Prince William announces 15 Finalists for inaugural year of the £50 million Earthshot Prize
17.9.2021 20:01:00 EEST | Business Wire | Press release
The Earthshot Prize announces today its first-ever shortlist of 15 Finalists, each with a chance of winning £1million to support their innovative environmental solutions to the greatest challenges facing the planet.
Prince William said: "Over half a century ago, President Kennedy’s ‘Moonshot’ programme united millions of people around the goal of reaching the moon. Inspired by this, The Earthshot Prize aims to mobilise collective action around our unique ability to innovate, problem solve and repair our planet.
“I am honoured to introduce the 15 innovators, leaders, and visionaries who are the first ever Finalists for The Earthshot Prize. They are working with the urgency required in this decisive decade for life on Earth and will inspire all of us with their optimism in our ability to rise to the greatest challenges in human history.”
Launched by Prince William and The Royal Foundation in October 2020, The Earthshot Prize is the most prestigious global environment prize in history. Like President John F. Kennedy’s ‘Moonshot’ did almost 60 years ago, the Prize aims to unleash an unprecedented wave of innovation and leadership to tackle our greatest environmental challenges. The Earthshot Prize will be awarded every year for the next decade, discovering a total of 50 Winners.
Five of these 15 Finalists will be awarded The Earthshot Prize and will win £1million in Prize funding for the best solutions of the five Earthshot goals: Protect and Restore Nature; Clean our Air; Revive our Oceans; Build a Waste-free World; and Fix our Climate. The Winners will be announced during an awards ceremony on 17th October from London’s Alexandra Palace, broadcast in the UK on BBC One and globally on Discovery+.
The Earthshot Prize Finalists for 2021 are:
Protect and Restore Nature:
- Pole Pole Foundation, Democratic Republic of Congo
An inspiring community-led model of conservation that protects gorillas and local livelihoods.
- The Republic of Costa Rica
A pioneering scheme paying local citizens to restore natural ecosystems that has led to a revival of the rainforest.
- Restor, Switzerland
A ground-breaking online platform connecting and empowering local conservation projects.
Clean our Air:
- The Blue Map App, China
China’s first public environmental database enabling citizens to hold polluters to account.
- Takachar, India
A pioneering technology to create profitable products from agricultural waste and put a stop to the burning of crops.
- Vinisha Umashankar, India
A 14-year-old innovator and activist who has designed a solar-powered ironing cart with the potential to improve air quality across India.
Revive our Oceans:
- Coral Vita, Bahamas
A truly cutting-edge breakthrough in coral farming that can restore our world’s dying coral reefs.
- Living Seawalls, Australia
Innovative and replicable seawall panels bringing marine life back to coastal sea defences.
- Pristine Seas, USA
An unprecedented global conservation programme protecting 6.5 million square km of the world’s ocean.
Build a Waste-Free World:
- The City of Milan Food Waste Hubs, Italy
A city-wide initiative that has dramatically cut waste while tackling hunger.
- Sanergy, Kenya
A circular sanitation solution that converts human waste into safe products for local farmers.
- WOTA BOX, Japan
A tiny water treatment plant that turns 98% of wastewater into clean water.
Fix our Climate:
- AEM Electrolyser, Thailand/Germany/Italy
An ingenious green hydrogen technology developed to transform how we power our homes and buildings.
- Reeddi Capsules, Nigeria
Solar-powered energy capsules making electricity affordable and accessible in energy-poor communities.
- SOLbazaar, Bangladesh
The world’s first peer-to-peer energy exchange network in a country on the front-line of climate change.
All 15 Finalists will receive support from The Earthshot Prize Global Alliance Members, an unprecedented network of global businesses, who will help scale their solutions for even greater impact.
Of these 15 Finalists, the five Winners will be selected by The Earthshot Prize Council, a diverse team of influential individuals which includes: HRH Prince William, Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan, Sir David Attenborough, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Indra Nooyi, Shakira Mebarak, Christiana Figueres, Luisa Neubauer, Cate Blanchett, Yao Ming, Daniel Alves Da Silva, Ernest Gibson, Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, Jack Ma, and Naoko Yamazaki.
In the run-up to the prize-giving ceremony on 17 October, BBC and Discovery will release a 5-part documentary series THE EARTHSHOT PRIZE: REPAIRING OUR PLANET, featuring Earthshot Prize Council Members including Prince William, Shakira Mebarak, Daniel Alves Da Silva and Sir David Attenborough.
For more information about the Finalists and The Earthshot Prize, visit: www.earthshotprize.org, email Claire Straw: TEPmedia@freuds.com, download media pack here.
