{"id":120428,"date":"2025-11-06T04:11:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T04:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/120428\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T04:11:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T04:11:13","slug":"william-announces-earthshot-prize-2025-winners-in-rio-ceremony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/120428\/","title":{"rendered":"William announces Earthshot Prize 2025 winners in Rio ceremony"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AFPAFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Prince William with Kylie Minogue at the awards ceremony <\/p>\n

The Prince of Wales has revealed the five winners of this year’s environmental Earthshot Prize, calling them an “inspiration that gives us courage”.<\/p>\n

Prince William said their work was “proof that progress is possible” during Wednesday evening’s awards ceremony in Rio de Janeiro’s Museum of Tomorrow.<\/p>\n

Winners include a project for making South America’s Atlantic Forest financially viable and a global ocean treaty initiative aimed at conserving marine life. <\/p>\n

Brazilian football legend Cafu, Olympic gymnast Rebeca Andrade and former Formula 1 driver Sebastian Vettel were among the award presenters.<\/p>\n

Performances from Kylie Minogue, Shawn Mendes and Brazilian queen of pop Anitta also got the jubilant mood swinging. <\/p>\n

Earthshot Prize supports eco-friendly projects from around the world, and annually awards each of the five winners with a \u00a31m grant to scale up their ideas aimed at repairing the world’s climate.<\/p>\n

Organisers of the initiative were inspired by former US President John F Kennedy’s Moonshot project, which challenged scientists to get astronauts to the Moon and back safely.<\/p>\n

Hosted by award-winning Brazilian broadcaster Luciano Huck, the awards ceremony was addressed by Prince William, the Earthshot Prize’s president.<\/p>\n

\"ReutersReuters<\/p>\n

The Prince of Wales and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer<\/p>\n

“When I founded the Earthshot Prize in 2020, we had a 10-year goal: to make this the decade in which we transformed our world for the better,” he told attendees.<\/p>\n

“We set out to tackle environmental issues head on and make real, lasting changes that would protect life on Earth.”<\/p>\n

There are five Earthshots or goals: Protect and Restore Nature; Clean Our Air; Revive Our Oceans; Build a Waste-free World; and Fix Our Climate.<\/p>\n

The future king has committed himself to it for 10 years, with Rio marking a halfway point for the venture.<\/p>\n

This year saw nearly 2,500 nominees submitted from 72 countries. Out of them, 15 finalists were selected, from which the five winners were chosen.<\/p>\n

Earthshot Prize 2025 – Full list of winners<\/p>\n

Protect and Restore Nature: re.green, in Brazil, is making protecting one of the world’s most important ecosystems, the Atlantic Forest, financially viableClean Our Air: The city of Bogot\u00e1, has shown how public policy can bring lasting change, through means such as clean air zones and re-greening degraded areas in the Colombian capitalRevive Our Oceans: The High Seas Treaty is a global ocean initiative that will set out clear measures to conserve marine life, among other things, and will go into effect from January 2026Build a Waste-Free World: Lagos Fashion Week, in Nigeria, is redefining the industry, with each designer wishing to showcase required to show their commitment to sustainable practice Fix Our Climate: Friendship is dedicated to helping vulnerable communities across Bangladesh for a multiude of things from access to public services, health, education and preparing for natural disasters\"PAPA Media<\/p>\n

The Prince of Wales was joined by artists Seu Gorge, Anitta, Kylie Minogue and Shawn Mendes<\/p>\n

Referring to the winners as “innovators”, Prince William called the Earthshot Prize a “mission driven by the kind of extraordinary optimism we have felt here tonight”.<\/p>\n

“There’s a great deal we can learn from their determination, their vision for scale, and their unyielding belief that we can create a better world.”<\/p>\n

The chair of the board of trustees, Christiana Figueres, said they were building a “global legacy”.<\/p>\n

“These winners are proof that the spirit of collective action born here in Rio continues to grow stronger, more determined, and more urgent than ever. <\/p>\n

“Their 2030 aims are deeply ambitious – but their impact to date, their plans in place and their tenacity fuels my optimism.”<\/p>\n

\"DailyDaily Mirror\/PA<\/p>\n

London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan also attended the ceremony in Rio de Janeiro<\/p>\n

Earlier in the day, Prince William met the 15 finalists during a visit to the Christ the Redeemer statue, where he posed for a photograph on the same spot his late mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, did 34 years ago.<\/p>\n

But much of the prince’s five-day visit to Brazil has been focused on climate and the environment.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, he criticised criminals for their involvment in the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest during a speech at the United for Wildlife conference.<\/p>\n

He also travelled to the small island of Paqueta, where he met locals, learnt about mangrove conservation and planted tree saplings.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, he will be travelling to Belem in the Amazon rainforest, where he is scheduled to give a speech at COP30, the UN’s annual climate change meeting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AFP via Getty Images Prince William with Kylie Minogue at the awards ceremony The Prince of Wales has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-120428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}