The Prince of Wales attended the Earthshot Prize ceremony in Boston on Friday evening which saw five projects win the £1million prize towards their efforts in tackling climate issues.
The Prince founded the Earth shot Prize in 2020 and will reward projects every year until 2030. Now the royal who has made tackling the climate crisis a cornerstone of his royal work has declared his confidence in our ability to “repair our planet”.
William compared his faith in humanity to prevent significant climate crises to the belief of former US President John F Kennedy that man could land on the moon.
The Prince was inspired by Kennedy’s ‘Moonshot’ project while naming his climate awards.
Speaking previously to The Guardian, the Prince said: “The Earth shot Prize is really about harnessing that optimism and that urgency to find solutions to some of the world’s greatest environmental problems.”
The royal identified this decade as “critical” in relation to the worsening climate crisis. It marked it as a time for urgency in tackling and overcoming the climate issues we face including pollution, the destruction of habitats, and waste.
From a list of 15 finalists, five winners were chosen by a select panel that included the likes of David Attenborough.
The five winners were each part of different categories dealing with different areas affecting the climate crisis such as clean air and nature protection and restoration.
The five winners are projects from Oman, India, Kenya, the United Kingdom and Australia.
One of the winners was a project from childhood friends in Oman who devised a way to turn carbon dioxide into rocks.
The project, called 44.01, will look for a cheaper and safer way to store carbon than burying it underground.
44.01 founder Talal Hassan explained how it was a "proud moment" for him and his team of colleagues who "launched 44.01 two years ago because we saw the real impact of climate change here in Oman".
Kenya’s Mukuru Clean Stoves also won a prize for its stoves, which are heated with coal, wood and sugarcane rather than solid fuels that pollute the air.
Agriculture in India won the award for protecting nature by giving smallholder farmers Kaushik Kappagantulu’s greenhouse-in-a-box that protects crops from extreme weather conditions and pests.
UK-based project Notpla uses seaweed to create biodegradable and natural plastics in an effort to reduce plastic waste.
Meanwhile, in the Restoring Our Oceans category, The Indigenous Women of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia received the award for training more than 60 women in traditional and digital marine conservation techniques.
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