant round that totals more than $25 million, which was announced Sept. 17, to support conservation work in the Cook Islands, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Tonga, and Vanuatu.
- Those awards bring the fund’s 2023 'Unlocking Blue Pacific Prosperity' initiative to $63.3 million and target the creation and expansion of marine protected areas covering more than 625,000 square miles of ocean.
- One grant will help Papua New Guinea set up its first large offshore marine protected area, others will expand Tonga’s protections and support the Cook Islands’ Marae Moana, and separate funding will back planning in Kiribati and Vanuatu.
- The fund also gave a grant to Rare to help Pacific governments draft proposals under the UN High Seas Treaty, which created a legal path in January 2026 for protecting biodiversity in international waters.
- The new Pacific awards underscore climate urgency from rising ocean heat and acidification in the South‑West Pacific and highlight a funding challenge: the Earth Fund has granted about $2.4 billion so far and must average roughly $1.8 billion a year to meet the $10 billion pledge by 2030.