The Earthshot Prize, founded by Britain's Prince William, on Sunday night revealed its first five winners at a glittering ceremony held in London.
Each winner will receive £1million ($1.3m) prize money and a global network of support for their environmental solutions to repair the planet.
The five winners include transformative technologists, innovators, an entire country and a pioneering city.
They were chosen for their ground-breaking solutions to the greatest environmental challenges facing our planet.
“Our five inspirational winners show that everyone has a role to play in the global effort to repair our planet," said Prince William, who is also a council member for the prize.
"We need businesses, leaders, innovators and communities to take action. And ultimately, we need all of us to demand that the solutions get the support they need.
"Because the success of our winners is our collective, global Earthshot.”
The Earthshot Prize winners for 2021 are:
Protect and Restore Nature: The Republic of Costa Rica
With an innovative policy paying citizens to protect rainforests and restore local ecosystems, Costa Rica and its Ministry for Environment have reversed decades of deforestation.
Since the programme was launched, Costa Rica’s forests have doubled in size, leading to a boom in ecotourism and contributing $4 billion to the economy.
Through winning the Earthshot Prize, Costa Rica will expand its work to protect the ocean and support the replication of its approach in other countries, especially in the global south.
Clean Our Air: Takachar, India
Takachar, in New Delhi, has developed technology to help end the burning of agricultural waste, which causes severe air pollution.
Its cheap, small-scale, portable technology is attached to tractors and converts crop residue into sellable products such as fuel and fertiliser, and helps to reduce smoke emissions by up to 98 per cent.
After winning the Earthshot Prize, Takachar will expand its operations to more rural communities around the world with a goal to cut a billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.
Revive Our Oceans: Coral Vita, the Bahamas
Coral Vita’s innovative approach to coral farming by growing it on land then replanting it in the ocean can produce it up to 50 times faster than traditional methods.
The process improves coral resilience to the effects of climate change.
Winning the Earthshot Prize will speed up Coral Vita’s goal to establish a global network of coral farms to grow a billion corals each year.
Build A Waste-free World: Milan's Food Waste Hubs
The Italian city's Food Waste Hub programme takes food from local supermarkets and restaurants and distributes it to citizens in need, recovering about 130 tonnes of food a year, for the equivalent of an estimated 260,000 meals.
Through winning the Earthshot Prize, Milan’s model can be used by other cities.
Fix Our Climate: AEM Electrolyser, Thailand, Germany and Italy
The AEM Electrolyser from Enapter turns renewable electricity into emission-free hydrogen more quickly and cheaply than ever before, and can transform the ways people power homes and buildings, and fuel transport.
Funding from the Earthshot Prize will help to increase the technology to mass production, making it universally easy to buy and install AEM Electrolysers wherever activities have high energy demand.
The ceremony capped a 10-month global search with more than 750 applications from around the world.
Fifteen finalists were chosen through a rigorous selection process, supported by an expert advisory panel, for their ability to aid people and the natural world, and their ability to help reach Earthshot goals.
The prize council also includes Queen Rania 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.
At the end of the event, televised by the BBC, Prince William took to the stage to tell the audience: “I want to say something to the young watching tonight.
“For too long, we haven’t done enough to protect the planet for your future. The Earthshot is for you. In the next 10 years, we are going to act.
“We are going to find the solutions to repair our planet. Please keep learning, keep demanding change and don’t give up hope.
“We will rise to these challenges.”
His wife Kate presented the winning award in the Protect and Restore Nature category to the government of Costa Rica, which has pioneered a project paying local citizens to restore natural ecosystems.
“Nature is vital to us all," she said. “A thriving natural world regulates our planet, nurtures our physical and mental health and helps feed our families.
“But for too long, we’ve neglected our wild spaces and now we’re facing a number of tipping points.
“If we don’t act now, we will permanently destabilise our planet and we will rob our children of the future they deserve.”
The winners were connected to the awards ceremony by global broadcast, where Prince William and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, were joined by Attenborough, Ms Figueres, Alves and stars and performers including Ed Sheeran and Yemi Alade.
