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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.”

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?”

Ant Forest

For turning the green good deeds of half a billion people into green trees planted in some of China’s most arid regions, Ant Forest mini-programme has been awarded Champion of the Earth for inspiration and action.

Launched by Ant Financial Services Group, an Alibaba affiliate, Ant Forest promotes greener lifestyles by inspiring users to reduce carbon emissions in their daily lives. When they do, Ant Forest rewards them with ‘green energy’ points, which can be used to plant a real tree.

The aim is to combat desertification, lower air pollution and protect the environment.

Ant Forest users are encouraged to record their low-carbon footprint through daily actions like taking public transport or paying utility bills online. For each action, they receive ‘green energy’ points and when they accumulate a certain number of points, an actual tree is planted. Users can view images of their trees in real-time via satellite.

The Ant Forest platform is also exploring innovative solutions to alleviate poverty and improve the lives of local people by leveraging the power of digital technology.

Since its launch in August 2016, Ant Forest and its NGO partners have planted around 122 million trees in some of China’s driest areas, including in desert regions in Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Qinghai and Shanxi. The trees cover an area of 112,000 hectares (1.68 million mu) and the project has become China’s largest private sector tree-planting initiative.

Business units across Alibaba are also encouraging users to take part in Ant Forest. For example, if they use the second-hand trading platform Idle Fish to recycle old items, they can earn ‘green energy’ points.

Ant Forest’s recognition as a Champion of the Earth highlights the importance of ecosystem restoration in reducing the emissions fuelling climate change. In March 2019, the United Nations underlined the urgent need to protect the natural systems that sustain life by declaring the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration from 2021-2030.

China has long been committed to reforestation to improve its environment and tackle climate change. Authorities aim to increase the area of land covered by forests from 21.7 per cent in 2016 to 23 per cent by 2020. Since 1978, the country has been building a 4,500-kilometre Green Great Wall, also known as the Three-North Shelterbelt Forest Program, along the edges of its northern deserts to hold back the expanding Gobi desert and prevent soil erosion and land degradation.

Champions of the Earth is the United Nations’ flagship global environmental award. It was established by the UN Environment Programme in 2005 to celebrate outstanding figures whose actions have had a transformative positive impact on the environment. From world leaders to environmental defenders and technology inventors, the awards recognize trailblazers who are working to protect our planet for the next generation.

The awards have recognized innovations and change-makers, particularly in the field of renewable energy.

In 2018, the Zhejiang Green Rural Revival Programme won the award for inspiration and action for its work to regenerate polluted waterways and damaged lands; also in 2018, Cochin International Airport, the world’s first solar power airport, won the award for entrepreneurial vision; and in 2017, the Saihanba Afforestation Community was recognized in the inspiration and action category for transforming degraded land on the southern edge of Inner Mongolia into a lush paradise.

Constantino Aucca Chutas

Constantino Aucca Chutas’ interest in conservation began more than three decades ago with the fieldwork he did as a biology student in Cusco, Peru.

At the time, the breath-taking slopes of the Peruvian Andes that surrounded the city were under pressure from annual fires, illegal logging and expanding farms.

“Conservation became a necessity,” Aucca said recently during an interview with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). His calling to defend nature grew stronger at the urging of his grandparents, indigenous Quechua farmers. “They told me, look, your name is Aucca, it means warrior. Please try to do something for us farmers.”

Aucca has spent the past 30 years honoring that request and is leading local communities in a push to protect forests across South America, which are critical for fighting climate change and home to unique plant and animal species.

The Asociación Ecosistemas Andinos (ECOAN), which Aucca founded in 2000, has planted more than 3 million trees in Peru and protected or restored 30,000 hectares of land.

For his efforts, Aucca has been named a Champion of the Earth for Inspiration and Action, the United Nations’ highest environmental awards.

Latin America and the Caribbean contain some of the world’s most biodiverse forest ecosystems, yet more than 40 per cent of the region’s forests have been cleared or degraded to make way for mining, agricultural and infrastructure projects.

Aucca’s community-led conservation has helped indigenous communities, a traditionally marginalized group, to secure legal rights to their land and establish protected areas for their native forests.

