Following his father Charles III “the green” King of the United Kingdom, Prince William also cares about the future of our planet. In 2020 the Prince together with The Royal Foundation launched The Earthshot Prize. Today Prince William announces the finalists for the 2022 Earthshot Prize. On December 2, five winners will receive £ 1 million prizes in a ceremony hosted in Boston.
The Earthshots
The Prize is invoked in the spirit of President John F. Kennedy. In the 60’s Kennedy’s ‘Moonshot’ united the American people around the goal of reaching the moon. This inspired Prince William to mobilize a wave of innovation and technology to be more optimistic about the future of our planet ánd to take serious action in this critical decade. According to scientifically agreed goals and targets, e.g. the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the prize is divided into 5 categories.
The 5 Earthshots:
- Protect and restore Nature
- Clean our Air
- Revive our Oceans
- Build a Waste-Free world
- Fix our Climate
Judging process
Finalists and the later winners of the prize are selected in a 5-stage procedure. Over 1,000 solutions to the 5 earthshots were submitted in early 2022. Afterward, the nominations were screened and shortlisted and assessed by a global Expert Advisory Panel that lists the 15 finalists. This panel consists of experts in science, conservation innovation, investment, economics, politics, communications and activism.
The final stage is deciding on the winners in the 5 different categories. The 5 winners will be selected by The Earthshot Prize Council, a diverse team of influential individuals committed to using their platforms to champion inspiring leadership and elevate urgent efforts to repair and regenerate the planet. Among the members are Prince William, Christiana Figueres (chair), Sir David Attenborough, Queen Rania Al Abdullah from Jordan and famous singer Shakira.
What’s at stake
The Earthshot Prize aims to catalyse an Earthshot challenge to urgently encourage and scale innovative solutions that can help put the world firmly on a trajectory toward a stable climate, where communities, oceans, and biodiversity thrive in harmony by 2030. The 5 winning projects will each receive £ 1 million. On top of that, all the finalists will receive tailored support and resources from The Earthshot Prize Global Alliance Members, an unprecedented network of private sector businesses around the world committed to helping scale innovative climate and environmental solutions and multiplying their impact.
The 15 Earthshot Prize Finalists 2022 are:
The Earthshot Prize to Protect and Restore Nature
1. Desert Agricultural Transformation, China: A team developing cutting-edge agricultural breakthroughs to turn barren desert landscapes into lush, green ones.
2. Hutan, Malaysia: An inspiring conservation model that protects orangutans, supports local jobs and livelihoods and restores forests to their former greatness.
3. Kheyti, India: A pioneering solution for local smallholder farmers to reduce costs, increase yields and protect livelihoods in a country on the frontlines of climate change.
Employees and the founders of the Kheyti project in IndiaThe Earthshot Prize to Clean Our Air
1. Roam, Kenya: An organisation building lower emission vehicles, making clean transportation accessible and affordable for urban cities on the African continent.
2. Mukuru Clean Stoves, Kenya: A start-up providing cleaner-burning stoves to women in Kenya to reduce unhealthy indoor pollution and provide a safer way to cook.
3. The Ampd Enertainer, Hong Kong: An emission-free electric battery system to power construction and reduce pollution.
Members of the AMPD team in their factoryThe Earthshot Prize to Revive Our Oceans
1. SeaForester, Portugal: A truly cutting-edge breakthrough in seaweed farming that can restore the ocean’s forgotten forests.
2. Indigenous Women of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia: An inspiring women-led programme that combines 60,000 years of indigenous knowledge with digital technologies to protect land and sea.
3. The Great Bubble Barrier, Netherlands: Inventive and ingenious technique to intercept plastics before they reach oceans by creating a curtain of bubbles.
The Earthshot Prize to Build A Waste-Free World
1. City of Amsterdam Circular Economy, Netherlands: A city-wide initiative to establish a fully circular economy by 2050, wasting nothing and recycling everything.
2. Fleather, India: An innovative and regenerative approach to creating leather out of floral waste.
3. Notpla, United Kingdom: A circular solution creating an alternative to plastic packaging from seaweed.
Notpla farms seaweed and other plants that disappear naturally. From those plants they create packaging in their fight against single-use plastic.The Earthshot Prize to Fix Our Climate
1. LanzaTech, USA: A circular solution that recycles carbon waste into sustainable fuels and everyday products.
2. 44.01, Oman: Childhood friends who have developed an innovative technique to turn CO2 into rock, and permanently store it underground.
3. Low Carbon Materials, United Kingdom: A new and innovative material that uses unrecyclable plastic waste to make traditional concrete blocks carbon-zero.
Part of the LCM teamStay tuned on the Earthshot Prize finalists
In 4 weeks the award ceremony will take place in Boston. Stay tuned on the finalists and keep track of your favorite project and maybe even have a look on how you could support sustainability projects in your surrounding.