What is the Prince William Earthshot Prize and what are its objectives?

What is the Prince William Earthshot Prize and what are its goals?

We highlight the award winners for the year 2022

The “Earthshot-Earthshot” award, or “Earthshot”, is an award established by Prince William in 2020 to support entrepreneurs developing unconventional climate solutions.

The name of the award is a reference to US President John F. Kennedy’s 1962 speech titled “Moon Attempts” which rallied public support for efforts to land American astronauts on the moon within a decade.

The term has persisted as a metaphor for goals so ambitious that they require enormous intellectual and financial commitments. In recent years, the urgency of the climate challenge has led some to ask whether limiting climate change will be what is needed to avoid future catastrophe?

The Earthshot Prize __EG_PH_22 answers this question yes, and brings in an amount of approximately “60 million” dollars to be disbursed during the current decade. The award holds an annual ceremony until 2030 to honor the most important environmental projects in the world.

Award categories and number of winners

The Earthshot Prize, an independent charity recently separated from The William and Catherine Royal Foundation, awards “5 million pounds sterling”, distributed among the five winners, one from each of the award categories: nature conservation and protection, air quality, ocean revitalization, waste-free living, and climate action.

This year there were more than 1,000 applicants from 80 countries, with submitted files reviewed by an expert panel of scientists, policymakers and academics, according to the organization’s website.

A high-level group of judges led by Prince William selects the winners from a group of three finalists in each category, which includes: naturalist David Attenborough, actress Cate Blanchett, singer Shakira, Queen Rania of Jordan, and businessman Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba. Below we highlight the winners for the year 2022.

 Preserving and protecting nature: greenhouses of Kheyti

Of the “570 million” farms in the world, more than 80 percent of them are farms of less than 5 acres. Together, these small farms produce a third of our food, but those who grow them are among the poorest people on the planet, and the most affected by climate change.

India is home to “100 million” smallholder farmers. India is also one of the most climate-affected regions in the world, and this year it recorded its first and most violent heat waves ever; Which led to a decline in harvests at a time when the world was already suffering from food shortages.

Kheyti, an Indian startup, has developed a simple but impactful solution. The company has designed an innovative greenhouse for smallholder farmers and the crops they grow, providing shelter from climate change and devastating pests. Kheyti also trains and supports farmers to ensure their greenhouses are as efficient as possible.

Although it may seem usual, what is new in this greenhouse? What’s new is that plants in this greenhouse use 98 percent less water than those outdoors, and productivity is seven times higher. The design of the greenhouse makes it easier to disassemble and install, in addition to being ninety percent cheaper compared to traditional greenhouses, so it more than doubles farmers’ income, helps them invest more in their farms and educating their children, and uses less water and pesticides. Thus, they also protect the planet.

Air Quality: Clean Mukuru Stoves

Charlotte Magai grew up in Mukuru, one of Nairobi’s largest slums, and had been selling charcoal for fuel for years, but the charcoal caused regular respiratory infections for her and her neighbours. Then in 2012, her daughter was severely burned by a coal stove, and searching for a better solution; She founded Mukuru Clean Stoves in 2017.

In African slums, primitive cooking solutions are relied upon, completely different from the ovens (stoves) that we see in our homes, so the challenge here was to find an economical and light solution that we can rely on.

Instead of burning solid fuel, Mukuru Clean Stoves use processed biomass made from charcoal, wood and sugarcane, resulting in 90 percent less pollution than using an outdoor fire source, and 70 percent less than a traditional cooking stove. The stove comes at a cheap price, costing only $10.

Today, 200,000 people in Kenya use Mukuru’s clean stoves, saving $10 million in fuel costs and also saving lives in rural areas, where young girls spend three hours a day collecting firewood, and the company also works to empower women to earn a living.

Magai plans to create a cleaner, ethanol-burning stove within three years, and hopes to reach 1 million customers. Within ten years, it plans to reach ten million people across Africa.

 Ocean Revival: Indigenous Women of the Great Barrier Reef

Facing a warming planet, the Great Barrier Reef located in the Coral Sea off the coast of Queensland, Australia, is under constant threat. Meanwhile, on Earth, plants and animals are being devastated by increasingly regular forest fires.

The indigenous people of the region are trying to defend it with their ancient knowledge that is passed down from generation to generation, while using the most modern tools, such as drones that monitor coral changes, forest fires, and land degradation.

