Bezos Earth Fund Pledges $24.5M To Create World's First Cross‑Border Marine Biosphere Reserve

LONDON, Dec 9 — The Bezos Earth Fund, the world's largest climate philanthropy, has announced $24.5 million in grants to protect coastal ecosystems and advance plans for the planet's first cross‑border marine biosphere reserve, the fund's head of nature told Reuters.

The funding is split across four grants intended to support community groups, local organisations and conservation partners working in Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia and Ecuador. The awards aim to strengthen coastal reserves, nursery zones and protections for migratory species such as hammerhead sharks and sea turtles.

The largest single award in this round — $13.85 million — goes to Re:wild to help create and buttress coastal reserves and nursery habitats for key marine species. These sites are critical for migration and lifecycle stages of many marine animals, officials said.

“It's an incredibly important area for migration of species,” said Cristian Samper, the Bezos Earth Fund's head of nature. “The only way you can protect this place is doing it in a transboundary way.”

Over the past two years the four countries have tripled the area of protected seas to more than 600,000 square kilometres (about 231,660 square miles) across ten separate marine zones. The current aim is to consolidate those zones into a single, transnational biosphere reserve — a first of its kind — to provide coordinated protection across national boundaries.

Samper also said the fund is in discussions to support a separate, much larger Pacific reserve that could be roughly five times the size of the continental United States. In addition, the Bezos Earth Fund has committed $100 million to help the Pacific region implement global biodiversity goals and plans to announce a second set of grants in 2026.

These grants form part of a broader pledge by the Bezos Earth Fund to contribute $1 billion toward the global “30 by 30” goal of protecting 30% of land and oceans by 2030. As part of the Protecting Our Planet Challenge, a coalition of 11 philanthropies aims to mobilise $5 billion toward that target; to date the Bezos Earth Fund has deployed nearly $700 million and the coalition has committed more than $3 billion.

Conservation leaders say targeted, regional efforts like these — which combine science, community engagement and cross‑border cooperation — are essential to meeting international biodiversity targets and securing critical habitats for migratory marine species.