08/11/2023
The Earthshot Prize, initiated by Prince William and the Royal Foundation in October 2020, is a remarkable global endeavour dedicated to inspiring environmental innovation and solutions. Modelled after President John F. Kennedy’s “Moonshot” challenge, this prestigious award aims to tackle the most pressing issues facing our planet. Since its inception, it has been celebrating visionaries and their ground-breaking contributions to a more sustainable world. Let’s take a closer look at some of the Earthshot Prize winners for 2023 and the incredible work they are doing to combat climate change, protect biodiversity, and preserve our planet for future generations.
Yesterday at The Earthshot Prize Awards ceremony in Singapore, Prince William and The Earthshot Prize named Acción Andina, GRST, WildAid Marine Program, S4S Technologies, and Boomitra the 2023 Winners of The Earthshot Prize. Each were awarded £1 million to help scale their solutions and accelerate their growth.
- PROTECT AND RESTORE NATURE
Acción Andina, The Andes Mountains, South America
Acción Andina is a grassroots, community-based initiative working across South America to protect native high Andean forest ecosystems for their invaluable benefits to nature and millions of people in the region.
Florent Kaiser, Chief Executive Officer, Global Forest Generation said: “In just five years, Global Forest Generation has grown Acción Andina to become one of the largest ecosystem restoration initiatives in South America. The support and recognition from The Earthshot Prize affirms our commitment to building climate change resiliency among communities most impacted by ecosystem loss. We aim to continue scaling and sustaining Acción Andina, while also replicating its community-driven model globally. We will prioritize regions with critically endangered and neglected ecosystems and vulnerable populations of people and wildlife that are essential to climate change resilience.”* - CLEAN OUR AIR
GRST, Hong Kong, China
With the development of a new way to build and recycle vital lithium-ion batteries, GRST’s solution offers a pathway to make the electric cars of the future even cleaner.
Frank Harley, Chief Strategy Officer, GRST, said: “We are honored to be part of The Earthshot Prize’s powerful platform for change. The world needs a massive amount of batteries to achieve Net Zero by 2050, but a revolution is needed to make these batteries cleaner and more recyclable. Today, our water-based technology is driving this transformation to provide consumers with sustainable energy future.”* - REVIVE OUR OCEANS
WildAid Marine Program, Global (US HQ with work in The Bahamas, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Gabon, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Palau, Panama, Philippines, Sao Tome & Principe, and Tanzania)
Global non-profit organization WildAid scales marine enforcement to end illegal fishing and strengthen ocean conservation.
Meaghan Brosnan, Chief Operating Officer, WildAid said, “We are thrilled, honored, and humbled to receive the 2023 Earthshot Prize to Revive Our Oceans. WildAid’s Marine Programme is making the promise of marine protected areas and sustainable fisheries real by filling a critical global gap: law enforcement capacity. Fundamentally, this honor recognizes the hard work our hundreds of dedicated local partners are doing to ensure the Earth’s oceans are healthy and vibrant for future generations. Winning the Earthshot Prize is an important milestone in our program’s path to scale from 96 to 250 marine areas by 2028, and will create effective enforcement with our partners to allow fisheries, marine wildlife, coral reefs, blue carbon habitats, and coastal communities to thrive.”* - BUILD A WASTE-FREE WORLD
S4S Technologies, India
S4S Technologies’ solar-powered dryers and processing equipment to combat food waste, enabling small-hold farmers to preserve crops and turn produce that might otherwise go to waste into valuable products.
Nidhi Pant, Co-Founder, S4S Technologies, said: “S4S, along with women farmers, are creating a new food ecosystem that reduces wastage and mitigates the increase in GHG emissions while meeting the world’s food needs. With empowered women farmers taking leadership to fight climate change by ensuring food security, increasing incomes, creating jobs, boosting local economies, and advocating with the government, women farmers have emerged as key-partners in driving lasting impact. We are honored to be recognised by the Earthshot Prize. We aim to create a waste-free food system and to transform lives of millions of women farmers.”* - FIX OUR CLIMATE
Boomitra, Global (With work in South America, Asia, and Africa)
Boomitra are removing emissions and boosting farmer profits by incentivising land restoration through a verified carbon-credit marketplace.
Aadith Moorthy, Founder and CEO, Boomitra, said: “On behalf of the Boomitra family, I’m deeply honored and humbled to accept the Earthshot Prize. This prize is a recognition of the hard work and dedication of our partners on the ground, the Boomitra team, and all the farmers we work with, who work every single day towards moving the needle on climate change.”*
The Earthshot Prize winners are shining examples of the remarkable progress being made to address the urgent environmental challenges we face. Their passion, innovation, and dedication provide hope and inspiration to people around the world. The Earthshot awards acknowledges the critical role the winners play in safeguarding our planet for generations to come. Their work demonstrates that when we come together with a shared purpose, we can tackle even the most formidable global issues.
The Earthshot Prize encourages innovation by providing recognition, financial support, exposure, and collaborative opportunities to environmental visionaries. It sets ambitious goals, inspires others, and fosters a culture of innovation.
At Reddie & Grose, we are proud to have supported the Earthshot Prize through our involvement in a committee put together by the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA) to support both the Earthshot committee and the finalists themselves. As part of this committee, we helped to review IP matters for the Earthshot prize nominees so that potential issues could be identified. Subsequently, the committee were able to provide all finalists with access to pro bono IP advice, if needed, so that they could be well informed about the availability of IP protection relating to their entries.
As our involvement with the Earthshot Prize shows, we are strong supporters of sustainable innovations and we strongly urge innovators to use IP to protect their innovations so that they can be utilised effectively and to ensure that the motivation to continue innovating remains. If you would like any advice relating to IP protection for your inventions, please get in touch with one of our patent team.
