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Frank Bainimarama

For his persistence and commitment to action against climate change for Pacific Island Nations, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) today announced Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama of Fiji as a 2020 Champion of the Earth for Policy Leadership.

Under the Prime Minister’s leadership, Fiji has taken bold and decisive actions to draw global attention to the consequences of climate change and rising sea levels. The country was the first to ratify the Paris Agreement – which marks its fifth anniversary tomorrow – and is pursuing a national strategy to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 across its entire economy.

“Prime Minister Bainimarama has demonstrated the leadership and ambition demanded by the escalating global climate emergency,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP. “Evacuated Pacific Island communities show us the consequence of moving too slowly. Whether it is protecting coral reefs or strengthening energy policy, the transformative policies Fiji is taking under Bainimarama’s leadership illuminates the path we must take together in the battle to heal our planet.”

As an advocate not only for Fiji but for other island nations, Prime Minister Bainimarama has used his global platform to draw the links between climate change and the health of the world’s waterways. In presiding over the COP23 Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany, in 2017 – the same year Fiji co-hosted the first UN Oceans Conference – he urged Member States to consider the importance of a healthy and functioning ocean, what he called, “the single most important factor influencing climate.”

“The science is very clear about the consequences of a global temperature rise of 3 degrees Celsius, and we cannot let that happen,” noted Prime Minister Bainimarama. “If nothing is done soon, human survival will be threatened. We cannot afford to take that gamble.”

Protection of waterways, reefs and related ecosystems is only part of Fiji’s climate conscious national strategy. The country has doubled down on an ambitious renewable energy policy, and is also turning to the forests that cover about 55 per cent of its landmass to increase carbon sinks and lower the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. The country’s national development and growth strategies incorporate both climate and finance considerations, while a rural electrification scheme has helped to reduce diesel emissions across the country for its nearly one million people.

Fiji raised some US$50 million in 2017 through the first-ever sovereign ‘green bond’ issued by an emerging market, supporting climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Fiji’s commitment to the region does not end with its advocacy against climate change; in addition to developing relocation plans for its own people who are displaced by climatological events, the country has offered permanent refuge to the displaced people of its Pacific neighbours Kiribati and Tuvalu.

“Beyond being a leader, my wife and I have a far more important role as grandparents,” Prime Minister Bainimarama said on receiving the Champions of the Earth award. “As grandparents, we have to create a better future for our grandchildren. Today their future looks bleak. We, as Leaders, have the opportunity to make this right. This worry is the only thing that keeps me awake at night. This is my commitment, and I will continue to request all Leaders’ absolute support in winning this fight for our grandchildren.”

UNEP’s Champions of the Earth awards are the UN’s highest environmental honour. It recognizes outstanding leaders from government, civil society and the private sector. Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama is one of six laureates announced 11 December 2020.

The United Nations Environment Programme’s Champions of the Earth and the Young Champions of the Earth honour individuals, groups and organizations whose actions have a transformative impact on the environment.

The annual Champions of the Earth award is the UN’s highest environmental honour. It recognizes outstanding leaders from government, civil society and the private sector. Frank Bainimarama is one of six laureates announced in December 2020, on the cusp of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030

By showcasing news of the significant work being done on the environmental frontlines, the Champions of the Earth awards aim to inspire and motivate more people to act for nature. The awards are part of UNEP’s #ForNature campaign to rally momentum for the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) in Kunming in May 2021, and catalyze climate action all the way to the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow in November 2021.

Yacouba Sawadogo

The West African nation of Burkina Faso is landlocked, arid and is home to an agricultural innovation that has revolutionized farming in African countries battling the effects of drought and climate change. That’s thanks to the patience and determination of Yacouba Sawadogo, winner of the United Nations Environment Programme’s 2020 Champions of the Earth award for Inspiration and Action.

Sawadogo, known locally as “the man who stopped the desert”, modified a traditional cultivation practice called Zaï, which allows crops to grow in pits that trap rainfall, even in regions beset by water shortages. His technique, now nearly four decades old, is used by farmers across a 6,000-kilometre stretch of Africa.

“Back in the 1980s, we had good land, and not so great land,” recalls Sawadogo, who lives in a semi-rural region of the country north of the capital, Ouagadougou, where much of the local economy depends on rain-fed agriculture. “But over time we have really seen a decline in the quality of our soil and the productivity of our fields.”

In the early 1980s that slow decline culminated in a crippling famine both in Burkina Faso and neighbouring countries.

“People were leaving, and the animals and trees were dying,” said Sawadogo. “So, we had to look at a new way to farm because, all of the good soil was disappearing, and if we stayed here doing nothing, our life was at risk.”

Traditionally, farmers in Burkina Faso would not touch their fields until the start of Burkina Faso’s rainy season. But Sawadogo innovated, modifying the traditional irrigation technique Zaï - which means “to start early” in the Mossi language – preparing his land well before the rain.

The results were striking, the soil improved along with his crop yield. He was also able to grow trees in the arid ground. Four decades on he has created a 40-hectare forest on his land with more than 60 species of bushes and trees.

Digging Deeper
Farmers who practice Zaï dig small pits into degraded soils or hardpans, and then place organic material, like compost or natural fertilizer, into the pit. Sawadoga’s modifications use wider and deeper pits with stones to aid water retention, and termites to help break up the hard ground. As soon as rainfall starts, seeds are planted in the pits, which collect and concentrate water at the plant, reducing water stress in a region of low and erratic rainfall. It is a labour-intensive process, Sawadogo admits, but says, “if you want to have a good yield, you have to start early.”

Studies of Zaï suggest that by providing what is essentially a funnel that directs rain to the roots of a plant, farmers may increase their yields by anything from 100 to 500 per cent. That is a boon for those who rely on subsistence farming not only to feed their families but to pay for school fees, hospital bills and other essentials.

“Yacouba Sawadogo is a pioneer who would not let people’s skepticism deter him from finding a solution to the challenges in his community,” said Inger Andersen, the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme. “Zaï farming has helped improve crop yields and livelihoods for small-holder farmers, and by matching it with a message about preservation of forests and indigenous plants, Yacouba Sawadogo has demonstrated the critical role communities can play in protecting our environment.”

Seeding a movement
Zaï farming techniques got a boost across Burkina Faso during the late 1980s when the government of President Thomas Sankara embraced the process. Now, says Sawadogo, around 95 per cent of farmers in his region are proponents of Zaï. The techniques have also radiated outward, reaching countries in the Sahel, and further across the continent, through Ghana, Chad and even in Kenya, where semi-arid lands are threatened by the same cycles of drought and rain.

Zaï is also one of the many indigenous land use techniques at the heart of the Great Green Wall programme, Africa’s flagship initiative to combat land degradation, desertification and drought.

Yet even with Zaï, Sawadogo says ruefully, the impact of climate change is visible, dangerous and only accelerating for the farmers of his region and beyond.

“The biggest challenge for our farmers is drought. A warming earth means lower yields,” he says. “Even those among us with no formal training know that trees and grasses and other plants can stave off the effects of climate change. But they can’t fix our harvests.”

Inspiring others
Sawadogo harbours no illusions about the challenges that confront the communities he is trying to help make more self-sufficient, most of whom are eking out modest livings in some of the most unforgiveable terrain. He spends a lot of time talking to people, teaching them about Zaï, but also about climate change, the need for reforestation and the value of preserving indigenous plants and trees. In his region, there is just a single hospital serving tens of thousands of people. Most depend on the forest for medicinal plants, and Sawadogo is now working to protect Burkina Faso’s fragile tree cover.

Sawadogo says the success of those efforts will ultimately lie with younger generations, who are increasingly pushing for environmental change.

“It’s not possible to avoid hardship or to be challenged by other people for your goals,” he says. “You have to be ready to challenge them back and defend your position. The world is counting on it.”

The United Nations Environment Programme’s Champions of the Earth and the Young Champions of the Earth honour individuals, groups and organizations whose actions have a transformative impact on the environment.

The annual Champions of the Earth award is the UN’s highest environmental honour. It recognizes outstanding leaders from government, civil society and the private sector. Yacouba Sawadogo is one of six laureates announced in December 2020, on the cusp of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030.

By showcasing news of the significant work being done on the environmental frontlines, the Champions of the Earth awards aim to inspire and motivate more people to act for nature. The awards are part of UNEP’s #ForNature campaign to rally momentum for the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) in Kunming in May 2021, and catalyze climate action all the way to the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow in November 2021.

Dr. Fabian Leendertz

Fabian Leendertz, a veterinarian who has helped trace the origin of some of the world’s deadliest disease outbreaks, has been named the 2020 Champion of the Earth for Science and Innovation.

Leendertz has led ground-breaking investigations into pathogens like Anthrax and Ebola, exploring how the contagions jump between animals and humans. He led a group of researchers who tracked a 2014 outbreak of Ebola back to a single, bat-filled tree in Guinea.

“What is amazing is to do science that has an effect,” said Leendertz. “Doing work in an innovative environment, that I can see in my lifetime is having an effect, is really motivating.”

Leendertz became interested in zoonotic diseases – contagions that vault between humans and animals – while doing PhD research on chimpanzees in Côte D'Ivoire. That started a lifelong career in primate ecology and pathogens, the micro-organisms that transmit disease.

“I started with a focus on the health and disease of these wild chimpanzees,” explains Leendertz. “From there it was the logical next step to see if the pathogens we find in great apes would also be found in the human population, and to learn where the pathogens come from.”

He now heads the eponymous Leendertz Lab focusing on zoonosis at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin. His team investigates the sources and reservoirs of microorganisms in wild primates and other animals, and their transmission between species. Leendertz was recently named as one of ten researchers selected by the World Health Organization (WHO) to investigate the source of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Investigating the source of Ebola
In 2014, days after Ebola was confirmed in Guinea, Leendertz led a team of 17 anthropologists, ecologists and vets charged with finding the source of the virus outbreak. Their work centred on the village of Meliandou, where some of the earliest cases were found.

“When we told the residents we were there to find out how this had happened they were keen to assist,” he explains. “They helped guide our team, because they know their village, they know where the animals are.”

Their information helped the team track the outbreak from what scientists believed was patient zero, a two-year-old boy in Meliandou, to a tree home to a colony of Angolan free-tailed bats. These bats are suspected to be one of the Ebola reservoir species.

Leendertz is quick to credit the local scientists across Africa that he collaborates with on these pathogen investigations. These interdisciplinary teams with their multifaceted approaches have been key to tracing the origins of diseases.

Leendertz incorporates a One Health approach to his work on zoonotic disease outbreaks. This means integrating public health, veterinary medicine and environmental expertise. His lab is part of the African Network for Improved Diagnostics, Epidemiology and Management of Common Infectious Agents. Working with four partner countries – Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Africa – the network helps states detect, respond to and prevent common infectious diseases, including COVID-19.

The increasing risk of pandemics
During his two decades in the field, Leendertz says diseases with “pandemic potential” are increasingly threatening humanity.

Urban population growth, agricultural encroachment and illegal mining are destroying the buffer zones that separate humans from wild animals, even in and around national parks. “With more people and more presence in the parks, the risk of micro-organisms and the exchange of pathogens between humans and wildlife is a rising risk.”

Once a disease makes the jump, its potential to become a pandemic is also mounting, he says. “People are more connected. There is better accessibility to remote areas, so if you have a spill over from a pathogen to the human population it is easier for it to reach a big city and from there to travel around the world.”

Leendertz cautions diseases can also jump from people to animals, sometimes with devastating effects. Great apes he was studying at the Taï National Park in Côte d'Ivoire, for example, were inadvertently being infected by guides and researchers. Leendertz’s work resulted in the 2015 publication of hygiene and training guidelines for humans, including tourists, who enter national parks with great apes.

He and 25 experts also published a letter in Nature calling for tourism and research trips to be halted amid COVID-19, fearing the disease could vault into the ape population. They noted, “Such efforts should include ways to offset loss of earnings from tourism, while taking care not to interfere with work to save human lives.”

“2020 has shown us how devastating pandemics are to our lives and our economies. The research Dr. Leendertz has conducted over the past two decades is crucial in helping us understand not only where these diseases come from, but also what is causing them,” said United Nations Environment Programme Executive Director Inger Andersen. “The science is clear that if we keep exploiting wildlife and destroying our ecosystems, then we can expect to see a steady stream of zoonotic diseases in the years ahead. To prevent future outbreaks, we must protect and restore our natural environment.”

Leendertz says everyone can help protect wild animals through their consumer choices and the politicians they support. “Environment, human and animal health are connected,” he says. “We need to see this bigger picture and support those who work and fight to protect and restore nature.”

The annual Champions of the Earth award is the UN’s highest environmental honour. It recognizes outstanding leaders from government, civil society and the private sector. Fabian Leendertz is one of six laureates announced in December 2020, on the cusp of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030.

By showcasing news of the significant work being done on the environmental frontlines, the Champions of the Earth awards aim to inspire and motivate more people to act for nature. The awards are part of UNEP’s #ForNature campaign to rally momentum for the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) in Kunming in May 2021, and catalyze climate action all the way to the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow in November 2021.

Mindy Lubber

What defines Mindy Lubber as an advocate, and what makes her such a fitting winner of the 2020 Champions of the Earth award for Entrepreneurial Vision, is her ability to change not only hearts and minds but also the way money flows around the world.

Lubber is the head of Ceres, a non-profit organization that shows investors and multinational corporations how to factor sustainability risks like climate change, water pollution and deforestation into what they do and how they invest. Ceres is also working to improve regulatory and policy systems to ensure investors and companies are mandated to factor climate risk and water risk into their work.

In her 17 years at the organization, Lubber has been proving that it is possible to be profitable as well as environmentally and socially responsible.

“It’s not just policy and people. It’s also markets because whether we like it or not, they drive so much of the world,” she says.

When Lubber talks about “markets”, she’s referring to capital markets, a broad term that includes the policies that govern our financial system as well as the trade in financial instruments, like stocks and bonds.

Ceres, and other organizations like it, use hard data to convince investors and corporations that investments in technologies like solar power, wind energy and water recycling can be a boon for the bottom line. The goal is to spur investments that align with the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). (Climate Action 100+, an initiative Ceres helped co-found, has more than 500 investors with $47 trillion in assets under management.)

“To make real progress against climate change, the Paris Agreement and SDG agenda must be part of the imperative of business, not something to hold your nose at and fight against,” says Lubber.

A lifetime visionary
Long before she got involved in capital markets, Lubber was honing her advocacy skills alongside the consumer advocate Ralph Nader. She rose through the ranks of the Massachusetts chapter of the Public Interest Research Group to become its director. Gradually, her interest in consumer protection was surpassed by an even greater passion: a commitment to be a steward not only of the Earth but also of its inhabitants.

“Sustainability is the future of the planet and of its people,” she says. “You cannot have a just and sustainable future without humanity – the subjugation of women, or poverty, or food shortages... all of these are conditions that people cannot survive in.”

As the founder and CEO of the impact investment firm Green Century Capital Management in the early 1990s, Lubber remembers the skepticism and cynicism that greeted pitches for environmentally focused investments.

Now, she says with a note of triumph, “it’s normal business. So, we have to go further. We have to change the way we do business, and we still have a long way to go.”

United Nations Environment Programme Executive Director Inger Andersen calls Lubber “a lifetime visionary...who sees the complex intersections between humanity and the world around them not as a challenge but as an opportunity. We are proud to celebrate Mindy Lubber as a 2020 Champion of the Earth, she demonstrates that with careful planning and collaboration, there needs not be a confrontation between environmental sustainability and economic growth.”

Sending the right signals
Lubber is proud of Ceres’ efforts to integrate sustainability into capital markets, and their success in demonstrating that acting on climate is good for the economy, not a burden.

In 2004, Ceres partnered with the United Nations Foundation to host a biennial investors summit on climate risk. Responses from companies were initially tepid: some sent interns. But today, the forum is a gathering place for CEOs, political leaders, major investors and development experts.

“It’s become a very special part of our history and partnership,” she says.

Lubber works directly with nearly 120 companies, and indirectly with hundreds more to develop and implement target-driven roadmaps for sustainability. She, and Ceres, also work with 198 investors including the largest pension funds in the US whose portfolios hold the biggest companies in our economy.

“When the largest owners of the largest companies say we want to see you act, and change, it’s a very different response,” she says.

These investors, she says were critical to the success of the Paris Agreement, the landmark global commitment to combat climate change reached in 2015.

“Capital markets work if there are honest pricing signals,” she says. “Our job, when it comes to sustainability and the impacts of environmental degradation, is to find those signals.”

The annual Champions of the Earth award is the UN’s highest environmental honour. It recognizes outstanding leaders from government, civil society and the private sector. Mindy Lubber is one of six laureates announced in December 2020, on the cusp of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030.

Nemonte Nenquimo

Nemonte Nenquimo didn’t ask to be a celebrity, not to become friends with Oscar-winner Leonardo DiCaprio, nor to be named by Time magazine as one of the most influential people in the world.

What the indigenous rights activist wanted was for her four-year-old daughter to live in peace, surrounded by the richness of the Amazon rainforest, in her ancestral lands deep in the middle of Ecuador.

“I grew up surrounded by the songs of the wise women of my community who said the green forest that we see today is there because our ancestors protected it,” said Nenquimo, a member of the Waorani indigenous community, who says she is of “warrior blood."

Nenquimo, winner of the 2020 United Nations Environment Programme’s Champions of the Earth award for Inspiration and Action, has continued that legacy of environmental stewardship. But her weapon of choice has been a modern one: the lawsuit.

In February 2019, the Waorani filed suit against the Ecuadorian government, claiming officials failed to consult with them before offering huge swaths of the Amazon rainforest to oil companies. An estimated one million indigenous people, representing more than 400 different communities, reside in the forest, but their livelihoods, land rights and self-determination have been challenged by central governments for generations.

A decision in April of that year in the Pastaza Provincial Court was historic, protecting 500,000 acres of Waorani territory in the rainforest from exploitation.

In June 2020, a provincial court ordered that improvements be made to the monitoring of illegal mining and logging, along with drug trafficking, on the grounds that those industries were vectors of COVID-19.

“As indigenous people we must unite in a single objective: that we demand that they respect us,” said Nenquimo. “The Amazon is our home and it is not for sale.”

UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen said Nenquimo’s lawsuit win was a seminal moment for indigenous communities in the Amazon basin.

“At least a quarter of the world’s land area is owned, managed, used or occupied by indigenous peoples and local communities,” she said. “Their contribution is essential to halt degradation of these ecosystems. Inclusion of indigenous communities in policy-making and supporting environmental defenders like Nemonte Nenquimo are at the heart of UNEP’s efforts to protect the environment.”

Working with Indigenous communities
In addition to safeguarding the Amazon, Nenquimo is also pressing for other rights for indigenous communities. Her organization, the Coordinating Council of the Waorani Nationality of Ecuador-Pastaza, works with indigenous non-profit Ceibo Alliance (Alianza Ceibo), which Nenquimo co-founded in 2014. The alliance brings together four different indigenous nations – the A'i Kofan, the Siekopai, the Siona and the Waorani to confront threats to their rainforest territories and cultural survival. Ceibo Alliance also builds sustainable indigenous-led alternatives for the protection of their lands and livelihoods by improving access to education, involving young people in leadership, promoting solar energy, and creating economic opportunities for women.

Celebrity connections
Indigenous self-determination and environmental stewardship are also focus areas of Ceibo Alliance’s sister organization, Amazon Frontlines, which Nenquimo helped to establish and which received early support from the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation. In partnership with indigenous and environmental organizations, the Amazon Frontlines works to build indigenous capacity and autonomy to protect the Amazon’s ecological systems and address climate issues.

It’s through this initiative that Nemonte got to know and eventual friend, the Oscar-winning actor, who nominated her for Time magazine’s list of the world’s 100 Most Influential People of 2020.

“It motivates me that the world is recognizing our collective struggle, and the struggle of indigenous peoples in many countries,” she said. “Thanks to this international recognition, we want to keep fighting.”

Nenquimo sees a growing desire among countries to address deforestation in the Amazon. That push, she says, can’t come too soon. This year, the region endured the worst cycle of forest fires in a generation, with more than 76,000 blazes burning across the Amazon basin over the dry months of June, July and August.

