Philanthropist Hansjörg Wyss Joins the “Protecting Our Planet Challenge” with a New $500 Million Commitment to Nature

Serranía San Lorenzo Municipal Protected Area in Santa Cruz, Bolivia | Photo credit: Andes Amazon Fund

Pledge increases Wyss’s total nature commitment to $1.5 billion before 2030 to accelerate the pace of conservation and protect 30 percent of the Earth’s surface by decade’s end

Three years ago, philanthropist Hansjörg Wyss and the Wyss Foundation met the crisis facing our natural world by launching the Wyss Campaign for Nature: a $1 billion pledge over a decade to accelerate the pace of land and ocean conservation globally, with a goal of protecting at least 30 percent of the planet’s surface by 2030. Since then, Hansjörg Wyss has invested nearly $676 million to help local communities, Indigenous Peoples, and governments safeguard their lands, water, and wildlife.

Today, Wyss is pledging an additional $500 million to help catalyze the “Protecting Our Planet Challenge,” a coalition of philanthropies committing $5 billion to nature before 2030 – the largest ever combined commitment to the conservation of nature from private philanthropy.

“The actions we take from today through 2030 will determine the fate of our natural world. For our grandchildren and their grandchildren to have the same opportunities we’ve had, for them to inherit a functioning planet, we have to rapidly slow the rate at which our economies are destroying nature,” said Hansjörg Wyss, Founder and Chairman of the Wyss Foundation. “This challenge is why I continue working alongside local communities, Indigenous Peoples, and nations to quickly narrow the enormous gap between how little of the natural world is protected and how much needs to be protected.”

Wyss’s pledge increases his total personal commitment to the Wyss Campaign for Nature to at least $1.5 billion before the decade’s end.

Scientists are sounding alarm bells about the crisis facing the planet’s biodiversity, calling on policy leaders to help transform humans’ relationship with nature or risk mass plant and animal extinctions with serious implications for global economic and social wellbeing. Already two-thirds of the planet’s ocean and three-quarters of its land have been significantly altered by human activity; one million species are at risk of going extinct – many within decades – if we remain on the current trajectory. Further, scientists warn that we must start treating the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis as two sides of the same coin and act immediately to address both with an equal sense purpose.

Nations have responded by forming the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People, an intergovernmental coalition of 72 nations championing a global goal to protect at least 30 percent of the planet’s lands and ocean by 2030. The 30x30 target is a core component of the global strategic plan to safeguard biodiversity, known as the post-2020 global biodiversity framework, currently being negotiated through the United Nation’s Convention on Biological Diversity. The plan will be finalized at the COVID-delayed Conference of the Parties next May in Kunming, China.

“We can solve the crisis facing nature,” continued Wyss. “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.”

The $1.5 billion commitment from Wyss will be mobilized to support the continued efforts of Indigenous Peoples and local communities leading the 30x30 efforts on the ground to protect, manage, and sustain functioning, intact natural areas across the planet. Given the massive and ongoing loss of biodiversity, the urgency to increase conservation ambition – with dedicated support from philanthropy, civil society, businesses, and governments – is increasing by the day.

Since he launched the Wyss Foundation in 1998, Hansjörg Wyss’s philanthropy has helped to permanently protect nearly 65 million acres of land and over 2.6 million square-kilometers of ocean – areas nearly the size of Colorado and Argentina, respectively – supporting locally-driven land and ocean conservation efforts on every continent except Antarctica. When combined with investments in nature Wyss made before the launch of the Wyss Campaign for Nature in 2018, this latest commitment will bring his overall investment in nature to more than $2 billion.

Hansjörg Wyss and the Wyss Foundation are proud to join the Protecting Our Planet Challenge and urgently call for additional private and governmental financial support behind 30x30 as the climate and biodiversity crises threaten communities and wildlife across the globe. This investment is being made jointly by the Wyss Foundation, Arcadia Fund, Bezos Earth Fund, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Nia Tero, Rainforest Trust, Re:wild, and the Rob and Melani Walton Foundation.