The Earthshot Prize announced its five winners for 2024 at an award ceremony hosted and livestreamed from Cape Town, South Africa, on Nov. 6. The prize was dubbed “Planet Earth’s biggest celebration of climate creativity” at the start of the event.
Launched by Prince William of the U.K. in 2020, the Earthshot Prize is awarded annually to projects that work toward five kinds of solutions for environmental problems: Protect and Restore Nature; Clean Our Air; Revive Our Oceans; Build a Waste-free World; and Fix Our Climate.
Each winner, selected from 15 finalists and 2,500 nominees, will receive 1 million pounds ($1.3 million) to “accelerate and scale their game-changing environmental solutions.”
“We want to make this the decade when we transform the world for good, one solution at a time from the ground up,” William said at the award ceremony. “That’s why we are here, to champion the dreamers, the thinkers, the innovators from every walk of life who share an ambition to build a better, more sustainable world. We’ll do everything we can to support them and help speed their solution to scale.”
The Green Africa Youth Organization (GAYO) from Ghana was the winner in the “Clean Our Air” category. The group works to reduce waste that reaches landfills, which in turn can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and particle pollution that results from the burning of landfill waste.
The High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People, winner in the “Revive Our Oceans” category, is a global organization of 119 countries. It engages with political leaders and Indigenous peoples and local communities, and provides governments with technical support and resources to help them achieve the goal of protecting 30% of the world’s lands and waters by 2030.
The Kazakhstan-based Altyn Dala Conservation Initiative won in the “Protect and Restore Nature” category. The organization was recognized for its efforts to restore steppe grasslands in Kazakhstan to help boost populations of rare wildlife like the saiga antelope (Saiga tatarica) and Przewalski’s wild horse (Equus przewalskii).
“Whenever we make peace with nature, give her space and time, she has incredible capacity to restore and recover herself,” Vera Voronova, Altyn Dala’s executive director, said at the ceremony. “And the remarkable recovery of the saiga antelope in Kazakhstan is the evidence of this.”
Kenya’s Keep IT Cool won in the “Build a Waste-free World” category for its efforts to provide refrigeration solutions for small farmers and fishers that can reduce food waste and improve the livelihoods of communities.
Advanced Thermovoltaic Systems from the U.S. was the winner in the “Fix Our Climate” category. The company was recognized for developing technology that captures waste heat from industries like cement production and steelmaking, and converts it into electricity, thereby reducing CO2 emissions.
Banner image of saiga antelope by Andrey Giljov via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
