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Prince William and Duchess Kate have awarded a prize for special commitment to environmental protection
Photo: Alberto Pezzali / Getty Images
Two weeks before the start of the UN Climate Change Conference in the United Kingdom, Prince William and Duchess Katherine honored people, organizations and companies for their contributions to environmental protection.
The winners of the »Earthshots« each received one million pounds - around 1.2 million euros.
The award ceremony took place on Sunday evening in London.
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This was the first year that the Earthshot prizes, which were awarded by the British royals, were awarded: for ideas on how pressing environmental problems could be solved.
The prize money is intended to further support the award-winning environmental and nature conservation projects.
The plan is for five so-called Earthshots to be awarded annually by 2030, i.e. for more than ten years - and that means that 50 solutions "for the world's greatest environmental problems" will be funded with a total of 50 million pounds.
The prizes were presented, among others, by British actresses Emma Thompson and Emma Watson around Liverpool FC striker Mo Salah.
One city, one country and three companies
People were honored in five categories: nature conservation and regeneration, cleaner air, revitalization of the seas, waste prevention and climate protection.
The money should flow into the promotion and further development of environmental protection projects and environmental companies.
In the category "Protecting and restoring nature", the award went to the government of
Costa Rica
: In the South American country, the forest area had shrunk by half since the 1990s.
As a result, the Costa Rican Ministry of the Environment, in collaboration with civil society groups, introduced programs that paid citizens to protect forests, plant trees and restore ecosystems.
The size of Costa Rica's forests has doubled since then. As a result, the income from ecotourism rose to four billion dollars. Now the government wants to expand the programs to urban areas as well. 30 percent of the country and the oceans are to be protected in this way.
Social entrepreneur Vidyut Mohan from
India received
an Earthshot award in the
“Purify our air” category
.
The aim of his company Takachar is to stop the incineration of agricultural waste.
Takachar has developed a cheap, small, portable technology that can be attached to tractors in remote farms.
The machine converts harvest residues into salable organic products such as fuel and fertilizer.
This technology makes it possible to reduce smoke emissions by up to 98 percent - with the result of an improvement in air quality.
Implemented on a larger scale, the Earthshots website says, could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by a billion tons per year.
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The winners in the “Revitalizing Our Seas” category are Sam Teicher and Gator Halpern, who run Coral Vita in the
Bahamas
.
Coral Vita grows corals on land to transplant into oceans and revitalize dying ecosystems.
The methods used by Coral Vita are said to allow corals to grow up to 50 times faster than conventional methods, while at the same time improving the resistance of corals to the effects of climate change.
Previous forecasts predict that 90 percent of coral reefs will have died out by the warming and acidification of the oceans by 2050.
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The city of Milan in
Italy
received the award in the “Building a Waste-Free World” category
. In 2019, “Food Waste Hubs” were launched there with the aim of halving the amount of food waste by 2030. According to the organizers, the centers mainly collect food from supermarkets and canteens. They pass the food on to organizations, which in turn distribute the food to citizens in need. Milan is the first major city to implement a city-wide food waste policy. The three food waste hubs would now each save around 350 kilograms of food per day, which corresponds to an estimated 260,000 meals.
Vaitea Cowan, co-founder of the company Enapter, which has its origins in
Thailand
, was
honored in the category »Improving our climate«
.
Enapter develops electrolysers that convert renewable electricity into emission-free hydrogen gas.
Enapter should use the prize money to continue investing in research and development.
Prince William calls for more climate protection
At the televised awards ceremony, Prince William called on humanity to "unite to repair the planet."
"The deeds that we decide to do or not to do in the next ten years will determine the fate of our planet for the next thousand years," said the grandson of Queen Elizabeth II.
A few days ago, the Queen also spoke out in favor of increased commitment by her kingdom in the fight against the climate crisis.
Queen Elizabeth II has criticized the leaders for their reluctance to act on the climate crisis.
She was "annoyed" by those who "talk but not act," she said on the sidelines of the opening of the Welsh Parliament in Cardiff.
vki / dpa / AFP