Leonardo DiCaprio’s Earth Alliance Pledges $5 Million Toward the Amazon Fires

Earth Alliance, a new environmental organization made by Leonardo DiCaprio and his benevolent friends, Laurene Powell Jobs and Brian Sheth, has vowed $5 million to help preserve the Amazon rainforest.

Fires have surged in the Amazon this year, the world's biggest rainforest is burning at remarkable rate since 2013, and Brazil's National Institute for Space Research says more than one-and-a-half soccer fields of Amazon rainforest are being devastated every minute of every day. The Amazon, which generates about 20% of Earth's oxygen, is usually referred to as "the planet's lungs." It is considered very important in slowing global warming.

“#EarthAlliance has formed an emergency Amazon Forest Fund with $5m to focus critical resources for indigenous communities and other local partners working to protect the biodiversity of the Amazon against the surge of fires,” the organization tweeted on Sunday.

Earth Alliance stated that its emergency fund will be dispersed between five local organizations that are "combating the fires, protecting indigenous lands, and providing relief to the communities impacted." They are: Instituto Associacao Floresta Protegida, Coordination of the Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon, Instituto Kabu, Instituto Raoni and Instituto Socioambiental.

The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation combined with Earth Alliance last month to "help address the critical dangers to our planet's life support systems." This partnership builds on DiCaprio's years of activism on the climate crisis.

"Since its founding in 1998, LDF has provided more than $100 million in grants to projects in all five oceans and across all seven continents," a July press release said.