“If we allow the Amazon to be destroyed little by little, of course, that affects us as indigenous peoples, but it will also affect everyone because of climate change,” said Nenquimo. “The struggle we do is for all humanity because we all live connected to the land.”

The annual Champions of the Earth award is the UN’s highest environmental honour. It recognizes outstanding leaders from government, civil society and the private sector. Nemonte Nenquimo is one of six laureates announced in December 2020, on the cusp of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030.

Jeff Orlowski

Jeff Orlowski won in the Inspiration and Action Category for his work on spreading powerful environmental messages to a global audience. Orlowski is the founder of Exposure Labs, which uses the power of storytelling to create impact. In 2012, he directed the climate-focused documentary, Chasing Ice, which has been screened in over 172 countries, 70 universities, over 75 film festivals, the White House and the UN.

His film, Chasing Coral, looks at the effects of ocean warming and coral bleaching on these vulnerable ecosystems. The award-winning documentary is the result of 500+ hours underwater, the creative application of cutting-edge technology, submissions of footage from volunteers from 30 countries, and support from more than 500 people around the world. It won the Sundance US Documentary Audience Award.

Chasing Coral’s impact campaign is driven by a central mission to inspire a new wave of climate champions in unexpected places, calling on people to arrange screenings of the film and take action to protect coral reefs that are dying across the world.

“The collapse of our reefs is an early, yet urgent warning of the threat posed to all ecosystems,” said Orlowski. “I hope this award can help reveal this elusive story hidden in our ocean to the world.”

Visit www.ChasingCoral.com to learn more. Both films can be streamed on Netflix.

Mia Mottley

When Barbados Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley stood up in front of the United Nations General Assembly earlier this year, she was not in a mood to pull punches. In front of world leaders, she decried the “faceless few” who were pushing the world towards a climate catastrophe and imperilling the future of small-island states, like her own.

“Our world knows not what it is gambling with, and if we don’t control this fire, it will burn us all down,” she said in September. Drawing on the lyrics of reggae great Bob Marley, she added: “Who will get up and stand up for the rights of our people?”

The impassioned speech would grab headlines around the world and for many, it was an introduction to Mottley. But the Barbados Prime Minister, this year’s Champion of the Earth for Policy Leadership, has spent years campaigning against pollution, climate change, and deforestation, turning Barbados into a frontrunner in the global environmental movement.

“Prime Minister Mottley has been a champion for those who are most vulnerable to the triple planetary crises of climate change, biodiversity and nature loss, and pollution and waste” said Inger Andersen, the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). “Her passionate advocacy and policy achievements are prime examples of how world leaders can take bold, urgent action on environmental issues.”

Mottley was elected Prime Minister in 2018 with more than 70 per cent of the popular vote, becoming Barbados’ first female leader since independence in 1966. Under her watch, the country has developed an ambitious plan to phase out fossil fuels by 2030. Her vision is for nearly every home on the island to have solar panels on the roof and an electric vehicle out front.

Mottley, who has said she finds inspiration in the forests that cover nearly 20 per cent of Barbados, has also overseen a national strategy to plant more than 1 million trees, with participation from the entire population. The plan aims to foster food security and build resilience to a changing climate.

It’s a push that couldn’t be timelier as a new UNEP report suggests the world is careening towards a temperature rise of 2.7°C, a number that could lead to catastrophic changes for the planet’s ecosystems. With Mottley’s urging, Latin America and the Caribbean became the first region in the world to agree on the Action Plan for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, an effort to prevent and reverse the degradation of natural spaces worldwide. A UNEP report published in June 2021 found that for every dollar invested in ecosystem restoration, up to US$30 are yielded in economic benefits.

Ultimately, Mottley believes that tackling environmental decline is vital to spurring economic development and combating poverty. Responding to climate-related disasters “affects your ability to finance your development on the Sustainable Development Goals,” she said. “Other things that matter to people on a day-to-day basis, like education, like healthcare, like roads, all become affected because you have limited fiscal space to be able to do that which you otherwise would.”

She has also been a vocal advocate for developing countries vulnerable to climate change, especially small-island states expected to be inundated by rising seas. During a visit by UN Secretary-General António Guterres to Barbados in October, she stressed the importance of making financing available for developing nations to adapt to climate change. For developing countries, the cost of countering climate-related hazards like droughts, floods and rising seas stands at $70 billion per year and could rise to as much as $300 billion annually by 2030.

“We have to recognize that if we don’t pause at this stage and settle the financing framework, we’re going to have problems,” Mottley has said. To help Barbados adapt to the climate crisis, Mottley has spearheaded a national resilience programme dubbed Roofs to Reefs. The initiative will include the use of innovative financial tools to scale up public spending on everything from reinforcing homes to restoring coral reefs, which help protect coastlines from storms. Roofs to Reefs has been hailed as a model for other countries under siege from climate change.

Mottley is also the co-chair of the Global Leaders Group on Antimicrobial Resistance, leading an international effort to combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR) - a major threat to the environment, human health and economic development. AMR is the ability of organisms to resist the action of pharmaceutical drugs used to treat illnesses in humans and animals. Misuse and overuse of antimicrobials, including antibiotics, can exacerbate climate change, nature and biodiversity loss and pollution and waste.

As the world continues to recover from the devastating COVID-19 pandemic, Mottley has stressed that a green recovery is critical to the fiscal survival of her tourism-dependent country and warned that continuing business as usual would accelerate the climate crisis.

“I think that the combination of the pandemic and the climate crisis has presented a perfect political moment for human beings to pause and really examine what it is we are doing,” she said. “What I really, really want in this world is for us to be able to have a sense of responsibility towards our environment, but also to the future generations.”

The United Nations Environment Programme’s Champions of the Earth and the Young Champions of the Earth recognize individuals, groups and organizations whose actions have a transformative impact on the environment. Presented annually, the Champions of the Earth award is the UN’s highest environmental honour.

The United Nations General Assembly has declared the years 2021 through 2030 the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. Led by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations together with the support of partners, it is designed to prevent, halt, and reverse the loss and degradation of ecosystems worldwide. It aims at reviving billions of hectares, covering terrestrial as well as aquatic ecosystems. A global call to action, the UN Decade draws together political support, scientific research, and financial muscle to massively scale up restoration. Visit www.decadeonrestoration.org to learn more.

Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka

It might have been the neighbor’s monkey which came downstairs to join her for piano lessons, or the wildlife club that she started in primary school in Kampala, Uganda. But from a very early age, Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, this year’s Champion of the Earth for Science and Innovation, knew she wanted to work with animals.

“Basically, pets were my first friends,” said Kalema-Zikusoka, a wildlife veterinarian by training who would go on to spend three decades helping to safeguard some of the world’s rarest primates, including endangered mountain gorillas. Much of her work has been in impoverished East African communities that border protected areas, where she has helped improve healthcare and create economic opportunities, turning many locals into partners in conservation.

“Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka is a pioneer in community-led wildlife conservation,” said Inger Andersen, the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme. “In many places, economic pressures can cause friction between humans and animals. But her work has shown how conflict can be overcome when local communities take the lead in protecting the nature and wildlife around them, creating benefits for all species.”

Supported by her family, Kalema-Zikusoka embarked on a global educational adventure, earning degrees in Uganda, the United Kingdom and the United States. In her early 20s, she returned to Uganda for an internship in, what would eventually become the locus of her future work, Bwindi Impenetrable National Park located in the country’s remote and impoverished southwest.

It was the beginning of gorilla tourism in Bwindi and Kalema-Zikusoka, then a young vet student, found that conservation wasn’t a simple process. “There were people focused on tourism and on community conservation,” she recalled. “There were wardens and rangers and the Peace Corps and lodges and by the end of my time there, I understood how complex tourism and conservation were.”

Kalema-Zikusoka would become the first-ever wildlife veterinarian for the Uganda Wildlife Authority. There, she began to apply what was a new approach to working for wildlife – one that centred on improving lives and livelihoods in the remote villages that surrounded Bwindi.

“(That allows) humans to enjoy a better quality of life and be more positive about conservation. When you show people that you care about them and about their health and well-being, you help them better co-exist with wildlife.”

That would become the guiding principle behind the organization that Kalema-Zikusoka founded nearly 20 years ago: Conservation Through Public Health. It has expanded its model of village health to protected areas near Virunga National Park in Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as to two non-protected areas of Mount Elgon National Park in Uganda. In addition to promoting hygiene and good sanitation practices, the teams also support family planning.

Appreciating the interplay between humans and wildlife, and the spread of zoonotic diseases between the two populations, was critical for Kalema-Zikusoka as she took on a greater role in providing guidance to the Ugandan government’s COVID-19 pandemic response.

Global lockdowns hobbled the tourism industry in Uganda’s southwest, forcing some to return to one particularly problematic vocation: poaching. That threatened painstaking advances made in restoring Bwindi’s mountain gorilla population, whose numbers have steadily increased to more than 400. This represents nearly half of the population of the endangered species still living in the wild.

Conservation Through Public Health provided fast-growing crops to families, allowing them to at least grow enough food to feed themselves. They also left the community with an important message. “We told them, you have to continue to protect wildlife because it’s helped you this much. This is your future.”

Conflict between people and animals is one of the main threats to the long-term survival of some of the world’s most iconic species, according to a recent report from World Wide Fund for Nature and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). In many countries like Uganda, the conflict, coupled with health risks of COVID-19 has further imperiled endangered species.

Kalema-Zikusoka worked with national park staff to encourage visitors and rangers to wear masks, not just to prevent transmission amongst themselves of COVID-19, but also to protect the gorillas, who can be infected by human-borne pathogens. That work would evolve into protocols designed to limit the spread of zoonotic diseases – contagions that jump between humans and animals – and training for local health workers designed to combat COVID-19. Now 21 countries in Africa – including the 13 states that are home to dwindling populations of great apes – have signed on to the guidelines.

“We are really adapting the model of preventing zoonotic disease to COVID-19 prevention,” said Kalema-Zikusoka. Conservation Through Public Health also looks at ways to diversify income streams for local communities sharing space with wildlife. The organization’s latest project is Gorilla Conservation Coffee, a social enterprise. Staff teach farmers near Bwindi how to grow top-notch coffee beans while conserving water and using organic fertilizers. “We are now working towards impact investment,” said Kalema-Zikusoka. “It’s all about the importance of sustainable financing for conservation.”

