Prince William talks of creating “the most prestigious environmental global prize”

In an interview with CNN’s Max Foster, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, discussed the launch of a decade-long prize initiative to reward and highlight solutions to environmental problems around the world.

The Earthshot Prize will award five, one million-pound prizes each year for the next ten years, with the backing of philanthropists and international conservation groups. Prince William spoke about the project, “It’s really the most prestigious environmental global prize there’s ever been on the environment.” He added, “It’s about optimism. It’s about this idea that we can find solutions and we can drive change, rather than saying it’s all doom and gloom.”

The initiative aims to find new solutions that will improve living standards globally, particularly for communities at most risk from climate change. The Prince described his vision for the Earthshot Prize, “Over the next ten years, if we can set these ambitious targets and these goals and inspire people to rise to the challenge, there are wonderful people doing incredible things around the world, one of them might have an amazing idea we can scale that up and we can use that to really tackle some issues.”

The Prince said that people have connected more to the natural world during the Covid-19 pandemic and could use the same collaboration and willpower witnessed around the world in recent months to tackle environmental issues, “I hope people have had that moment to connect and realise how special the green and natural world around them is. And so I think that if we can find the money and the collaboration and the willpower to tackle Covid as we have done, we can do this for the environment as well.”

Prince William also discussed the next generation and his own children, saying that he wanted to provide environmental solutions for their worries about the natural world, “I want to turn round to them and say, we have solutions, we can find a way through this.”

Video Link: https://cnn.it/30IBxWd