The Royalty Nerd

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See these fine folks here? Those are the 2023 Earthshot finalists!

What Is Earthshot?

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy of the United States issued a “Moonshot” challenge, aiming to one day land a man on the moon. Decades later in 2020, Prince William, the now Prince of Wales, launched Earthshot, inspired by the ambitious Moonshot, in order to search for and help support initiatives and organizations that are trying to create a better environment for us all.

The Earthshot prize is based on five ‘Earthshots’:

• Protect and restore nature
• Clean our air
• Revive our oceans
• Build a waste-free world
• Fix our climate

These are five goals that Earthshot hopes to achieve by 2030. So, each year since 2020 until 2030, five organizations with the best chance of achieving one of those five goals will be rewarded with one million GBP to help support their work. The winners are chosen by Prince William and the Prize Council.

Here are the 2023 winners!

Protect and Restore Nature Winner: Acción Andina

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Focused on the Andes Mountains, Acción Andina brings together thousands of people in both local and Indigenous communities in order to restore the natural fauna in the mountains. They help support with paying salaries for those working on the environment there, managing projects, and training. Since 2018, their work has seen 6,508,208 trees planted!

Clean Our Air Winner: GRST

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GRST stands for Green, Renewable, Sustainable Technology, which really sums up the work they do. GRST has come up with a new way of creating batteries that is more environmentally friendly. Batteries generally contain toxic material and can be difficult to recycle. GRST builds batteries using a water soluble technique that makes it easier to recover the lithium, cobalt, and nickel and even allows it to be reused.

How does this relate to the clean our air goal? Well GRST aims to use their techniques in order to create cleaner electric cars.

Revive Our Oceans Winner: WildAid Marine Program

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Illegal fishing has a major impact on our oceans. The goal of WildAid is to gather resources and information for governments and organizations to work with, together and apart, in order to enhance the security of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), which are often not as secure as they need to be. When MPAs are secure and fully protected, marine wildlife can flourish. WildAid aims to expand their work, and with the support of Earthshot, they can!

Build a Waste-Free World Winner: S4S Technologies

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Did you know that every year, about 30% of produce on Indian farms is wasted before it can even go out? S4S Technologies aims to change that.

They provide smallholder female farmers with solar powered conduction dryers (do not ask me what that means because I am not technical enough to understand), and food processing equipment to help sustain product shelf life. So far, S4S has been able to help 300,000 women who have increased their profits by 10-15%!

Fix Our Climate Winner: Boomitra

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Boomitra uses AI technology and satellite imaging to support farmers in Africa, South America, and Asia with tracking the soil carbon capacity. Using this data, farmers can then track the carbon held in the soil, improve that soil, and therefore expand their crops. Boomitra holds a carbon marketplace, where companies wishing to purchase carbon emission credits can do so with most of the profits going back to the farmers.

Fun fact: Boomitra means ‘friend of the earth’ in Sanskrit!

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Congratulations to all of the winners! For more information on each of the winners, finalists, and the Earthshot Prize in general, check out the Earthshot site, here:

https://earthshotprize.org/