The plan envisions five prizes of 1 million pounds
($1.3 million) awarded each year for the next 10
years, providing at least 50 solutions to the world’s
greatest environmental problems by 2030.
The first five Earthshots center on protecting
and restoring nature, clean air, reviving oceans,
building a waste-free world and fixing the climate.
“We very much hope that even if we can’t
necessarily change the world in ten years’ time just
from the prize alone, what we do hope is that, just
like the Moonshot landings where they developed
cat scanners, X-ray machines, breathing apparatus,
stuff like that I think has been really, really
important to come out of that,” William said.
Nominations open on Nov. 1 with an annual
global awards ceremony held in a different
city each year, starting with London in the fall
of 2021. William will be part of the panel that
makes the decisions.
The prize fund will be provided by the project’s
global alliance founding partners, a group which
includes the philanthropic bodies of billionaires
like Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, Alibaba
founder Jack Ma, and Michael Bloomberg.
Attenborough, 94, said time is of the essence.
“Suddenly there are real dangers that there may be
a tipping point in which the icecaps of the North
Pole begin to melt, which it’s doing already,” he
told BBC radio. “It’s a matter of great urgency now.”
William also spoke about how his seven-year-
old son, Prince George, is getting concerned
about what’s going on in the world. He said his
son was left so saddened by an Attenborough
documentary about extinction that he told his
father “I don’t want to watch this anymore.”