However, only 20% of Aboriginal forest rangers in Queensland are women, which is where the Queensland Aboriginal Women Ranger Network comes in. Over the past four years, the network has helped build the next generation of women forest rangers.

The program trained more than 60 women, and encouraged new conservation methods through knowledge sharing. Through their vital work, and the data they collected, we were able to gain insight into one of the most important ecosystems on the planet. As protectors of the land, rangers also have protected sites of great cultural and spiritual significance.

With greater support, the idea of “employing indigenous environmental guardians” could extend across the planet; Which will help restore ecosystems from Hawaii to Nepal and Tanzania.

 Waste-free living: an alternative to plastic from seaweed

Global awareness of the problem of Plastic packaging has reached record levels in recent years, with the quest for a truly sustainable alternative continuing, but does the solution lie in the seas? Notpla, a London-based startup founded by Pierre Paslier and Rodrigo García Gonzalez, thinks so.

It is worth noting here that only 9% of the total plastic produced throughout history has been recycled while 12% of it has been burned, with the rest going to landfills or being dumped in the oceans. Notpla is an alternative to plastic made from seaweed and plants. The new solution is a completely natural and completely biodegradable alternative, and can be used to create a range of product packaging.

Notpla has already manufactured more than one million take-away food boxes for a food company, with the potential to replace more than “100 million” plastic-wrapped containers in Europe in the future, and the company continues to research to develop new forms and solutions of the product.

Notpla’s impact is wide and varied. Cultivated seaweed, which is then used as raw material, captures carbon 20 times faster than trees, tackling one of the main causes of the climate crisis. The packaging itself means less plastic clogging our seas; Which reduces ocean waste. At the same time, farms are increasing fish populations, and seaweed farming is creating new opportunities for fishing communities.

Notpla is still at the beginning of its journey, with new materials in development that could one day replace single-use plastic packaging applications across various industries and on a global scale.

 Climate action: turning carbon dioxide into stones

While many companies have made progress in developing technologies to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, storing – or better disposing of – millions of tons of it remains a challenge.

The “44.01” company, which is named after the molecular weight of carbon dioxide, is an Omani company that provides solutions to permanently eliminate carbon through “peridotite”, a rock found in abundance in Oman, as well as in America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

Peridotite rocks are characterized by the fact that they can capture and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, where they react with it to form a solid mineral of limestone or marble, but this process can take many years for it to react with a small amount of carbon dioxide. 44.01 It accelerates this process in peridotite layers deep in the Earth.

Unlike carbon “storage,” which involves burying carbon dioxide underground in oil wells or abandoned aquifers, this method removes carbon dioxide forever. This means there is no need for long-term monitoring or constant insurance of the amount of carbon being removed, and the new method could make the process more cost-effective, scalable and safer.

As the world transitions to clean forms of energy, 44.01 is also providing new job opportunities for engineers and geologists working in the fossil fuel industry, and given that Oman has the largest concentration of peridotite in the world, the new technology could play a role in providing a large number of job opportunities for everyone in this country.

Who was last year’s winner?

In the last world edition, which was attended by the Egyptian star “Mohamed Salah” by official invitation, Costa Rica won in the category of protecting and restoring nature through its national system to prevent deforestation by paying citizens to care for forests. The category highlights all efforts made to reduce the global collapse of diversity. Biological.

In the air quality category, Takachar, an India-based company, won the award for its efforts to combat air pollution caused by agricultural burning, developing a portable technology that attaches to tractors and turns crop waste into fuel and fertilizer.

For Ocean Revival, Coral Vita, a company working to restore our world’s dying and damaged coral reefs, won by growing resilient corals on farms and in threatened coral reef ecosystems in the Bahamas.

While the city of Milan won in the waste-free living category; This is in recognition of its food waste centres, which recover unsold food from supermarkets and businesses and redistribute it through charities and food banks. Worldwide, food waste accounts for between 8 and 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.

In the Climate Action category, which highlights efforts to reduce emissions, Enapter, a German energy technology company, won; This is because she invented a small electrolysis device, which is now sold in 50 countries around the world, and is used to produce hydrogen fuel from water.

We are waiting for next year’s ceremony to see the new innovations in the field of preserving the environment and its components, all in pursuit of one goal, which is to preserve and restore planet Earth and work to sustain it.