Amazon invests R24m to restore nature and create jobs in Soweto
August 31, 2026
Source: Sowetan
The Soweto Urban Greening Project will revitalise the Klip River corridor, plant 20,000 trees, and create lasting economic opportunities for local communities.
Amazon is investing $1.5 million through its Right Now Climate Fund to support a nature restoration and community resilience project in Soweto in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Delivered by the World Resources Institute (WRI) in collaboration with the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), the project is expected to restore degraded river landscapes, create hundreds of jobs, and deploy cutting-edge climate technology to protect one of South Africa's most vulnerable urban communities.
The project centers on the restoration of 130 hectares of the Klip River corridor—a critical water source for Johannesburg and surrounding areas—by removing invasive species and solid waste, reintroducing indigenous vegetation, and stabilizing riverbanks to enhance water quality, reduce flooding, and preserve local biodiversity.
The initiative is designed to create lasting economic opportunity for Soweto's residents. It will create approximately 300 jobs in nature restoration such as nursery businesses, urban forestry, and native plant propagation, and provide training to equip over 1,000 women from the community with technical skills and business know-how to turn restoration work into income-generating enterprises.
Four urban farms and 20 school clubs will be established to empower communities and youth leadership. In total, the project is estimated to engage more than 2,000 people directly—of whom over 50% are women—and will benefit an area of more than 200,000 people through improved food security, reduced heat stress, and flood mitigation.
Mapping urban heat with AWS technology
WRI's Cool Cities Lab data platform equips city officials with heat data accurate to the square meter to deploy cooling techniques such as trees, cool roofs and shade structures to the neighborhoods that need them most. AWS is providing the computing power, machine learning technology, and engineering support to expand the platform's reach and scale—making it faster, more powerful, and easily accessible to non-technical users such as planners and community leaders.
The project is also supported by City of Johannesburg, Johannesburg City Parks and Zoo, and GenderCC Southern Africa.