The Prince of Wales has revealed the five winners of this year’s environmental Earthshot Prize, calling them an “inspiration that gives us courage”. Prince William said their work was “proof that progress is possible” during Wednesday evening’s awards ceremony in Rio de Janeiro’s Museum of Tomorrow. Winners include a project for making South America’s Atlantic Forest financially viable and a global ocean treaty initiative aimed at conserving marine life. Brazilian football legend Cafu, Olympic gymnast Rebeca Andrade and former Formula 1 driver Sebastian Vettel were among the award presenters. Performances from Kylie Minogue, Shawn Mendes and Brazilian queen of pop Anitta also got the jubilant mood swinging.
Earthshot Prize supports eco-friendly projects from around the world, and annually awards each of the five winners with a £1m grant to scale up their ideas aimed at repairing the world’s climate. Organisers of the initiative were inspired by former US President John F Kennedy’s Moonshot project, which challenged scientists to get astronauts to the Moon and back safely. Hosted by award-winning Brazilian broadcaster Luciano Huck, the awards ceremony was addressed by Prince William, the Earthshot Prize’s president. “When I founded the Earthshot Prize in 2020, we had a 10-year goal: to make this the decade in which we transformed our world for the better,” he told attendees. “We set out to tackle environmental issues head on and make real, lasting changes that would protect life on Earth.”
There are five Earthshots or goals: Protect and Restore Nature; Clean Our Air; Revive Our Oceans; Build a Waste-free World; and Fix Our Climate.The future king has committed himself to it for 10 years, with Rio marking a halfway point for the venture. This year saw nearly 2,500 nominees submitted from 72 countries. Out of them, 15 finalists were selected, from which the five winners were chosen.