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LONDON: Prince William has joined forces with renowned British broadcaster and naturalist David Attenborough to launch a new environmental award on Thursday, the Earthshot Prize, which has high ambitions to “fuel change and help repair our planet for the next 10 years. “.
The award is inspired by the Moonshot challenge that President John F. Kennedy established for the US in 1961 to put a man on the moon at the end of the decade.
William, who has been mired in environmental problems his entire life, said that the same resources used to tackle the coronavirus pandemic should be dedicated to saving the natural world.
“According to experts, it really is the point of no return,” he told Sky News. “We have 10 years to fundamentally fix our planet.”
The plan envisions five prizes of 1 million pounds ($ 1.3 million) awarded each year for the next 10 years, providing at least 50 solutions to the world’s biggest environmental problems by 2030.
The first five Earthshots focus on protecting and restoring nature, cleaning the air, reviving the oceans, building a debris-free world, and fixing the weather.
“We are very hopeful that even if we can’t necessarily change the world in ten years with the award alone, what we do hope is that, like the Moonshot landings, where they developed cat scanners, X-ray machines, breathing, things like that, I think it’s been very, very important to get out of that, “said William.
Nominations open on November 1 with an annual global awards ceremony that takes place in a different city each year, beginning with London in the fall of 2021. William will be part of the decision-making panel.
The award fund will be provided by the founding partners of the project’s global alliance, a group that includes the philanthropic bodies of billionaires such as Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, Alibaba founder Jack Ma, and Michael Bloomberg.
Attenborough, 94, said time is of the essence.
“Suddenly, there are real dangers that there could be a tipping point where the polar caps at the North Pole start to melt, which is already happening,” he told BBC radio. “It is a matter of great urgency now.”
William also spoke about how his seven-year-old son, Prince George, is worrying about what is happening in the world. He said his son was so saddened by an Attenborough documentary on extinction that he told his father: “I don’t want to see this anymore.”
