Tuesday 27 October 2020

Rockefeller Foundation to spend $1 billion to catalyse green recovery from COVID-19

The Rockefeller Foundation has announced it will spend $1 billion (£770m) to help catalyse a green recovery from the coronavirus pandemic over the next three years.

The organisation says it will use the money to scale-up distributed renewable energy resources across developing countries and finance new tools and technologies to combat Covid-19.

Even before the pandemic, more than 800 million people around the world lacked access to electricity and half of the world’s population could use essential health services - the Rockefeller Foundation emphasises these issues have been worsened by the effects of the pandemic and notes more than 100 million people have seen their electricity access severed this year because they couldn’t pay their bills.

The World Bank estimates the effects of climate change and Covid-19 will cause 132 million people to fall into poverty.

Dr Rajiv J. Shah, President of the Rockefeller Foundation, said: "There’s no going back to the past, to before-Covid. We need to reimagine the future we want.

"To meet this moment, we must leverage all our resources and relationships to build an equitable, sustainable future, where everyone has the opportunity to realize their full potential and climate disaster is avoided. The time to act is right now to make sure vulnerable children and families are included in the pandemic response and recovery.”