Since 2005, the United Nations Champions of the Earth Award has been highlighting four major environmental protection initiatives. The call for entries, which closes on 5 May 2024, focuses on sustainable innovation.
If one of your initiatives is helping to solve the triple global crisis of climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss, then the Champions of the Earth award could be for you. The call for entries launched by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is open until 5 May 2024.
Civil society actors, political decision-makers and interested economic operators will be competing in four categories: “political leadership”, “inspiration and action”, “entrepreneurial vision” and “science and innovation”. The winners will be presented on World Environment Day, to be celebrated on 5 June, under the theme: “Land restoration, desertification and drought resilience”.
There is a growing number of initiatives in this area on a global scale, including the African Forest and Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100), which was launched at the end of the 21st United Nations Conference of the Parties on Climate Change (COP21) held in Paris, France, in 2015. A total of 34 African countries (Central African Republic-RCA, Eswatini, Madagascar, etc.) have signed up to it, with the aim of reforesting up to 100 million hectares of land on the continent by 2030. That year will mark the deadline for the implementation of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG14, which focuses on the protection of terrestrial biodiversity.
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In 2023, the United Nations Champions of the Earth Award went to the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in the “Science and Innovation” category. This South African organisation is “a pioneer in identifying sustainable alternatives to conventional plastics, creating opportunities for local manufacturing and economic development, and testing the biodegradability of plastics”, says UNEP.
For more information on the Champions of the Earth award, click here.
Benoit-Ivan Wansi