All 15 finalists will receive tailored support from the Earthshot Prize Global Alliance, a network of philanthropies, NGOs and private-sector businesses around the world who will help to increase their solutions.
“The natural world on which we entirely depend is declining at a rate faster than at any time since the end of the dinosaurs," Attenborough said.
"We know where this story is heading and we must now write a different ending. This is what the Earthshot Prize was created to achieve.
"The 15 Earthshot Prize finalists tonight build optimism by finding innovative and brilliant solutions to the world’s challenges, and they give us hope, which we are told, springs eternal.”
The awards ceremony concluded by revealing that the prize ceremony will travel to the US in 2022. Nominations for the 2022 prize will open in January.
UK’s AI plan
- AI ambassadors such as MIT economist Simon Johnson, Monzo cofounder Tom Blomfield and Google DeepMind’s Raia Hadsell
- £10bn AI growth zone in South Wales to create 5,000 jobs
- £100m of government support for startups building AI hardware products
- £250m to train new AI models
Tamkeen's offering
- Option 1: 70% in year 1, 50% in year 2, 30% in year 3
- Option 2: 50% across three years
- Option 3: 30% across five years
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COMPANY PROFILE
Company name: Letstango.com
Started: June 2013
Founder: Alex Tchablakian
Based: Dubai
Industry: e-commerce
Initial investment: Dh10 million
Investors: Self-funded
Total customers: 300,000 unique customers every month
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What are NFTs?
Are non-fungible tokens a currency, asset, or a licensing instrument? Arnab Das, global market strategist EMEA at Invesco, says they are mix of all of three.
You can buy, hold and use NFTs just like US dollars and Bitcoins. “They can appreciate in value and even produce cash flows.”
However, while money is fungible, NFTs are not. “One Bitcoin, dollar, euro or dirham is largely indistinguishable from the next. Nothing ties a dollar bill to a particular owner, for example. Nor does it tie you to to any goods, services or assets you bought with that currency. In contrast, NFTs confer specific ownership,” Mr Das says.
This makes NFTs closer to a piece of intellectual property such as a work of art or licence, as you can claim royalties or profit by exchanging it at a higher value later, Mr Das says. “They could provide a sustainable income stream.”
This income will depend on future demand and use, which makes NFTs difficult to value. “However, there is a credible use case for many forms of intellectual property, notably art, songs, videos,” Mr Das says.
Moon Music
Artist: Coldplay
Label: Parlophone/Atlantic
Number of tracks: 10
Rating: 3/5
Our family matters legal consultant
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
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Profile
Company: Justmop.com
Date started: December 2015
Founders: Kerem Kuyucu and Cagatay Ozcan
Sector: Technology and home services
Based: Jumeirah Lake Towers, Dubai
Size: 55 employees and 100,000 cleaning requests a month
Funding: The company’s investors include Collective Spark, Faith Capital Holding, Oak Capital, VentureFriends, and 500 Startups.
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Day 1, Abu Dhabi Test: At a glance
Moment of the day Dimuth Karunaratne had batted with plenty of pluck, and no little skill, in getting to within seven runs of a first-day century. Then, while he ran what he thought was a comfortable single to mid-on, his batting partner Dinesh Chandimal opted to stay at home. The opener was run out by the length of the pitch.
Stat of the day - 1 One six was hit on Day 1. The boundary was only breached 18 times in total over the course of the 90 overs. When it did arrive, the lone six was a thing of beauty, as Niroshan Dickwella effortlessly clipped Mohammed Amir over the square-leg boundary.
The verdict Three wickets down at lunch, on a featherbed wicket having won the toss, and Sri Lanka’s fragile confidence must have been waning. Then Karunaratne and Chandimal's alliance of precisely 100 gave them a foothold in the match. Dickwella’s free-spirited strokeplay meant the Sri Lankans were handily placed at 227 for four at the close.
The specs
Engine: Long-range single or dual motor with 200kW or 400kW battery
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Max touring range: 620km / 590km
Price: From Dh250,000 (estimated)