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210917005454/en/
Contact information
Claire Straw:
TEPmedia@freuds.com
About Business Wire
For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Honoring the World’s Most Exceptional Tourism Destinations: Nominations Now Open for the Second TOURISE Awards2.9.2026 16:55:00 EEST | Press release
The second cycle of the TOURISE Awards officially launched today as a continuing global benchmark celebrating premier tourism destinations. The TOURISE Awards set a new global benchmark in 2025, celebrating destinations that deliver distinctive, purpose-driven travel experiences. In 2027, TOURISE will celebrate the destinations shaping tomorrow’s tourism; that deliver value across the entire journey, align with traveler purpose, and set new global standards for how the world travels, connects, and grows. Nominations are now open to the public from 1st September to 19th November 2026. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260901221901/en/ The TOURISE Awards feature six distinct award categories: Best Arts and Culture Destination, Best Adventure Destination, Best Food and Culinary Destination, Best Shopping Destination, Best Entertainment Destination, and a new category: Best Wellness Destination. Together, the catego
ABB Extends Engagement with Wipro to Deliver and Enhance Global Digital Workplace Services2.9.2026 16:30:00 EEST | Press release
Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT, BSE: 507685, NSE: WIPRO), a leading AI-powered technology services and consulting company, has renewed its long-standing Digital Workplace Services contract with ABB, a global technology leader in electrification and automation. Building on an established relationship spanning multiple years, Wipro will continue delivering end-to-end AI-enabled Digital Workplace Services for ABB's global operations while further enhancing employee experience through advanced automation, AI-powered service capabilities, and workplace modernization initiatives. Powered by Wipro Intelligence™, the unified suite of AI platforms, solutions and transformative offerings, this engagement will modernize ABB’s digital workplace with AI-led, experience-centric capabilities delivered through Wipro’s AI Live Workspace™ and Digital Workplace Services offerings and operationalized through WINGS, Wipro’s AI-powered delivery platform for operations. Through SmartOps, Wipro’s AIOps capability,
Safe Software to Increase Global Headcount by Over 15% as Demand for AI-Ready Data Grows2.9.2026 16:00:00 EEST | Press release
Safe Software, the creator of FME, the only All-Data, Any-AI enterprise integration platform with true support for spatial data, today announced it is recruiting for more than 60 roles throughout the remainder of 2026. The hiring will take the company past 400 employees, increasing headcount by over 15%, with new positions across the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. The expansion follows a year in which Safe crossed $100 million in annual revenue, growing close to 20 percent year over year and moving ahead of schedule on its target of $250 million by 2028. The company also grew its employee base by over 20% in the same period. "The incredible growth that we’ve seen over the last 30+ years at Safe has always been a testament to the great people behind what we do," said Don Murray, Co-Founder and CEO of Safe Software. "Almost every organization we speak to is trying to get its data ready for AI, and most of them are realizing that the hard part is not the model, it is the da
Egon Zehnder Names Ayşe Güçlü Onur Global Human Resources Practice Leader2.9.2026 16:00:00 EEST | Press release
Egon Zehnder has appointed Ayşe Güçlü Onur as Global Leader of its Human Resources Practice. This appointment comes as companies and boards increasingly look to CHROs to help shape business strategy, lead transformation, build leadership pipelines, and navigate major shifts in culture and the workforce. "CHROs used to be evaluated by how well they supported the business. Today, the best drive it," said Onur. "Our role is to help CHROs move from a seat at the table to a hand in business growth. We help them connect leadership decisions, talent, and culture directly to elevated performance. That's the shift Egon Zehnder is built to guide with our leadership advisory services." Egon Zehnder’s Human Resources Practice partners with companies to discover, develop, and transform future-ready CHROs, helping them shape the future of the function. This includes executive search, leadership assessment and development, board effectiveness, culture, succession planning, organizational transformati
Owkin to License K Pro AI Scientist and Multimodal Oncology and Immunology Data to Boehringer Ingelheim2.9.2026 15:00:00 EEST | Press release
Owkin, the agentic AI company striving to transform drug discovery and development for biopharma, today announced a license agreement with Boehringer Ingelheim for K Pro, Owkin’s AI Scientist, together with multimodal patient data, aiming to speed up the discovery process across multiple indications in oncology and immunology. This agreement builds upon an initial pilot undertaken by Owkin with Boehringer in 2025. In that pilot Owkin delivered deep spatial insights into the tumor microenvironment of a gene target through its MOSAIC dataset. Under the new agreement, Owkin will license multimodal oncology data to Boehringer and will generate new multimodal data in immunology. Owkin licenses, sources and generates multimodal patient data in collaboration with its global patient data network. Boehringer Ingelheim’s teams will access and analyze this data through K Pro, which provides a single environment to interrogate data and run reproducible analyses. K Pro’s reasoning capabilities supp
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom