President of France, Emmanuel Macron has put climate action at the top of his foreign agenda. He is recognized for championing the International Solar Alliance and promoting international cooperation on environmental action, and for his leadership on the Global Pact for the Environment.
Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat are joint winners of the Champions of the Earth Award, in the Science and Innovation category. They produce a sustainable alternative to beef burgers that are more environmentally friendly and rival the taste of meat. These winners believe that there is no pathway to achieve the Paris climate objectives without a massive decrease in the scale of animal agriculture. They are taking steps for the global community to eliminate the need for animals in the food system by shifting to plant-based meat.
Joan Carling has been defending land and environmental rights of indigenous peoples for more than 20 years. She actively participated in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and REDD+, twice served as Secretary-General of the Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact and was Chairperson of the Cordillera People’s Alliance. She was appointed by the UN Economic and Social Council as an indigenous expert and has been a member of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, among other responsibilities.
UN Environment Programme has recognized Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his bold environmental leadership on the global stage. Under Modi’s leadership, India pledged to eliminate all single-use plastics in the country by 2022. Prime Minister Modi also supports and champions the International Solar Alliance, a global partnership to scale up solar energy.
Zhejiang province derives its name from the Zhe River, meaning “crooked” or “bent” river. The rivers of Zhejiang Province have long been vital for communities, flowing through ancient towns, among traditional white-walled and black-roofed houses, feeding fertile rice fields. Yet Zhejiang is also one of the richest and most developed provinces in China, and rapid development turned waters black. Action was taken through a range of initiatives – including the nomination of river chiefs to take charge of the waters – to revive the environment across the province.
José Sarukhán Kermez has spent a lifetime not just leading students, fellow researchers and politicians to a greater understanding of biological diversity and its value – he has pioneered ways to translate that insight into action.
Sarukhán, 76, persuaded the Mexican government to establish a permanent top-level commission on biodiversity. The commission has bridged the traditional barriers between academic disciplines, government departments and social interest groups.
That was back in 1992, when the UN’s Earth Summit in Rio was crystallizing concern that our global development track was unsustainable. Today, the approach developed by Sarukhán is essential for the world to correct its course.
As a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), one of Mexico’s best, Sarukhán rose to become Director of the Institute of Biology in 1979 and later served as its Coordinator of Scientific Research. He was rector of the university from 1989 until 1997, and remains one of Mexico’s most renowned scientists.
His academic work in areas including ecology, biodiversity and Darwinism has won numerous awards, and he has published more than 190 scientific works as well as several books on subjects including natural capital and climate change.
But his most enduring innovation was his call in 1991 for the establishment of the National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity, better known as CONABIO. Sarukhán was named as its first national coordinator, a position he still holds.
The commission pools knowledge from across Mexico’s institutions and society to build a fuller understanding of the diversity of life and its immense value to humankind. Crucially, it ensures that the protection of biodiversity is considered at all levels of government policy and practice.
With strong political support – the Mexican president is also president of CONABIO – and an array of national and international donors, CONABIO produces and collates biodiversity data and assessments across Mexico's varied ecosystems and makes them available to policy-makers and the public.
It also administers or guides a range of biological conservation and sustainability projects in Mexico and the region, and cooperates on biodiversity protection at the international level, including through the Convention on Biological Diversity established at the Earth Summit.
Sarukhán has received considerable recognition within Mexico and internationally, including honorary doctorates from 10 national and foreign universities.
Masen, the Moroccan Agency for Sustainable Energy, spearheads the first large-scale capture of solar energy in the Middle East and North Africa, a bold initiative to make solar power affordable and reduce the country’s dependence on high-carbon imports.
The first phase of the Moroccan Solar Plan NOOR, the NOOR Ouarzazate I, a 160 MW concentrated solar power plant, came online early this year. When complete, it will be one of the biggest facilities of its kind in the world. It will reduce the country’s fossil fuel dependence by about 2.5 million tons of oil a year, and could eventually export renewable energy to neighbouring countries.
Masen was created in 2010 to coordinate the solar development strategy of the country’s renewable energy plan, alongside the National Office of Electricity and Potable Water.
The Kingdom of Morocco has traditionally been the largest importer of fossil fuels in the region - depending on foreign sources for over 97 per cent of its energy - and Masen is instrumental in helping to turn that around.
Masen leads projects aimed at creating an additional 3,000 MW of clean electricity generation capacity by 2020, and a further 6,000 MW thereafter. The overarching national goal is to secure 52 per cent of the country’s energy mix from renewable sources by 2030.
The first NOOR project is under construction in one of Morocco’s most disadvantaged regions, creating thousands of jobs and providing training and community development programmes for the region’s inhabitants, as well as indirect employment and other benefits.
Masen aims to share its best practices in order to boost the development of renewable energy in countries that have the potential, but not yet the ability, to harness the power of the sun.
