Billionaires aren’t going to save the planet. Part II: Jeff Bezos’ megayacht

Complete with illegal teak decks imported from Myanmar.

Jeff Bezos is the second richest man in the world, with a total net worth of US$231 billion. In 2020, he launched the Bezos Earth Fund, which is the “largest philanthropic commitment ever to fight climate change and protect nature”. By 2030, the Fund plans to hand out US$10 billion.

On its website, the Bezos Earth Fund states that, “The climate crisis will not be solved by a single country, a single company, a single person, or a single philanthropy. It will take all of us.”

But when Bezos talks about “All of us,” he means everyone except the billionaires. Like him.

And that’s a serious problem.

Between 1990 and 2019, just 1% of the world’s population were responsible for almost one-quarter of greenhouse gas emissions growth.

A 2024 study by Oxfam reveals that fifty of the world’s richest billionaires produce, on average, more carbon in just over half-an-hour than the average person does in their entire life.

In a statement, Oxfam International Executive Director Amitabh Behar says,

“The super-rich are treating our planet like their personal playground, setting it ablaze for pleasure and profit. Their dirty investments and luxury toys — private jets and yachts — aren’t just symbols of excess; they’re a direct threat to people and the planet.

“Oxfam’s research makes it painfully clear: the extreme emissions of the richest, from their luxury lifestyles and even more from their polluting investments, are fueling inequality, hunger and — make no mistake — threatening lives. It’s not just unfair that their reckless pollution and unbridled greed is fueling the very crisis threatening our collective future — it’s lethal."

Bezos’ megayacht, the Koru

In 2018, Bezos commissioned Netherlands-based firm Oceanco to build a US$500 million yacht. Many of the extremely rich get their yachts built in the Netherlands.

Bezos’ yacht was initially called “Project Y721”. And the boat’s owner was anonymous until Bloomberg reported, in May 2021, that this was Jeff Bezos’ yacht.

The yacht was completed in April 2023. It is 127 metres long, with several decks, and three huge masts. It is one of the largest yachts in the world. Because of its enormous sails, the yacht has no helipad. So Bezos commissioned a US$75 million support yacht, complete with helipad.

All of this is an obscene show of wealth, associated with massive pollution.

As Chris Armstrong, a professor of political theory at the University of Southampton, points out, “owning a megayacht is the most polluting activity a single person can possibly engage in”.

In an article in The Guardian, Armstrong writes about the massive greenhouse gas emissions associated with megayachts:

The bulk of these emissions happen whether or not a yacht actually travels anywhere. Simply owning one – or indeed building one – is an act of enormous climate vandalism. It helps, of course, that yachts are currently exempt from most of the emissions rules overseen by the International Maritime Organization.

Myanmar teak

It turns out that Bezos’ yacht is even more destructive. The timber used for the decks of Bezos’ luxury yacht is teak from Myanmar.

The hypocrisy is staggering.

In a promotional video for the Bezos Earth Fund, Bezos talks about the need to “invest in nature” and says that “we must all stand together to protect our world”.

Sir Andrew Steer, the President and CEO of the Bezos Earth Fund, adds,

“I’m very proud of what we’ve done to protect nature. We’ve been heavily involved in moving forward a wonderful vision to conserve and protect 30% of all the land and all the sea by 2030. And if you protect nature you address climate change.”

Since 2021, the Environmental Investigation Agency has been asking Bezos whether the timber decking on his megayacht came from Myanmar. Neither Bezos, nor anyone else in his organisations, replied.

A spokesperson for Oceanco told Mongabay in 2021 that,

“At Oceanco we ensure all teak used on our projects meets the EUTR-order 995/2010 which is verified by third party verification to ensure due diligence.”

EUTR stands for EU Timber Regulations. Since 2013, EUTR has required that importers of timber to the EU have to prove that the wood is not illegally harvested.

“There’s no way to supply Myanmar teak in a way that complies with European law,” Alec Dawson, a forests campaigner at EIA, told Mongabay.

After the coup d'état in 2021 the EU imposed sanctions to stop funding going to the regime that was accused of human rights abuses against the pro-democracy movement. And in November 2024, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, filed a request for an arrest warrant to be issued against Min Aung Hlaing, Myanmar’s military commander-in-chief and acting president, for crimes against humanity of deportation and persecution of the Rohingya people.

In addition to the human rights abuses, EIA notes, “The level of deforestation in Myanmar is cataclysmic.” Myanmar teak has been labelled as “blood timber” following the genocide of the Rohingya people.

Immediately after the 2021 coup, the military junta took control of the State-owned Myanmar Timber Enterprise. The money from sales of teak from Myanmar goes directly to one of the most brutal regimes on the planet.

Myanmar teak is illegal

On 26 November 2024, the Dutch Public Prosecution Service announced that it had “reached a settlement of €150,000 with a Dutch yacht builder”. The fine is to be paid by Oceanco for violating EUTR.

Oceanco bought some of the timber from a German company called Alfred Neumann GmbH. As early as 2019, EIA had alerted the German authorities about their concerns that illegal timber from Myanmar was being imported into Germany.

In 2023, Der Spiegel reported that teak from Myanmar was being smuggled into Germany via third countries and used in luxury yachts.

So far, the German courts have taken no action.

Of course there is no evidence that Bezos knew that his megayacht’s decks were built using “blood timber”. But he has enough advisers, like Sir Andrew Steer, who really should be keeping an eye on what Bezos is up to.

The fact that Bezos was spending US$500 million on a megayacht should have been a huge red flag for Steer — suggesting that (at least) further investigation was necessary. But somehow neither Steer, nor anyone else at Bezos Earth Fund, felt the need to investigate further.

The uncomfortable truth is that if Bezos really cared about the climate crisis, he would never have bought a megayacht.

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This is the second of an occasional series on REDD-Monitor: Billionaires aren’t going to save the planet.