The Prince of Wales stepped out on the green carpet for this year’s Earthshot Prize Awards, joining a host of famous faces. It comes as the father-of-three conducted engagements this week in South Africa centring around climate change and conservation.
This year’s Awards ceremony took place in The Earthshot Prize Dome, a purpose-built venue beside Cape Town Stadium using a structure designed and engineered in South Africa, which has been used previously and will be used again for future events in the country. The Dome is the biggest of its kind in Africa with a width of 36m, a height of 15.5 metres and a length of 144m, twice as long as a rugby pitch.
Prior to the Awards, Prince William spoke to the BBC about Catherine, who stayed behind in the UK as she continues her recovery. When asked how his wife is, William replied that she is ‘doing really well’ and has been ‘amazing this whole year’ whilst undergoing treatment for cancer. He added that ‘hopefully she is watching tonight, cheering me on.I know she will be really keen to see tonight be a success’.
Opening his speech at the Awards, William said that ‘the ambition of the earth shot it was to champion the spirits of ingenuity that put a man on the moon within 10 years’ with the aim of the Earthshot Prize ‘to find solutions to repair our planet and provide real hope for the future. We want to make this the decade in which we transform the world for good one solution at a time from the up’.
Reflecting on the inspiration of the Prize, His Royal Highness noted the idea first came to him during a previous visit to Namibia and Tanzania when he was ‘lucky enough’ to see some of the ‘stunning wildlife that caused this continent home’ but was struck by ‘the incredible impact local people were having on the environment around them thanks to their ingenuity and creativity biodiversity was returning, animals were being protected and jobs were being created’.
Prince William saw the extent ‘to which people were dedicating their time, talent and vision to fixing environmental challenges but they support they needed to speed their solutions or to have them replicated worldwide’ and believed the world ‘can be rich impossibility in hope and in optimism that is why the Earthshot Prize exists to champion the game changers, the inventors, the makers, the creatives, the leaders, to help them build upon the amazing things they’ve already achieved to speed their innovations to scale and to inspire the next generation to create the future we all need sense that optimism’.
The green carpet was rolled out for this year’s Ceremony in Cape Town. (Robert Irwin)
Closing his speech, William issued a rallying call to others to ‘join the movement for climate innovation’ and stated that ‘The Earthshot Prize isn’t just a celebration of winners. It’s a collaborative movement for change and I now invite you to join the movement for climate innovation that’s happening around the world’
Stars that also attended the event included Winnie Harlow, Heidi Klum and Nomzamo Mbatha, Robert Irwin, Nina Dobrev and Tendai Mtawarira. Joining Prince William, over 1000 members of the public were invited to attend the Awards, with attendees chosen in recognition of their long-serving commitment to their local communities.
The show was hosted by Billy Porter, whilst the first ever Green Carpet Event, which was broadcast live globally via the Earthshot Prize’s YouTube channel, was hosted Ebuka Obi-Uchendu and Moozlie.
Sustainable fashion played a key role at this year’s Awards as it has in previous years, with guests asked to ‘rewear’ their wardrobe or spotlight African designers in order to highlight the importance of sustainable fashion and local creatives. William stepped out in a vintage blazer which was sourced from a vintage shop in London, paired with £130 ‘sustainable trainers’ by Purified Footwear, who are also an Earthshot Prize finalist at this year’s Awards.
The Prince of Wales launched the Earthshot Prize in 2019; it is ‘an ambitious set of challenges to inspire a decade of action to repair the planet’, giving a decade to turn the tide of global warming. The prize was launched in collaboration with the Royal Foundation and has welcomed entries from across the globe to find innovative solutions to the problem.
The winners of this year’s Earthshot Prize Awards were:
Protect and Restore Nature –Altyn Dala Conservation Initiative, Kazakhstan: An organisation that has achieved what was thought impossible – the rapid recovery of a large animal from the brink of extinction. Partnering with governments and indigenous communities to restore Kazakhstan’s Steppe grassland, Altyn Dala’s work to deliver the comeback of the Saiga antelope is one of the greatest nature restoration successes ever recorded.
Clean Our Air – Green Africa Youth Organization, Ghana: A youth-led organisation that uses its “zero waste model” to drive behavioural change in waste management practices across Africa that cut greenhouse gas emissions and particle pollution while bringing additional income to communities. Their plan to scale would reduce air pollution by 70% and make them the leading model for waste management on the continent.
Revive Our Oceans
– High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People, Global: A groundbreaking alliance of 119 countries with the grandest goal of any Finalist to date – to protect 30% of the land and oceans by 2030, by identifying technical, financial and knowledge gaps and connecting governments with technical assistance and funding. They’ve already achieved a major milestone with the adoption of this “30×30” target in the 2022 UN Global Biodiversity Framework.
Build a Waste-Free World – Keep IT Cool, Kenya: A company that is tackling problems with proper refrigeration and cold-chain logistics across Africa by offering solar-powered refrigeration solutions that cut post-harvest waste by 25% and by connecting smallholder farmers and fishers to a centralised online marketplace.
Fix Our Climate – Advanced Thermovoltaic Systems, USA: A company that takes excess heat from heavy industrial processes, like creating cement and steel, and converts the heat waste into electricity. ATS’s unique heat waste capture technology has the potential to avoid a gigatonne of CO2 waste by 2050.
Prince William with this year’s Earthshot Prize Winners. (Kensington Palace).
Each of the five winners will receive £1 million prize money and a global network of professional and technical support to scale their remarkable environmental solutions to repair our planet and accelerate their impact.
Each winner of the categories received a medal which takes inspiration of a photograph of the Earth from the Crescent moon, as taken on Apollo 8 in 1968. It is supposed to reflect the beauty and fragility of our planet.
