LONDON, October 17, 2021 — Five innovators on Sunday won 1 million pounds each at the inaugural awards ceremony for Prince Williams’s Earthshot Prize, a kind of Oscars for green projects that the British royal hopes will highlight creative solutions to the world’s most pressing environmental challenges.
The winners, spanning the globe from Italy to Costa Rica, were announced at the glitzy televised ceremony at Alexandra Palace in North London, where guests arrived on a “green carpet.”
William founded the environmental prize — self-styled as the “most prestigious global environment prize in history” — after becoming disappointed with world leaders’ lackluster efforts to combat climate change, he has said in his book on the initiative.
Ahead of the ceremony, his father, Prince Charles, tweeted: “I am very proud of my son, William, for his growing commitment to the environment and the bold ambition of the Earthshot Prize.”
The winners included a green hydrogen technology that can be used as a carbon-free alternative to fossil fuels; an India-based outfit that makes low-cost smokeless machines that convert agricultural waste into fuels and fertilizers; and a team from the Bahamas that grows coral farms on land that can be replanted in oceans.
The Republic of Costa Rica also won for reversing deforestation by paying its citizens to protect its forests, and the city of Milan won for its system of food hubs that collect and redistribute surplus supplies to the city’s needy.
The winners were selected from a pool of more than 750 candidates chosen by a panel of more than 200 experts. The judges included the British TV naturalist David Attenborough, Jordan’s Queen Rania, actress Cate Blanchett, singer Shakira and former basketball star Yao Ming.
Keeping with the eco-friendly theme, the winners didn’t collect their prizes onstage; rather, they were patched in via video from around the world. See complete Washington Post article at https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/earthshot-prince-william-winners/2021/10/17/6b870dd2-2ba5-11ec-b17d-985c186de338_story.html
