Bezos Earth Fund and three partners pledge $12.5 million toward protecting Guyana's Acarai-Rupununi Corridor

Four conservation funders, the Bezos Earth Fund, Andes Amazon Fund, Nia Tero and Rainforest Trust, pledged an initial $12.5 million on October 30 toward permanently protecting Guyana's Acarai-Rupununi Corridor, a forest of more than 1 million hectares.

The pledge backs a plan by Guyana's president, Irfaan Ali, to give the corridor permanent legal protection, the funders said in a joint announcement from Georgetown. Guyana's Department of Public Information reported that James Deutsch, chief executive of Rainforest Trust, announced it at the Global Biodiversity Alliance conference at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre.

What does the $12.5 million pay for?

Protection that has to be written into law first. The funders say the corridor should gain permanent legal protection with set boundaries and lasting limits on mining, industrial logging and other uses at odds with conservation. The government's account is blunter: the money is conditional on legally enforceable, permanent protection.

The pledge combines new and existing funding and will flow to conservation groups and other qualifying partners active in the country, the funders said. They did not say how much each of the four is giving. They also plan to explore long-term financing, help strengthen the public institutions that manage protected areas, and require that projects respect the free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous Peoples and local communities. Guyana's natural resources ministry, its Forestry Commission and its Protected Areas Commission are leading the government's side, and other public and private funders have been invited to join.

How much would the corridor add?

About as much as Guyana protects now. Forest covers about 85% of Guyana, while only about 8.4% of its land sits inside the national protected-area system, the funders said. Adding the corridor would roughly double that footprint and bring the country about halfway to its goal of protecting 30% of its land and waters by 2030, a target often called 30x30.

By our arithmetic, doubling 8.4% gives about 17%, which would leave around 13 percentage points to reach 30%. Spread over 1 million hectares, $12.5 million is at most $12.50 a hectare, or about $5.20 an acre, before any long-term management costs. The funders call it an initial pledge.

The two official accounts differ in places. The table is our comparison.

Neither account explains the gap between 1 million and 1.5 million hectares.

What should donors watch?

In our view, the date the protection becomes law. Because the money follows the legal designation, the pledge's real test is when Guyana sets the corridor's boundaries and safeguards, and how they are enforced. "For Guyana, forest stewardship is not a sacrifice we make for development," Ali said in the funders' announcement.

The Bezos Earth Fund is also one of the nine funders in the Species Recovery Alliance, which pledged more than $500 million this month without pooling the money. Donors comparing conservation commitments can ask the same questions of both: how much is new money, who holds it and what has to happen before it is spent.