What is Earth Alliance? Brian Sheth and Leonardo DiCaprio’s Conservation Dream Team
By Space Coast Daily // August 17, 2022
Brian Sheth is one of the world’s youngest billionaires, amassing his fortune as a co-founder of a private equity firm. Leonardo DiCaprio is the Oscar-winning actor we all know and love from his many box-office hits.
Besides rising to the top of their respective industries through hard work and talent, there’s something else that these two juggernauts share — a deep appreciation for planet Earth and a burning passion for global conservationism.
It’s this mutual interest that brought them together in the Earth Alliance.
Earth Alliance
In one of his most recent ventures into conservation, Brian Sheth co-founded Earth Alliance, an organization dedicated to protecting the planet’s life support systems, alongside co-founders DiCaprio and businesswoman Laurene Powell Jobs.
Created in response to a growing climate crisis and biodiversity loss, the Alliance is working to save life on our planet. A consortium of organizations, including the Emerson Collective (founded by Powell Jobs), the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, and the Global Wildlife Conservation (now rebranded as Re:wild and headed by Sheth), pool their resources to maximize Earth Alliance’s impact.
Earth Alliance’s website describes its mission as protecting ecosystems and wildlife, ensuring climate justice, promoting renewable energy, and protecting Indigenous rights. Earth Alliance gives grants, funds campaigns, and works with grassroots organizations and individuals in areas most affected by biodiversity loss and climate change.
The destruction of the natural world is caused or exacerbated by an increase in natural disasters, food insecurity for a growing number of people, species extinctions, community displacement, ocean acidification, and human deaths.
DiCaprio says Earth Alliance is a “new larger, nimble platform that shares resources and expertise while identifying the best programs to drive real change around the planet.”
According to Brian Sheth, “Our planet is at a critical turning point, and we have an opportunity to transition our society to a sustainable one in harmony with — and in support of — all life on Earth. I am honored to team up with Laurene and Leo in this ambitious new partnership to save our incredible natural world by conserving wildlife and wild places and supporting the many individuals, organizations, and indigenous groups that serve as guardians protecting life around the world.”
Laurene Powell Jobs had the following to say: “The climate crisis threatens all we know and love, and each of us must ask ourselves and one another what more we can do to protect the planet we share — Earth Alliance is part of our answer.”
Leonardo DiCaprio
As a champion of environmentalism, DiCaprio has given out $100 million in grants through his Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation. “I am extremely proud of the impact my foundation has made over the last 20 years by supporting nearly 200 projects from 132 different organizations across climate science, marine conservation, and Indigenous rights,” said DiCaprio. Earth Alliance will incorporate his foundation.
At the South by South Lawn (SXSL) festival on the South Lawn of the White House, he discussed climate change: “When I traveled to the Galápagos Islands, I met with [wildlife veterinarian] Paula Castaño and other environmental heroes in Ecuador working day in and day out to save one of the most irreplaceable places on the planet.
I’m excited to share her team’s work and to support the longstanding effort to protect and restore these iconic islands alongside the team at Re:wild. Unfortunately, around the world, the wild is declining. We have degraded three-quarters of the wild places and pushed more than 1 million species to the brink of extinction.”
He cautioned that “more than half of Earth’s remaining wild areas could disappear in the next few decades if we don’t act, and added: “Fortunately, conservation leaders like Paula are showing us that it is not too late to reverse this alarming trend.”
Laurene Powell Jobs
Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs, is a businesswoman and philanthropist.
“All we know and love is threatened by the climate crisis, and each of us must ask ourselves and one another what more we can do to protect the planet we share,” she said.
“Earth Alliance is part of our answer. I am proud to join with Leo and Brian to make a habitable Earth possible for future generations. Leo is one of the most uniquely gifted communicators of our time, and with Earth Alliance, we will harness those gifts to inspire people, regardless of age, race, or geography, to stand up as leaders for our natural world and safeguard our imperiled planet.”
Brian Sheth
In addition to being an entrepreneur, self-made billionaire Brian Sheth is a prolific philanthropist. He established The Sheth Sangreal Foundation with his wife, Adria, to support environmental and educational initiatives. The Sheth Sangreal Foundation funds Earth Alliance’s operations and administrative costs.
As stated in the mission statement of the Sheth Sangreal Foundation, “For our children, our planet and our well-being, to ensure no one stands alone while protecting life in a changing world.” This incredible foundation allows Sheth to have a positive impact on millions of lives.
Fifty thousand miles of forest and 83 species have been saved from extinction thanks to the Sheth Sangreal Foundation, and more than 120,000 children have been impacted. The organization is involved in 430 projects and has established over 90 partnerships with like-minded organizations, governments, local authorities, and communities across more than 80 countries. Over $60 million has been donated by the foundation to save the planet.
Those in this incredible collective for good are environmental heroes. It’s now up to us all to take up the challenge and join them.
