Overview
- The Earthshot Prize marked its fifth anniversary on Tuesday, when Prince William said the programme shows that scalable environmental solutions exist and ‘helps me sleep at night’.
- The prize is a ten-year initiative that awards five innovators each year with £1 million per winner as part of a planned £50 million support fund for solutions to climate and conservation challenges.
- Organisers presented cumulative impact figures from the first five years, reporting support for 75 finalists, £25 million in awards, 18 million tonnes of CO2 avoided or sequestered, 1.4 million km² of land and ocean protected or restored, 21 million tonnes of water saved, and nearly 500,000 tonnes of waste removed or avoided.
- At a United for Wildlife forum convened by the Royal Foundation, representatives of Google, Meta and Amazon said they will end wildlife trade on their platforms and Vodafone together with Vodacom and Safaricom pledged to use AI and transaction monitoring to disrupt money flows linked to wildlife crime.
- Organisers confirmed the next awards will be held in India in November 2026 and said internal planning is under way for the remaining years of the decade and decisions about the prize’s direction after 2030, a shift that could shape how finalists scale and how private-sector rules affect illegal wildlife commerce.