Recognized globally for her work, Kalema-Zikusoka, says that she hopes she will inspire young Africans to choose careers in conservation. “There is a lack of local representation among conservationists. Not many are from the places where endangered animals are found,” she said. “We need more local champions, because these are the people who will become decision-makers for their communities and countries.”

The United Nations Environment Programme’s Champions of the Earth and the Young Champions of the Earth recognize individuals, groups and organizations whose actions have a transformative impact on the environment. Presented annually, the Champions of the Earth award is the UN’s highest environmental honour.

Sea Women of Melanesia

To most people, fins, masks and neoprene wetsuits are recreational gear. But to the non-profit group Sea Women of Melanesia, this year’s Champion of the Earth for Inspiration and Action, they are the tools of change.

Clad in diving gear, the group’s 30-plus members chart the health of the fragile coral reefs that surround Melanesia, a grouping of island nations in the South Pacific. Their goal: teaching local women scuba diving and biology skills so they can monitor the health of coral reefs and create and restore marine protected areas.

“I remember the first time I went and talked to a fishing village to try and recruit some women to join our programme,” recalled Israelah Atua, a member of the Sea Women. “They didn’t even want to hear us. But we convinced them that marine conservation is necessary to protecting all of our livelihoods.”

The Sea Women work in what’s known as the Coral Triangle, which covers some 5.7 million square kilometres between the Great Barrier Reef and the island archipelagos of Melanesia and South East Asia. Brimming with marine life, it is one of the world’s premier destinations for underwater tourism and home to a major fisheries industry. It is also exceptionally threatened by surging human populations and waste levels.

Coral reefs the world over are under siege from climate change, overfishing and pollution. Since 2009 alone, almost 14 per cent of the world’s corals have disappeared, according to a recent report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Many of those that remain are endangered.

Healthy reefs are critical to withstand climate change impacts, including ocean acidification and extreme events. But the report shows that, unless drastic action is taken to limit global warming to 1.5°C, a 70 - 90 per cent decrease in live coral on reefs could occur by 2050.

The good news is that coral reefs are resilient and can recover if the marine environment is safeguarded. The Sea Women initiative, which is run by the Coral Sea Foundation, has since 2018 worked across the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea to promote restoration of coral reefs and support the establishment of no-fishing areas. It also supports marine protected areas in the two countries, to ensure there is abundant fish life for villagers to rely on in future.

The Sea Women are simultaneously changing narratives about a woman’s role in her community and her opportunities for leadership.

“Having a woman in the community who can advocate for the marine reserve process and marine conservation, in a local language, is important to get the initial messages out about the importance of marine protected areas,” said Andy Lewis, the executive director of the Coral Sea Foundation. “There can be no conservation work done in these countries without explicit recognition of indigenous culture.”

For the Sea Women, combining indigenous knowledge with science is central to their engagement with communities. Learning from community members about where fish are most plentiful at a certain time of year, or matching the colour change in coral reefs with underwater survey data, or understanding how tides may shift as a function of climate change is important to the outreach they do to demonstrate the value of preservation and marine protected areas.

But equally, the Sea Women say, they are challenging indigenous conventions about a woman’s role in her household, community and society.

“When you train a woman, you train a society,” said Evangelista Apelis, a Sea Woman and co-director of the Sea Women programme based in Papua New Guinea. “We're trying to educate women, get women on board, so they can then go back and make an impact in their own families and their society as well."

The Sea Women undergo a rigorous marine science training, which is supplemented by practical training in reef survey techniques and coral reef ecology. Then they learn to dive.

“What I love most about my job is being able to experience the beauty of the underwater world,” said Apelis. “Before going down, you just imagine all sorts of things but the reality is even more mesmerizing – the fish, the shipwrecks… it’s like everything just came alive.” Each of the Sea Women is supported through internationally recognized scuba diving certification, and taught how to use GPS, underwater cameras and video to survey fish and coral populations on the Coral Triangle’s reefs. Their work since 2018 has led to proposals for more than 20 new marine protected areas in the waters of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

“Coral reefs are a sanctuary for marine life and underpin the economies of countless coastal communities,” said Inger Andersen, UNEP’s Executive Director. “Coral reefs are vital to the future of our planet and the work done by the Sea Women to safeguard these beautiful, diverse ecosystems is nothing short of inspirational.”

For Naomi Longa, a team leader for the Sea Women in the West New Britain Province of Papua New Guinea, helping create marine reserves means that she is not only a leader in her community but also setting a course for the future. As population pressures on land add to the stress on the sea, the marine reserve programme is an investment into long-term well-being for communities vulnerable to stresses and shocks.

“We are actually saving food for the future generation,” she said. “There are species dying out, so some of the species that are living in those marine reserves may be the only species left when our future generations are born.”

Sir David Attenborough

When Sir David Attenborough was a boy, he spent much of his free time bounding through abandoned quarries in the English countryside, hammer in hand. His prey: fossilized ammonites, spiral-shaped mollusks that lived in the time of the dinosaurs.

To a young Attenborough, the fossils were like buried treasures and he was amazed to be the first to set eyes on them in tens of millions of years.

The natural world would keep him enthralled for the rest of his life.

