Patagonia founder donates entire company to fight climate change

Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, his wife and their two adult children have irrevocably transferred their ownership of the outdoor apparel company to a set of trusts and non-profit organisations.

Patagonia is an outdoor gear and apparel company based in California, US. Its product lines are similar to those of South Africa’s Cape Union Mart. Chouinard dictated that the corporation’s profits will fund efforts to deal with climate change, as well as protect wilderness areas. It will, however, remain a privately held enterprise.

Patagonia is worth about $3 billion (R53.6bn) and its profits that will be donated in perpetuity could total around $100 million (R1.78bn) every year.
The Conversation US spoke to Indiana University’s Ash Enrici, a scholar who studies how philanthropy affects the environment, to find out more about why this new form of charity is so important.

“The amount of uber-wealthy donating billions are increasingly making climate change a priority,” Enrici said.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, for example, announced in 2020 that he was putting $10bn into his Earth Fund, and Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, said in 2021 that she would devote $3.5bn of her fortune to fighting climate change.
But, no matter how frequently these donations occur, it’s important to keep in mind that the cost of meeting the world’s environmental challenges is enormous and will cost trillions of dollars. So while all of these gifts are certainly significant in their scale, donors and governments will need to do and spend much more.”

What’s unusual about Chouinard’s climate-change gift is its structure. By giving away his company and directing that the profits be spent fighting climate change in the long term in the form of regular instalments, he is creating a new model for large-scale donations.

Source: eNCA

In other news – Durban Gen shocks viewers

Viewers of Durban Gen were left shocked by the changes in the drama series on Monday, 3 October.

The show’s second season was extended and jumped straight to the lives of characters five years later. And, viewers took to Twitter to express their confusion. Learn more