“Constantino Aucca Chutas’s pioneering work reminds us that indigenous communities are at the forefront of conservation,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP. “As some of the best custodians of the natural world, their contributions to ecosystem restoration are invaluable and cannot come at a more urgent time for the planet.”

Restoring highland and ‘cloud forests’

The Asociación Ecosistemas Andinos has mobilized thousands of people in Cusco to protect and restore ancient Polylepis forests, which once dominated the high Andes. Growing at up to 5,000 meters above sea level, higher than any forests in the world, these “cloud” trees play a vital role in the fight against climate change and biodiversity loss.

They harbor endangered wildlife, store carbon, fix soils and help to capture water from the Andes’ melting glaciers which is then slowly released to farming communities downstream. From their high vantage point, Polylepis forests absorb mist and retain huge amounts of water from clouds, which is gradually discharged through moss cover to keep mountain streams flowing.

Vast areas of the Andes were once covered in Polylepis trees but only 500,000 hectares are left standing today as decades of deforestation for firewood, livestock grazing, logging, mining and roads take their toll. The loss of these mountain forests impacts water scarcity, affecting the lives and livelihoods of millions of people.

To ensure the survival of future generations of indigenous farmers, Aucca’s association organizes tree-planting festivals in Cusco every year. The day begins with ancestral rituals derived from the region’s rich Incan heritage. Musicians blow conch shells and beat drums in honor of nature as villagers make their way up steep mountain trails to plant trees, some carrying bundles of seedlings on their backs – others, babies.

“When we plant a tree, we give something back to Mother Earth. We are convinced that the more trees we plant, the more people will be happy. It’s a celebration, a day of happiness,” Aucca said.

Giving back to local communities

In return for their efforts to restore threatened habitats and conserve birds and other wildlife, local communities receive help from Acción Andina to secure titles to their lands, which provides legal protection against exploitation by timber, mining and oil companies.

Aucca and his team have also created protected areas, brought doctors and dentists to remote mountain villages and provided solar panels and clean-burning clay stoves to communities to improve their quality of life.

Aucca’s vision for ecosystem regeneration goes beyond his native Peru. In 2018, the Asociación Ecosistemas Andinos and U.S. non-profit Global Forest Generation established Acción Andina to scale-up the community-led reforestation model in other Andean countries.

As President and co-founder of Acción Andina, Aucca now oversees plans to protect and restore 1 million hectares of critically important forests in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia and Ecuador, as well as Peru, over the next 25 years with support from Global Forest Generation. His work exemplifies the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration’s call for global action to prevent, halt and reverse ecosystem degradation.

The common good

Studies show that restoring 20 million hectares of degraded ecosystems in the Latin American and Caribbean region could yield US$23 billion in benefits over 50 years. Thriving ecosystems are also essential for keeping global warming below 2°C and helping societies and economies to adapt to climate change.

At the heart of Aucca’s work is his profound connection to his Inca heritage and the Incan principles of “Ayni and Minka,” a deep commitment to work together for the common good, which runs through plans to scale up reforestation in other Andean countries too.

“Once in South America we were the greatest empire, united by one culture, Inca culture,” Aucca said. “It was the first time we all came together. The next time we came together to create a movement was to free ourselves from the Spanish yoke, to seek our independence. Now we’re coming together for the third time. Why? To protect a little tree.”

Sir Partha Dasgupta

When the United Kingdom Treasury approached Sir Partha Dasgupta in 2019 to carry out a review of the economics of biodiversity, the first time a finance ministry is believed to have commissioned such a study, the eminent Cambridge University economist did not think twice about saying “yes”.

Over the next 18 months or so, Dasgupta and his team combined scientific, economic and historical evidence with rigorous mathematical modelling to produce The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review.

Published in February 2021, the landmark report shows that economic growth has come at a devastating cost to nature. It makes clear that humanity is destroying its most precious asset — the natural world — by living beyond the planet’s means and highlights recent estimates that 1.6 Earths would be required to maintain current living standards.

“Economic forecasts consist of investment in factories, employment rates, [gross domestic product] growth. They never mention what's happening to the ecosystems,” said Dasgupta, who is this year’s United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Champion of the Earth laureate for Science and Innovation. “It really is urgent that we think about it now,” he said.

