Prince William’s fourth Earthshot Prize winner will travel to Cape Town, South Africa, in November, raising the possibility of a royal visit to the country.
The Prince of Wales, 41, has attended all the annual awards ceremonies for his environmental initiative to date, including events in London in 2021, Boston in 2022 and Singapore in 2023.
His wife Kate, 42, who is currently recovering from abdominal surgery at Adelaide Cottage in Windsor and is not expected to return to official duties until after Easter, traveled with her husband to the United States.
However, she missed the most recent event in Singapore after staying home to help her eldest son, Prince George, 10, with his “first set of big exams”.
It is unclear whether the Prince, whose father King Charles is currently battling cancer, and the Princess of Wales will travel to South Africa for Earthshot Week 2024. MailOnline has contacted Kensington Palace.
Prince William’s fourth Earthshot Prize will travel to Cape Town, South Africa, this November
Over five days of events, the Earthshot Prize will celebrate the innovative work of fifteen global environmental solutions.
It will convene leading innovators, Earthshot alumni, partners, investors and philanthropists to inspire conversations and take action to catalyze solutions to protect and restore our planet.
The Earthshot Prize is an ambitious global environmental prize that aims to discover and help scale the world’s most innovative climate and environmental solutions to protect and restore our planet.
The award focuses on five ‘Earthshots’; Simple but aspirational goals to ensure our communities, oceans and ecosystems can thrive together in harmony for generations to come.
Over the coming months, a rigorous selection process will uncover fifteen finalists from around the world, five of whom will receive a £1 million prize to scale up their solutions, during the ceremony in Cape Town.
Hannah Jones, chief executive of the Earthshot Prize, said: “This is the Earthshot Decade, a decade in which we must, by 2030, reduce CO2 emissions by more than 40 per cent and protect 30 per cent of nature, oceans and fresh water.
‘The Earthshot Prize nominations remind us that human ingenuity, courage and determination can turn the seemingly impossible into the new normal.
‘We are delighted to work with changemakers and partners across Africa to highlight the incredible innovation emerging across the continent, convene brave conversations about scale and finance, and partner with young creators and filmmakers to tell the story of agents of change from all over Africa. ‘
Nearly 400 nominees for this year’s Prize reside in Africa, highlighting pioneering creativity and innovation across the continent with the potential to inspire optimism and provide pathways to transformative change around the world.
The Prince of Wales, patron of the London Air Ambulance charity, attends the London Air Ambulance charity gala dinner at Raffles London at the OWO on Wednesday.
Despite being the continent that contributes the least to global warming and having the lowest emissions, Africa is the continent most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
In 2022 alone, more than 110 million people across Africa were directly affected by weather, climate and water-related hazards, according to the World Meteorological Organization.
Earthshot Week will begin with the Prize’s annual awards ceremony, a night of extraordinary storytelling and star-studded performances, celebrating the work of the fifteen Earthshot Prize finalists.
The ceremony will be followed by Earthshot+, a day of thought-provoking conversations aimed at multiplying the impact of Earthshot Prize winners and finalists.
The Prize recently completed its annual nomination process, which culminated in nearly 2,500 nominations submitted by 432 official nominators from around the world, doubling the nominations from any previous year.
Nearly 400 of the 2024 nominations are based in Africa, three times more than in any previous set of nominations.
The Prince and Princess of Wales arrive at the second annual Earthshot Prize ceremony in 2022
The Prize’s first three cohorts of 45 finalists have already made incredible impact to repair and regenerate our planet, with over 1.5 million people directly benefiting from their solutions.
More than 7,000 hectares of land and almost 2.1 million hectares of ocean have been protected or restored, while more than 35,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions have been reduced, avoided or sequestered. The finalists for the 2024 Earthshot Prize will be announced in September.
The announcement comes after the Daily Mail’s Richard Eden revealed that the Earthshot Prize charity made a mammoth £22.4m in revenue in its first nine months alone.
At the time of its launch, Earthshot was managed by the Royal Foundation, established by Princes William and Harry in 2009 to further their various charitable ambitions.
But in 2022 the award will be separated and will be run as a completely independent charity.
While the Royal Foundation transferred £8.6 million, the rest came from various sources, as accounts just published by the Charity Commission reveal.
Donations amounted to £7 million, while “gifts in kind” accounted for just over £3 million and a grant from the American Friends of the Royal Foundation for a further £2.7 million.
The remaining five per cent (£1.1m) came from sponsorship and licensing income.