The Walt Disney Company will invest $7 million in forest conservation projects in the U.S., the Congo Basin, and the Amazon in an effort to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.
Disney’s investment is being made in partnership with three conservation groups: Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy and The Conservation Fund.
Working with Conservation International, Disney will contribute $4 million to the Tayna and Kisimba-Ikobo Community Reserves in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and the Alto Mayo conservation project in the Peruvian Amazon. The reserves will protect habitat for endangered populations of gorilla and okapi in the Congo and the Andean spectacled bear and yellow-tailed woolly monkey in Peru.
The projects will fund community forest management and sustainable development activities around the reserves, reducing deforestation from logging and slash-and-burn agriculture.
The investment is the largest-ever corporate contribution to reduce emissions from deforestation, according to Peter Seligmann, CEO and chairman of Conservation International.
“This commitment by Disney… will help build confidence in these activities that generate such compelling climate, local community and biodiversity benefits,” he said in a prepared statement.
“Disney’s leadership points the way to the key role tropical forest conservation must play in emerging climate change policies.”
Disney will provide another $2 million for a reforestation project of native hardwoods in the Lower Mississippi Valley. The project is run by The Nature Conservancy.
Disney also will invest $1 million in The Conservation Fund’s reduced impact logging operation in Mendocino County, California.