Prince William

Protecting and Restoring Nature with Earthshot

Prince William is the Founder and President of The Earthshot Prize. He established it in 2020 to find and scale innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing environmental challenges by 2030. It’s a 10-year ‘ACT NOW’ initiative that accelerates the importance of addressing the damage we have down to planet earth – now! The ethical Prince actively participates in various aspects of the prize, including selecting finalists, hosting events, and presenting awards. His passionate leadership is effecting vital change across the world, and young people, particularly, are drawn to his sincerity and his eloquence on the irrefutable facts.

This is how Earthshot works: Every year, five winners of the prize are selected, and each receives a £1 million grant to further develop their innovative environmental solutions to the world’s greatest environmental challenges. There are five categories:

1. Protect and Restore Nature
2. Clean Our Air
3. Revive Our Oceans
4. Build a Waste-Free World
5. Fix Our Climate

Once the five winners are chosen, their innovative solutions can then be scaled quantifiably with the £1 million grant. They are not only given the resources they need to do the scaling, but they are connected with other highly motivated innovators. The result of their collective group collaboration can then reap powerful, impactful results. Many of the solutions to the planet’s challenges are already out there but not much can be done until the ingenuity of a group of innovators comes together. Earthshot has been highly effective in bringing together leaders who are optimistically solution oriented.

At the five-year mark of this 10-year goal, here are some examples of the transformative results:

As of March 2025, Earthshot Prize Finalists have achieved the following changes:

• 9 million tons of water has been saved, reused or recycled so far
• 4.8 million tons of CO2e has been avoided or captured
• Almost 1 million miles of land and ocean have been protected or restored The scalable results as of July 2025 are impressive:
• 6.4 million lives have been directly improved by Earthshot’s Finalists’ solutions
• 661,000 pounds of harmful Nitrogen Oxides and particulate matter have been avoided
• 250,000 tons of waste has been removed, upcycled or avoided

Prince William’s and Earthshot’s bold initiatives have created critical changes that are happening at scale. Case studies are scientifically measured for results. Not a cent is being wasted.

Most importantly, the objective is not to create fear – but to rather inspire optimism by relating the stories of the measurably effective solutions that have taken place through positive action. Introduced in 2024, Earthshot’s matchmaking platform, Launchpad, connects Earthshot innovators with funders, and this has already driven global product rollouts and major investments.

• 275 million views of Earthshot Prize digital storytelling content in 2024
• 800 partnerships made between Finalists and influential global organizations
• 250 active funders on Launchpad helping to scale solutions

All of us should feel motivated by the achievable and positive results of a great group of leaders at Earthshot.

Earthshotprize.org