By Aliu Akoshile
The British Prince of Wales, Prince William, will today in Cape Town, South Africa, unveil the five winners of the £5 million Earthshot Awards, the world’s biggest environmental prize.
Each of the winners will receive a grant of £1 million to support the scaling up of their creative solutions to the world’s environmental challenges.
This is the first time the prize ceremony will be held in Africa since the maiden awards were given in 2021.
The five winners of this year’s awards will be selected based on rigorous screening from a pool of over 2,400 entries received from 140 countries.
The Earthshot Prize is a global environmental award launched by Prince William in 2020, with a prize budget of £50 million to be disturbed £5 annually for ten years.
The prize is awarded annually to five individuals or organizations who create impactful and sustainable solutions addressing the planet’s environmental challenges.
Inspired by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), the Earthshot award is based on five thematic issues, namely, to Protect and Restore Nature – for initiatives that protect and restore natural ecosystems; Clean Our Air – for solutions that reduce air pollution; and Revive Our Oceans – for initiatives that restore and preserve ocean health.
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Others are to build a Waste-Free World – for solutions that reduce waste and promote sustainable consumption; and to Fix Our Climate – for initiatives that address climate change.
Inspired by President John F. Kennedy’s “Moonshot” challenge in 1962 to land a man on the moon within a decade, The Earthshot Prize, according to the The Prince Foundation, was launched by Prince William in 2020 to search for and scale the most innovative solutions to the world’s greatest environmental challenges.
Justifying the huge prize attached to the awards, the Foundation noted that “change was not yet happening fast enough or at the scale we need.
“Levels of climate anxiety and despondency are high, and political interventions are happening too slowly.
“Despite all these challenges, we are optimists. We see genuine pathways to an era of regeneration and abundance.
“We want to unleash the urgent optimism required to accelerate and scale the environmental innovations that will repair and regenerate our planet.
The Earthshot award on environment is one of the focal issues Prince Willaim is committed to.
The Foundation says The Prince of Wales is also keen “in bringing lasting change on disrupting the illegal wildlife trade, tackling mental health stigma, supporting our emergency service community and leading a global search for solutions to save our planet through The Earthshot Prize.”
The maiden African’s event will be headlined by many showbiz personalities, including Billy Porter, Bonang Matheba, Ebuka Obi-Uchendu, and Nomuzi Mabena.