Today, Attenborough, 95, is arguably the world’s best-known natural history broadcaster. During a career that began with the dawn of television, he has penned and presented some of the most influential documentaries on the state of the planet, including his decade-spanning, nine-part Life series.

With what the New York Times called his “voice-of-God-narration” and an insatiable curiosity, he has spent 70 years revealing the beauty of the natural world – and laying bare the threats it faces. Along the way, he has offered hundreds of millions of viewers a vision for a more sustainable future.

“If the world is, indeed, to be saved, then Attenborough will have had more to do with its salvation than anyone else who ever lived,” wrote environmentalist and author Simon Barnes.

The United Nations has recognized Attenborough’s outsized impact on the global environmental movement, presenting him with the UN Champions of the Earth Lifetime Achievement Award. The award is the UN’s highest environmental honour and celebrates those who have dedicated their lives to tackling crises like climate change, species loss and pollution.

“You have been an extraordinary inspiration for so many people,” said Inger Andersen, the Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), as she presented Attenborough with the award.

“You spoke for the planet long before anyone else did and you continue to hold our feet to the fire.”

Along with his work in the media, Attenborough is one of the leading voices of the global environmental movement. He has appeared at landmark summits, like the 2015 Paris Climate Change Conference, where he has called for a unified global effort to combat the threats to the Earth.

He has also collaborated with UNEP for at least four decades, lending his voice to a series of campaigns and short films that have cast a spotlight on the organization’s efforts to counter the climate crisis, biodiversity loss and pollution. That work is driven by a belief that no one country alone can solve the planet’s environmental ills.

“We are living in an era when nationalism simply isn’t enough,” Attenborough said in accepting the UNEP Champion of the Earth Lifetime Achievement Award. “We must feel like we are all citizens of this one planet. If we work together, we can solve these problems.”

Attenborough graduated from Cambridge University in 1947 with a degree in natural sciences, but soon found he didn’t have the disposition for a life of research. And so, he made his way to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) just as television was creeping into homes.

His first tv appearance came on 21 December, 1954, in Zoo Quest, a globe-trotting series that introduced rapt Britons to exotic creatures, like orangutans and Komodo dragons.

As talented an administrator as he was a presenter, Attenborough would rise through the ranks of Britain’s national broadcaster, eventually coming to helm BBC Two. There, he commissioned Monty Python’s Flying Circus, among other series.

But administration wasn’t really for him, and in 1973 Attenborough left the executive suite to return to making films.

The result would be his landmark 1979 series Life on Earth, an epic that charted the history of the living world, from the first microbes to humankind.

The series took three years to make and Attenborough travelled 1.5 million miles during filming. With its scope and ambition, Life on Earth would redefine the natural history documentary and be viewed by some 500 million people.

Over the next three decades, Attenborough would write and present eight more grand documentaries, focusing the world’s attention on what he called the “spectacular marvel” of nature.

But as his career progressed, Attenborough came to bear witness to the cratering of the natural world. As humanity’s presence grew, nature’s receded. Human activity has altered three-quarters of the Earth’s surface and placed 1 million species at risk of extinction.

“Immensely powerful though we are today, it's equally clear that we’re going to be even more powerful tomorrow,” he said at the conclusion of 1984’s The Living Planet. “Clearly we could devastate the world. [The Earth’s] continued survival now rests in our hands.”

Attenborough’s films showed the world that the wild is not infinite, that it was delicate and needed protecting – and that humanity was growing dangerously apart from nature.

Last year, halfway through his 90s, he addressed world leaders at the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland.

“We are already in trouble,” he said. “Is this how our story is to end? A tale of the smartest species doomed by that all-too-human characteristic of failing to see the bigger picture in pursuit of short-term goals.”

But then, as almost always, Attenborough’s words were tinged with optimism. A recurring theme of his films has been that despite the dire state of the planet, humanity can still repair the damage it has done.

“It’s not all doom and gloom,” he said in 2020’s A Life on Our Planet, a look back at his career. “There’s a chance for us to make amends, to complete our journey of development and once again become a species in balance with nature. All we need is the will to do so.”

In the same film, he offered a prescription for making peace with nature. It centered on raising living standards in poorer countries to curb population growth, embracing clean energy, like solar and wind power, eating more plant-based foods, which are easier on the planet, and abandoning fossil fuels.

“If we take care of nature, nature will take care of us,” he said. “It’s now time for our species to stop simply growing, to establish a life on our planet in balance with nature, to start to thrive.”

Attenborough’s work and activism would see him knighted (twice) and become the namesake of dozens of species, from attenborosaurus (a prehistoric swimming reptile) to nepenthes attenboroughii (a carnivorous plant).

In recent years, Attenborough has continued to lend his voice to natural history documentaries, earning a pair of Emmy nominations in 2021 for narration. (In his career, he has won three Emmys and eight BAFTAs.)

For decades, Attenborough has been sought by world leaders looking for solutions to the crises facing the natural world – and perhaps a jolt of his enthusiasm.

In 2015 he visited the White House for a conversation with United States President Barack Obama. Obama asked Attenborough what sparked his “deep fascination” with the natural world.

“I’ve never met a child who’s not interested in natural history,” he replied, perhaps recalling his fossil-hunting days in the English countryside. “So, the question is, how does anyone lose it?”