John,
This week, Bloomberg Philanthropies co-hosted the Earthshot Prize Innovation Summit and the UN Climate Action: Race to Zero and Resilience Forum in New York City. World leaders, groundbreaking innovators, longtime advocates, youth activists, and many more came together to talk about building partnerships, advancing big ideas, and winning the fight against climate change.
The day also featured real climate action -- with major investments to expand clean energy, fight petrochemical pollution, and protect the ocean. Here's a look at what we announced this week:
Petrochemical plants emit pollution that poses a major threat to public health and the environment -- especially for people living in nearby communities. Drawing on the success of our Beyond Coal and Beyond Carbon campaigns, Beyond Petrochemicals will put people over pollution, by turbocharging existing efforts led by frontline communities to block the expansion of more than 120 proposed petrochemical projects concentrated in Louisiana, Texas, and the Ohio River Valley. The effort will also work to establish stricter rules for existing petrochemical plants to safeguard the health of American communities.
The ocean plays a critical role in the fight against climate change. To protect and conserve this vital resource -- and support coastal communities and marine ecosystems -- we launched the new Bloomberg Ocean Initiative. This $204 million initiative will support data-driven solutions to protect coral reefs, stop illegal fishing, and safeguard marine ecosystems and biodiversity that are threatened by climate change.
The more we invest in clean energy around the world, the faster we can end coal for good. We're expanding our efforts to accelerate the clean energy transition into another 15 developing countries, helping them tap into abundant potential for solar, wind, and other renewable energy. The new investments support programs and partnerships in Botswana, Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Madagascar, Morocco, Mexico, Philippines, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Thailand, and Uganda. These new partners add to existing energy transition efforts we're already supporting in 17 countries and the EU -- including the 10 developing countries announced earlier this year at the Sustainable Energy for All Forum in Kigali, Rwanda.
To close out the day's events, we announced the Bloomberg Countdown to COP27 -- a 45-day series of Bloomberg initiatives and commitments aimed at delivering on UN Secretary-General António Guterres' call for urgent climate action leading into November's UN Climate Change Conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. Our Countdown will unveil dozens of climate actions through investments, partnerships, and capacity-building and educational efforts in advance of COP27.
Stay tuned for much more climate action to come!
Thanks,
Bloomberg Philanthropies
