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AKDN partners with Prince William in Earthshot prize

Tuesday October 27 2020
william

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, (right) and Sir David Attenborough at the launch of the £50 million Earthshot Prize on October 8, 2020. This is the most prestigious global environment prize in history to incentivise change and repair our planet over the next 10 years. PHOTO | COURTESY

By The EastAfrican

The Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) is partnering with Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, to launch The Earthshot Prize.

The prize aims to find new solutions to environmental crises and improvement of living standards, particularly for communities most at risk from climate change.

The goal is to incentivise environmental change while helping repair the planet over the next 10 years. The AKDN is a Global Alliance Founding Partner.

Inspired from President John F. Kennedy’s Moonshot, which united millions of people around a goal to put man on the moon and catalysed the development of new technology in the 1960s, The Earthshot Prize is centred around five “Earthshots” — simple but ambitious goals for the planet which, if achieved by 2030, will improve quality of life for all.

The five Earthshots unveiled are: protect and restore nature, clean our air, revive our oceans, build a waste-free world, and fix our climate.

Prince Rahim Aga Khan, chair of AKDN’s Environment and Climate Committee, said: “The Aga Khan Development Network is a proud founding partner of The Earthshot Prize. It is our collective responsibility to be good stewards of the planet. At this critical moment, we must nurture and invest in solutions that can repair our planet before it is too late.

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“The AKDN has been working for over a century in Asia and Africa to improve quality of life — through education and healthcare, livelihoods and infrastructure, and long-term institutions of civil society. The decades of progress now hang in the balance: Environmental degradation and climate change will wipe out these gains entirely unless we act now with urgency and conviction.

“To do its part, AKDN has a net-zero carbon target for its own operations and will mobilise its agencies to mitigate the effects of climate change and help vulnerable communities to adapt. We are excited to partner with The Earthshot Prize which, over the next decade, will identify 50 solutions with potential to keep our planet habitable. Working together, we can and must help to ensure a future for life on Earth,” Prince Rahim added.

Shared vision

Every year from 2021 until 2030, Prince William, alongside The Earthshot Prize Council, which covers six continents, will award The Earthshot Prize to five winners, one per Earthshot.

Sir David Attenborough became the first member of The Earthshot Prize Council last month and spoke with a global list of leaders from the environmental, philanthropic, business, sporting and entertainment worlds.

Also, The Earthshot Prize will be supported by its Global Alliance, a network of organisations that share the ambition of the Prize to repair the planet.

Nominations open November 1, 2020, with over 100 nominating partners from across the world to submit nominations.

The £1 million in prize money will support environmental and conservation projects agreed with the winners.

Shortlisted nominees will also be given tailored support and opportunities to help scale their work, including being connected with an ecosystem of likeminded individuals and organisations.

The first awards ceremony will take place in London in autumn 2021.

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