The Zayed Sustainability Prize has launched a $600,000 award for Local weather Motion
The world desperately wants new methods to deal with our local weather disaster. However arising with modern options, not to mention scaling them, is tough, time-consuming, and costly—loads of startups fail earlier than they will attain important mass. Prizes can typically play a vital position in driving optimistic change, rewarding people and corporations with each the funding and the elevated recognition wanted to make actual progress.
That’s the place the Zayed Sustainability Prize is available in. Since 2008, the prize—established as a tribute to the sustainability and humanitarian efforts of the UAE’s founding father, the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan—has been celebrating sustainability pioneers, from excessive colleges to SMEs to nonprofits. In complete, over 378 million folks throughout 151 international locations, and counting, at the moment are benefiting from the options developed by its 106 winners.
The Zayed Sustainability Prize has lengthy targeted on key areas essential for environmental and human growth: Well being, meals, power, and water safety, in addition to a particular prize for top colleges. Final 12 months’s winners ranged from the French insect protein firm Ÿnsect to LEDARS, a Bangladesh-based nonprofit that targeted on fixing water-scarcity points in catastrophe areas. Earlier years have seen organizations awarded starting from bettering public well being entry to modern peer-to-peer solar energy grids.
This 12 months sees the addition of a brand new class, Local weather Motion, designed to reward NPOs and SMEs deploying modern options to our most pressing sustainability challenges. Nominations may be produced from wherever on the earth; the eventual winner will obtain $600,000 at a ceremony in December.
That sum of money can have a big influence on a small enterprise. 2022 winner S4S Applied sciences, as an example, makes use of photo voltaic conduction dryers to assist farmers convert in any other case misplaced meals into preservative-free, nutrient-rich substances, boosting farm income within the World South by as much as 200 per cent. Successful the Prize not solely offered important funding, however introduced worldwide recognition that helped S4S attain hundreds extra farmers and feminine micro-entrepreneurs. In complete, the corporate is believed to have prevented 36,000 tons of meals waste and equipped vitamin to 1.2 million folks.
The Prize’s new Local weather Motion class comes because the UAE marks a Yr of Sustainability, and prepares to host the 2023 United Nations Local weather Change Convention—COP28—in December. “It’s extra essential than ever to acknowledge and help modern options that shield the planet and other people from the impacts of local weather change,” says Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, UAE Minister of Trade and Superior Know-how, and director basic of the Zayed Sustainability Prize.
LEDARS received the Water class in 2023 for its work in water-scarcity administration in Bangladesh.
“The UAE is dedicated to delivering a COP of motion—a solutions-focused COP that promotes inclusive sustainable growth and accelerates the adoption of insurance policies that may ship throughout mitigation, adaptation, local weather finance, and loss and harm. The brand new Local weather Motion class of the Zayed Sustainability Prize reinforces this dedication by supporting the deployment of options the world wants as we speak to maintain the Paris Settlement alive and restrict warming beneath 1.5 levels Celsius.”
Crucially, the Local weather Motion class shall be geared in the direction of options that may drive scalable and important change. “We’re proud to encourage and reward modern options wanted to show local weather pledges into concrete motion, and drive tangible, inclusive, and lasting progress for our planet and communities,” Al Jaber stated.
Deadline is closed, discover out extra at zayedsustainabilityprize.com
This text was initially revealed by WIRED UK