The report was the culmination of four decades of work in which Dasgupta has sought to push the boundaries of traditional economics and lay bare the connection between the health of the planet and the stability of economies.

The Economics of Biodiversity is the foundation of a growing field of what is known as natural capital accounting, in which researchers attempt to assess the value of nature. Those numbers can help governments better understand the long-term economic costs of logging, mining and other potentially destructive industries, ultimately bolstering the case for protecting the natural world.

“Sir Partha Dasgupta’s ground-breaking contributions to economics over the decades have awakened the world to the value of nature and the need to protect ecosystems which enrich our economies, our well-being and our lives,” said Inger Andersen, UNEP Executive Director.

Economics as part of a ‘tapestry’

Dasgupta was born in 1942 in what is now the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka. (At the time, the city was part of India.) His father, the noted economist Amiya Kumar Dasgupta, had a huge influence on him and his path towards academia. After completing a bachelor’s degree in physics in Delhi, Dasgupta moved to the United Kingdom where he studied mathematics and later gained a doctorate in economics.

Through his many major contributions to economics for which he was knighted in 2002, Dasgupta has helped to shape the global debate on sustainable development and use of natural resources.

“Nature is a wondrous factory, producing a bewildering variety of goods and services at different speeds and of varying spatial coverage. Think of, for example, all the beautiful processes that shape wetlands – the birds and insects that pollinate, the water voles that dig round for food, the way tiny organisms decompose material and filter water,” said Dasgupta.

“It is a bewildering tapestry of things that are happening, many of which are unobservable. And yet they are creating the atmosphere in which humans and all living organisms can survive. The way we measure economic success or failure, the whole grammar of economics, needs to be built with this tapestry in mind.”

Affection for nature

Dasgupta traces his interest in the idea of living sustainably in a world of limited natural resources to his now classic 1969 paper On the Concept of Optimum Population. In the 1970s, Swedish economist Karl-Göran Mäler encouraged him to develop his ideas on the links between rural poverty and the state of the environment and natural resources in the world’s poorest countries, a subject that was notably absent from mainstream development economics at the time.

This led to further explorations of the relationships between population, natural resources, poverty and the environment, for which Dasgupta has become acclaimed.

“I’ve had a ball working in this field,” he said. “One reason it’s been fun is that I had no competition. Nobody else was working on it.”

Grasslands, forests and freshwater lakes are some of Dasgupta’s favourite ecosystems. He believes children should be taught nature studies from an early age and that the subject should be as compulsory as reading, writing and arithmetic. “That’s one way to generate some affection for nature. If you have affection for nature, then she is less likely to be trashed,” he said.

Inclusive wealth

Dasgupta is passionate about the need to replace gross domestic product (GDP) as a measure of the economic health of countries because it tells just part of the story. He argues instead for “inclusive wealth”, which not only captures financial and produced capital but also the skills in the workforce (human capital), the cohesion in society (social capital) and the value of the environment (natural capital).

This idea is embedded in the United Nations-supported System of Environmental Economic Accounting which allows countries to track environmental assets, their use in the economy, and return flows of waste and emissions.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has developed the Inclusive Wealth Index. Now calculated for about 163 countries, the index indicates that inclusive wealth expanded by an average of 1.8 per cent from 1992-2019, far below the rate of GDP, largely because of declines in natural capital.

Nature as a capital asset

Echoing the urgency of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration to prevent, halt and reverse ecosystem degradation, Dasgupta’s Economics of Biodiversity warns that critical ecosystems, from coral reefs to rainforests, are nearing dangerous tipping points, with catastrophic consequences for economies and people’s well-being.

The 600-page report calls for a fundamental rethink of humanity’s relationship with nature and how it is valued, arguing that the failure to include “ecosystem services” on national balance sheets has only served to intensify exploitation of the natural world.

“[It is] about introducing nature as a capital asset into economic thinking and showing how economic possibilities are entirely dependent on this finite entity,” said Dasgupta.

Dr Purnima Devi Barman

Dr. Purnima Devi Barman, this year’s Champion of the Earth for Entrepreneurial Vision, was only a child when she developed an affinity for the stork, a bird that was to become her life’s passion.

