What is the Earthshot Prize created by the Royal Foundation?

In the face of mounting environmental challenges, the Earthshot Prize represents a focused effort to drive innovation and urgency. Established by Prince William and The Royal Foundation, this global initiative is inspired by President John F. Kennedy's ambitious "Moonshot" challenge from the 1960s. With the core principle that "urgency+ optimism = action", the prize seeks to spotlight and scale innovative solutions that address the planet's gravest concerns. As we delve deeper into the Earthshot Prize, we'll uncover its purpose, the ambitious goals set for 2030, and how it aims to galvanise global efforts in environmental restoration and regeneration.

👉 In this article, we'll explore the Earthshot Prize's mission to highlight and amplify groundbreaking solutions to urgent environmental issues by 2030.

Some people are becoming preoccupied with the idea of living on Mars, but the Earthshot Prize strives to maintain hope that humans can continue to reside on Earth. 

If we're exploring the possibility of life on Mars, why not ensure a sustainable future here on Earth? The Earthshot Prize champions the idea that through innovative solutions, Earth can continue to thrive as our home.

Have you ever heard of the term, “moonshot”? If you haven’t, it’s a term used to describe a goal that you think might never happen because it’s too extreme or “out of this world” to accomplish. The same meaning is depicted in the title of this environmentally savvy prize. 

The term "Earthshot" embodies ambitious Earth-centric goals that might seem unattainable. Hence, the “Earthshot Prize” was coined. Recognised as one of the top environmental accolades, it celebrates individuals uniting humanity in the mission to preserve our planet.

The Royal Foundation - the original creators of the Earthshot prize - is the primary philanthropic and charitable vehicle for The Prince and Princess of Wales, i.e. Prince William and his wife.

The Royal Foundation achieves this through the use of research, viable partnerships, and measuring their impact to lead to future improvement. 

On 31 December 2019, after two years in the making, Prince William unveiled the Earthshot Prize. Designed to recognise and reward impactful, sustainable solutions to the world's environmental challenges, the initiative saw a joint launch by Prince William and David Attenborough in October 2020 with a commitment of £50 million for the upcoming decade. Initially, under The Royal Foundation, the Earthshot Prize transitioned to an independent charity by July 2022 and is primarily funded by philanthropic donations and charitable contributions.

The Earthshot Prize works in five steps: search, select, accelerate, award, and scale. There will be five Earth shooters every year for the next decade. 

Step one: search

Step one of the Earthshot Prize is to conduct a global search for five, “Earth shooters” – or five people who have come up with an innovative solution worthy of the Earthshot Prize. 

The Earthshot Team searches the world for the best ideas and observes how these aspirational plans have motivated groups and others in their society to proceed with environmentally friendly habits in their own daily lives. 

👉 Anyone can be nominated for an Earthshot prize – no matter what sector their idea is for or what country they come from. 

Candidates for the Earthshot prize can present their ideas for a non-profit organisation, investment, corporate company, academic institution, government-based organisation, or communal purposes. The most important value that should be illustrated by any Earth shooter is their unified mission to better the planet. 

Nominations for the Earthshot Prize are made through the help of the Global Alliance, which is a network of various organisations dedicated to improving the planet and holding the same values entailed by the Earthshot Prize itself. 

The Global Alliance helps the Earthshot Prize committee seek the most influential and aspiring individuals with brilliant ideas to help maintain life on Earth.

The Earthshot Prize is becoming more popular with each following year – with 345 nominations from 80 countries around the world. 

The final part of the search step is the screening process, used to ensure the validity of each potential candidate for the Earthshot Prize.

Step two: select

After the search step is completed, the Earthshot Prize committee selects the most innovative solutions for five “Earth shooters”. This is better known as the “select” step. 

This is all done by the Earthshot Prize Council – which is an international team of influencers that share the same positive mindset for saving the planet as the rest of those involved in the Earthshot Prize. 

👉 The selection process is done by determining the main interest of each Earth shooter, and how their idea will benefit society and the planet. 

Step three: accelerate

The Earthshot Prize doesn’t just award people for having good ideas but actually helps them come to fruition. This is the third step of the Earthshot Prize process, known as the “accelerate” step. 

Essentially, this is the part of the process where after being awarded for an excellent environmental idea, each of the five winners receives special expertise to help them finalise their idea.

Step four: award

After the winners have undergone this programme to manifest their ideas into reality, they are awarded a whopping £1 million to help facilitate their ideas into action – which is known as the fourth step.

