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William has spent two years creating the award through his Royal Foundation, following the advice of the teams behind the Nobel Prize and the Xprize. He believes he is unique and is incorporating the world’s leading figures and organizations.
With the planet at a “tipping point,” he said, he felt the sense of urgency of the situation worsen each year, coinciding with a feeling of pessimism about humanity’s ability to solve complex challenges. This was making many people look the other way, he believed.
“The duke took this as an opportunity to ask what he could do to change this equation. I wanted to maintain the sense of urgency but turn pessimism into optimism, believing it would lead to real action, ”said Jason Knauf, executive director of the Royal Foundation. “It was this new equation (urgency plus optimism equals action) that led to the Earthshot award.”
Knauf added: “Our power to innovate and cooperate 50 years ago put a man on the moon. And our power to innovate and cooperate now can save the planet for future generations. “
It is said that William was clear that the award could not only be about him or his Royal Foundation, and that it was imperative that it be led by a global team of experts. He said he had chosen the challenge after realizing that he had a leadership role to play and now was the time to do it.
Nominations for the first five awards of £ 1 million will open on November 1. More than 100 “nominators” have been selected from around the world. The first five winners will be announced at a ceremony in London next year.
The award is backed by a global alliance of associations, including WWF and Greenpeace, and there are plans for it to have its own foundation next year. Sponsors include Aga Khan Development Network, Bloomberg Philanthropies, DP World in association with Dubai Expo 2020, and the Jack Ma Foundation.
To mark the launch, William and Sir David Attenborough are interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Today show on Thursday. William said: “I felt a lot that there are a lot of people who want to do a lot of good things for the environment and what they need is a little bit of catalyst, a little bit of hope, a little bit of positivity that we can really fix what’s happening. presented.
“And I think that urgency with optimism really creates action. So the Earthshot Award is really about harnessing that optimism and urgency to find solutions to some of the world’s biggest environmental problems. “
“We believe this decade is one of the most crucial for the environment and by 2030 we really hope to have made great strides in solving some of the biggest problems facing the Earth.”
William told the Today show: “The key to the Earthshot Award is that positivity. It is the idea we need to find solutions to be able to live our lives and enjoy our lives and not feel guilty and bad for some of the things we do. That finally has to change. Because it also worries me, from a mental health point of view, the anxiety and worry that many of these younger generations are going to have when they hear what we are talking about. It will weigh them down. And they don’t want to inherit a world that is going to be full of pessimism and pessimism “