Afroz Shah, a young Indian lawyer from Mumbai, is synonymous with the world’s largest beach clean-up project.
In October 2015, Shah and his neighbor Harbansh Mathur, an 84-year-old who has since passed away, were frustrated with the piles of decomposing waste that had washed up and completely overwhelmed the city’s Versova beach. Determined to do something about it, the pair started cleaning up the beach themselves, one piece of rubbish at a time.
Every weekend since, Shah has inspired volunteers to join him – from slum-dwellers to Bollywood stars, from schoolchildren to politicians. They have been turning up at Versova for what Shah calls "a date with the ocean", but what in reality means labouring shin-deep in rotting garbage under the scorching Indian sun.
So far, the volunteers have collected over 4,000 tons of trash from the 2.5 kilometre beach.
Shah, who rallied residents and fisherfolk by knocking on doors and explaining the damage marine litter causes, now plans to expand his group’s operation to prevent litter from washing down the local creek and onto the beach. He also wants to clean-up the coastline’s rubbish-choked mangrove forests, which act as a natural defense against storm surges, and to inspire similar groups across India and beyond to launch their own clean-up movements.
Shah is deservedly proud of the Versova residents' accomplishments. Not only has the movement brought marine little to the attention of decision-makers, it is also starting to win back the beach, with decreasing amounts of new litter appearing each month.
He vows to continue his beach clean-up crusade until people and their governments around the world change their approach to producing, using and discarding plastic and other products that wash up onto beaches all over the world.
Leyla Acaroglu instigates positive environmental and social change through innovation. A New York-based Australian designer, social scientist, and sustainability expert, she is internationally recognized as a leader in the use of disruptive design across sustainability and educational initiatives. Her mainstage TED Talk has collected over one million views, making it one of the most watched TED Talks on sustainability.
In 2014, Acaroglu completed her PhD in change-centric disruptive design and started developing the Disruptive Design Method, which is the backbone of her unique approach to design-led social change. She has won a host of awards for her work, was named one of Melbourne’s 100 Most Influential People and has been forging positive change through creative practice in multiple ways for over a decade. Her systems-based thinking coupled with her highly-skilled communication techniques has featured in several publications, including the New York Times.
Acaroglu is the founder of two design agencies, Disrupt Design in New York and Melbourne-based Eco Innovators, and a rebellious experimental knowledge lab, the UnSchool, which sets out to disrupt the usual ways that knowledge is gained and shared. It runs innovative pop-up programs around the world and has won a CORE77 Design Education Initiative Award.
As a designer, her works such as Design Play Cards, Game Changer Game, Secret Life of Things, Designercise, and the AIGA Gender Equity Toolkit, are at the forefront of activated experience design. She has authored several handbooks for change makers and continues to agitate for new ways of solving complex social problems through beautifully designed interventions.
Often referred to as ‘The Doctor of Change’, Acaroglu’s creative work is highly acclaimed, featuring in a permanent exhibition in the Leonardo da Vinci museum in Milan and earning commissions from the National Gallery of Victoria.
Paul Kagame is the current President of Rwanda having taken office in 2000.
President Kagame has prioritised national development, launching a programme to develop Rwanda as a middle income country by 2020. As of 2014, the country is developing strongly on key indicators, including health care and education: Rwanda’s maternal mortality rate dropped 55% between 2000-2010; secondary school enrolment more than doubled from 2006-2012. Annual growth between 2000 and 2014 averaged 8% per year and one million Rwandans have been lifted out of poverty.
Rwanda's economy and its people depend heavily on natural resources: land, forests, waters and wildlife, as they provide the basis for farming, fishing, household energy and tourism. At the same time, these resources are under increasing pressure from a growing population, unsustainable use, soil erosion, deforestation and climate change.
Yet Kagame has been at the forefront of forward-thinking environmental initiatives to mitigate the effects of climate change. As a result, Rwanda has become an inspirational model of how to integrate economic development with environmental sustainability, how to reduce poverty through reducing vulnerability, and how to make the environment everyone's business.
Such initiatives include Rwanda’s commitment to combatting illegal forestry; restoring vital wetlands; protecting the habitat of endangered Gorillas; becoming one of the first countries in the world to ban the use of plastic bags.
In October 2016, Rwanda hosted the Montreal Protocol meeting that passed the Kigali Amendment, which could cut up to 0.5 degrees Celsius from global warming by the end of this century. As president of the 28th Meeting of the Parties, Rwanda was instrumental in bringing together the 197 countries to sign what is hailed as the single largest contribution the world has made towards keeping the global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius.
By working closely with the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda in a shared commitment to ecosystem restoration, Rwanda has helped to restore the critically endangered population of one of the world's rarest species of gorilla in the Virunga National Park.