Not only does this massive financial contribution help the winners bring about real change, but it also provides them with an international platform to share their ideas being implemented into reality all over the world. 

👉 The Earthshot Prize committee doesn’t believe that winning the Earthshot Prize marks the end and ultimate success – but rather serves as the starting point to facilitate true change. 

Step five: scale

The fifth and final step in the Earthshot Prize is to “scale”, or in other words, to help the Earthshot Prize winner’s thinking turn into a reality so that concrete action can be taken to create real environmental change. 

The Earthshot Prize Council recognises that the global predicament of climate change isn’t going to get better just by coming up with good ideas, but by executing them. 

Through the generous financial award and subsequent guidance to help Earthshot Prize winners turn their ideas into viable projects, the Earthshot Prize illustrates their most imperative goal and value: to help bring indispensable and intriguing environmental ideas to life. 

Who are some of the people who have thrived with the help of the Earthshot Prize council, before? 

Even though the Earthshot Prize only started a few years ago (back in 2020) the Earthshot Prize has already helped many winners turn their environmental visions into reality. 

👉 The Earthshot Prize awards five different winners annually across five different categories: Protect and Restore Nature, Clean Our Air, Revive Our Oceans, Build a Waste-free World, and Fix Our Climate. 

In 2022, the Earthshot Prize recognised the following exceptional contributions to environmental solutions:

• Clean Our Air: Mukuru Clean Stoves from Kenya offers cleaner-burning stoves, addressing indoor pollution and ensuring safer cooking methods. Their mission has already impacted 200,000 households in Kenya, with the aim to expand to 1 million households.
• Protect and Restore Nature: Kheyti from India introduced the Greenhouse-in-a-Box, enabling smallholder farmers to cut costs, boost yields, and safeguard their livelihoods in climate-vulnerable regions. The innovation seeks to amplify the efforts of farmers globally.
• Revive Our Oceans: The Indigenous Women of the Great Barrier Reef program in Australia melds millennia of indigenous wisdom with modern tech to conserve land and marine environments. With over 60 trained women, the initiative promotes fresh conservation strategies.
• Build a Waste-Free World: UK-based Notpla is pioneering seaweed-derived alternatives to plastic. Their innovations range from edible water bubbles to seaweed paper, addressing the pressing issue of plastic waste with natural solutions.
• Fix Our Climate: Oman's 44.01 has conceptualised a unique method to transform CO2 into rock for permanent underground storage. This technique effectively removes CO2 from the atmosphere, presenting a potent solution to combat climate change.

These winners each received their £1 million financial supplement to jumpstart their environmental project, an Earthshot Prize medal, and the global, professional support to turn their ideas into real climate-change prevention projects. 

In addition to the five prize winners, all of the finalists are given the same personalised support to create tangible environmental projects stemming from the initial ideas that got them nominated for the Earthshot Prize. 

👉 Each winner has showcased groundbreaking initiatives to address our planet's pressing challenges, underscoring the global call for urgent and impactful action. And this year's finalists are no less impressive. Out of fifteen remarkable finalists, five will be chosen in November. Their outstanding accomplishments will be honoured in Singapore at the 2023 Earthshot Prize Ceremony on November 7th.

👉 The Earthshot Prize knows that answers to our problems regarding climate change exist – it’s just a matter of finding them and doing what’s possible to make these great ideas into a reality. 

Every year, the Earthshot Prize Council wants to give back to the world by giving exceptional ideas a chance to make a difference that would otherwise go unnoticed.  The Earthshot Prize, while generous with their £1 million donation to help scale these ideas into the real world, recognises that it takes more than just money – but expert guidance to create something worthy of eliciting change.

The Earthshot Prize council has an abundant and wide variety of resources to help the winners of the Earthshot Prize bring forth new, positive environmental action so that we can all stay put on planet Earth. 

The Earth can live without people, but people can’t live without Earth. Mars or the moon may seem exotic for now, but there’s no reason to plan for plan B when there is no confirmed planet B. 

It’s time we all make Planet A the priority it is, and the Earthshot Prize helps to make that priority a reality. 

If reading this article about the Earthshot Prize by the Royal Foundation has made you interested in reducing your carbon emissions to further fight against climate change – Greenly can help you!

Greenly can help you make an environmental change for the better, starting with a carbon footprint assessment to know how much carbon emissions your company produces.

‍Click here to learn more about Greenly and how we can help you reduce your carbon footprint.