The Earthshot Prize awards ceremony for 2022 was recently held in the United States at the MGM Music Hall in Boston, naming five winners.
Each winner was awarded Earthshot prize funding of $1.2 million to develop their environmental solution. The winning participants were from Kenya, India, Oman, the UK, and Australia, with five categories available.
The five Earthshot Prize 2022 winners were selected for five categories, each representing a specific global environmental challenge. The five categories are:
- Restoration and Protection of Nature,
- Air Cleanliness,
- Ocean Revival,
- Waste-free Living, and
- Climate Action.
These five categories were after the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
What is the Earthshot Prize?
The Moonshot challenge launched by President J.F. Kennedy in 1962 inspired the Earthshot Prize. The said challenge set out to reach the monumental goal of landing on the moon within 10 years.
Finding tangible solutions to looming environmental issues that will become critical in the next few years is the main objective of the Earthshot Prize.
Prince William and Sir David Attenborough launched the initiative in 2020 after two years of development, and the prize will run until 2030.
Five annual winners from 15 finalists, will each receive $1.2m in funding. The inaugural Earthshot prize awards ceremony was held in October 2021 at Alexandra Palace in the UK.
The Earthshot Prize Council selected the winners, a thirteen-member council of global ambassadors in various fields of climate action and environmentalism. Some of the council members include Queen Rania of Jordan, Sir David Attenborough, Prince William, and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the current Director-General of the World Trade Organization.
The Earthshot Prize 2022 Winners
The Earthshot prize winner for the ‘Protect and Restore Nature’ category was Kheyti. It’s an Indian startup that developed a ‘greenhouse-in-a-box’ solution to help smallholder farmers increase their yield.
Mukuru Clean Stoves won the Clean Our Air prize award. They’re to develop clean and safe cooking stoves in Africa that do not emit harmful chemicals that cause respiratory issues.
The Revive Our Oceans category winner was the Indigenous Women of the Great Barrier Reef. It is an initiative led by the Indigenous women in Australia to protect critical ecosystems around the world.
The Build a Waste Free World Earthshot Prize winner 2022 was Notpla. The firm is a London-based startup that tackles the plastic waste issue by developing an eco-friendly seaweed-based alternative.
Finally, the Fix Our Climate part of the 2022 Earthshot Prize award went to 44.01, a novel carbon removal solution that permanently stores carbon dioxide by mineralizing it inside rocks. Permanent storage of carbon dioxide has been a critical issue in recent years as part of an effort to drastically reduce carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Some of the 2021 Earthshot Prize winners included the Indian-based Takachar, an agricultural waste recycling initiative, and Enapter’s green hydrogen solution, the AEM Electrolyser.
Meanwhile, the Earthshot Prize 2023 nominations are currently open. And the deadline for nominations is on the 31st of January 2023. Submissions can be made via the hundreds of global official nominators for the Earthshot Prize 2023.