Prince William recruits celebrities to launch global environment prize

Prince William recruits celebrities to launch global environment prize
Prince William launched a multi-million-pound environmental prize on Thursday, teaming up with celebrities including David Attenborough and Cate Blanchett to launch a project aimed at tackling the world's climate problems.

The Earthshot Prize will award five one-million-pound prizes each year for the next 10 years under the categories of protecting and restoring nature, cleaner air, reviving oceans, waste-reduction and climate change.

William has recruited a dozen global celebrities to join the Earthshot Prize Council to decide the winners.

As well as Attenborough and Blanchett, they include Brazilian footballer Dani Alves, Alibaba founder Jack Ma, Queen Rania of Jordan, Colombian singer Shakira and former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres.

William’s grandfather, Queen Elizabeth’s husband Prince Philip, and his father Prince Charles have both spoken for decades about the importance of conservation and the impact of climate change, years before such ideas became mainstream.

FILE PHOTO: Britain’s Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, speaks during a visit to the Garden House, part of the Light Project, which works on getting people safely off the streets throughout the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Peterborough, Britain, July 16, 2020. Picture taken July 16, 2020. Kirsty Wigglesworth/Pool via REUTERS

William told BBC Radio it was now his responsibility to take on that baton because the world was at a tipping point and he owed it to his children and grandchildren to leave the world in a better condition.

While he had often wondered what his father was “banging on about” he realised now it had been a very hard sell “to predict and see some of the slow-moving catastrophes that we were headed towards”.

“This is a generational baton-handling, my grandfather started it, my father has picked it up and really accelerated that and I feel right now that it’s my responsibility, I really feel that we are at a tipping point,” he said.

Speaking alongside Attenborough, William said change was critical in the next decade.

“By 2030 we really hope to have made huge strides in fixing some of the biggest problems the Earth faces,” William, 38, said.

“I think that urgency with optimism really creates action. And so the Earthshot Prize is really about harnessing that optimism and that urgency to find solutions to some of the world’s greatest environmental problems.”

Nominations open on Nov. 1 ahead of the first awards ceremony in the autumn next year.

Kensington Palace said the prize drew inspiration from U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s Moonshot, which it said had been synonymous with ambitious and ground-breaking goals since the 1969 moon landing.

Further members of the Earthshot Prize Council will be announced in the coming months.

Reuters

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