Prince William and Princess Catherine, are all set to attend the 2023 Earthshot Prize ceremony. The third annual award show is to be held in Singapore on 7th November 2023.
This is the first time the Earthshot Prize is being held in Southeast Asia. It also marks the first time that the award show will be accompanied by a series of events comprising Earthshot Week.
The five winners of this year’s edition will receive GBP 1 million (approximately USD 1.25 million or SGD 1.7 million), and it is aimed to act as a propeller to further their ideas and innovations, implementing them at a larger scale.
‘Protect and Restore Nature,’ ‘Clean our Air,’ ‘Revive our Oceans,’ ‘Build a Waste-free World’ and ‘Fix our Climate’ are the five main areas of achievement in healing the planet, known as the ‘Earthshots.’
“Designed to find and grow the solutions that will repair our planet this decade,” the Earthshot Prize, as described on its official website, is a brainchild of Prince William.
The Prince of Wales founded the Earthshot Prize in 2020 with the intention of finding five £1 million prize winners every year across a decade to fund 50 solutions to repairing the planet with the aim of identifying and accelerating innovative climate solutions. The prestigious accolade aims at discovering, celebrating, accelerating and scaling solutions that can help put the world firmly on a trajectory towards a stable climate, where communities, oceans and biodiversity thrive in harmony by 2030.”
The first-year finalists have already impacted more than 1.5 million people with innovation-driven solutions to help the earth recuperate. With the help of their efforts, over 70 km sq of land and 21,000 sq km of ocean restoration have been carried out, while CO2 emissions have been cut down by 35,000 tonnes.
Even though Southeast Asia is one of the worst-affected regions in the world with respect to the adversities of climate change, it thrives as a hub of business, innovation and entrepreneurs who are committed to bring about a positive change for the planet.
Singapore is expected to receive world leaders, businesses and investors from 6th November 2023, as they seek to find new opportunities with the Earthshot winners to help accelerate their plans in a way that indicate visible effects on the earth.
Although further details are yet to be revealed, the event is to have performances by globally renowned artists and musicians as well.
Strategic partners
The 2023 Earthshot Prize is supported by a number of global organisations : investment house Temasek, decarbonisation investment hub GenZero, Philanthropic Organisation Temasek Trust, and Conservation International. Standard Chartered Bank comes on board as a founding partner. Former New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Arden, has also joined the board of trustees of the Earthshot Prize.
These bodies bring in their expertise, knowledge and huge network bandwidth to encourage a fruitful series of collaborations during the entire event.
The inspiration behind its name wais drawn from US President John Kennedy’s ‘Moonshot’ initiative in the 1960s, which aimed at sending man to the Moon.
Prince William said in a statement about his decision to launch the awards that the Earth was at a tipping point and we face a stark choice of either continuing as we are and irreparably damage our planet, or remember our unique power as human beings and our continual ability to problem-solve, lead and innovate. He said that the next decades present us with one of our greatest tests – a decade of action to repair the Earth.
The prize is expected to stimulate technological breakthroughs just as Kennedy’s proposal in the 1960s led to the development of new technology like advanced water filters, the MRI scanner, satellite dishes and smoke detectors.
For the 2022 US event, guests took the ‘reuse and recycle’ path where they arrived in hybrid vehicles and wore recycled or vintage outfits.
Kate Middleton, who presented an award, appeared in a rented lime green Solace London dress from Hurr accessorising it with Princess Diana’s emerald choker. The year’s finalists are also on their way to making a huge difference.
(Hero and feature image credit: The Prince and Princess of Wales/ Instagram)
The Prince of Wales will join global business leaders, philanthropists, climate activists and policymakers, for the Earthshot Prize annual innovation summit.
This year’s awards ceremony will be held in Singapore in November, with Prince William and Princess Catherine expected to visit the country together for the event.
