Queen Elizabeth II’s grandson Prince William presented the inaugural Earthshot prizes at a ceremony in London on Sunday, with projects from Costa Rica, Italy, the Bahamas and India picking up prizes.
India’s Vidyut Mohan was named amongst five winners in a ceremony held in London on Sunday (October 17). His initiative called Takachar was the winner in the ‘clean our air’ category and won £1 million as prize money, according to official release by British High Commission.
14-year-old Vinisha Umashankar made it to the list of 15 finalists and her project will receive tailored support from The Earthshot Prize Global Alliance—an unrivalled network of philanthropies, NGOs, and private sector businesses around the world who will help scale their solutions.
Deputy British High Commissioner to India, Jan Thompson, said: “I would like to congratulate both Vidyut and Vinisha for their achievement. Earthshot aims to provide the right direction to the innovative solutions offered by young people around the globe in our collective fight against climate change.”
“It’s also reminder for leaders around the globe as we approach COP26 that young generation is looking up to them for concrete action to save and restore our planet.”
The new annual awards were created by Prince William to reward efforts to save the planet in the face of climate change and global warming.
Five winners were announced, each receiving a million pounds ($1.4 million).
The build-up to the televised event—featuring the renowned naturalist David Attenborough and performances by Coldplay, Ed Sheeran and others—was marked by royal displeasure at world leaders’ inaction on climate change.
William hopes it will help propel the fight against climate change leading up to the COP26 summit, which opens in Scotland at the end of the month, calling those on the shortlist “innovators, leaders and visionaries”.
In a short film recorded for the ceremony in the London Eye and released ahead of the event on Sunday, William warns that the “actions we choose or choose not to take in the next 10 years will determine the fate of the planet for the next thousand”.
“A decade doesn’t seem long, but humankind has an outstanding record of being able to solve the unsolvable,” he says.
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