At the age of five, Barman was sent to live with her grandmother on the banks of the Brahmaputra River in the Indian state of Assam. Separated from her parents and siblings, the girl became inconsolable. To distract her, Barman’s grandmother, a farmer, started taking her to nearby paddy fields and wetlands to teach her about the birds there.

“I saw storks and many other species. She taught me bird songs. She asked me to sing for the egrets and the storks. I fell in love with the birds,” said Barman, a wildlife biologist who has devoted much of her career to saving the endangered greater adjutant stork, the second-rarest stork species in the world.

A species in decline

Fewer than 1,200 mature greater adjutant storks exist today, less than 1 per cent of what they numbered a century ago. The dramatic decline in their population has been partly driven by the destruction of their natural habitat. Wetlands where the storks thrive have been drained, polluted and degraded, replaced by buildings, roads and mobile phone towers as the urbanization of rural areas gathers pace. Wetlandsnurture a great diversity of animal and plant life but around the world they are disappearing three times faster than forests due to human activities and global heating.

Human-wildlife conflict

After gaining a Master’s degree in Zoology, Barman started a PhD on the greater adjutant stork. But, seeing that many of the birds she had grown up with were no more, she decided to delay her thesis to focus on keeping the species alive. She began her campaign to protect the stork in 2007, focusing on the villages in Assam’s Kamrup District where the birds were most concentrated – and least welcomed.

Here, the storks are reviled for scavenging on carcasses, bringing bones and dead animals to their nesting trees, many of which grow in people’s gardens, and depositing foul-smelling droppings. The animals stand about 5 ft (1.5 metres) tall with wingspans of up to 8 ft (2.4 metres) and villagers often prefer to cut down trees in their backyards than allow the storks to nest in them. “The bird was totally misunderstood. They were treated as a bad omen, bad luck or a disease carrier,” said Barman, who was herself mocked for attempting to save nesting colonies.

Conflict between people and wildlife is one of the main threats to wildlife species, according to a 2021 report from the World Wildlife Fund and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). This conflict can have irreversible impacts on ecosystems which support all life on Earth. The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration provides an opportunity to mobilize the global community to re-balance the relationship between people and nature.

‘Hargila Army’

To protect the stork, Barman knew she had to change perceptions of the bird, known locally as “hargila” in Assamese (meaning “bone swallower”) and mobilized a group of village women to help her.

Today the “Hargila Army” consists of over 10,000 women. They protect nesting sites, rehabilitate injured storks which have fallen from their nests and arrange “baby showers” to celebrate the arrival of newborn chicks. The greater adjutant stork regularly features in folk songs, poems, festivals and plays.

Barman has also helped to provide the women with weaving looms and yarn so they can create and sell textiles decorated with motifs of the hargila. This entrepreneurship not only spreads awareness of the bird, it also contributes to the women’s financial independence, boosting their livelihoods and instilling pride and a sense of ownership in their work to save the stork.

Since Barman started her conservation programme, the number of nests in the villages of Dadara, Pachariya, and Singimari in Kamrup District have risen from 28 to more than 250, making this the largest breeding colony of greater adjutant storks in the world. In 2017, Barman began building tall bamboo nesting platforms for the endangered birds to hatch their eggs. Her efforts were rewarded a couple of years later when the first greater adjutant stork chicks were hatched on these experimental platforms.

Restoring ecosystems

For Barman, safeguarding the adjutant stork means protecting and restoring their habitats. The Hargila Army has helped communities to plant 45,000 saplings near stork nesting trees and wetland areas in the hope they will support future stork populations. There are plans to plant a further 60,000 saplings next year. The women also carry out cleaning drives on the banks of rivers and in wetlands to remove plastic from the water and reduce pollution.

“Purnima Devi Barman’s pioneering conservation work has empowered thousands of women, creating entrepreneurs and improving livelihoods while bringing the greater adjutant stork back from the brink of extinction,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP. “Dr Barman’s work has shown that conflict between humans and wildlife can be resolved to the benefit of all. By highlighting the damaging impact that the loss of wetlands has had on the species who feed and breed on them, she reminds us of the importance of protecting and restoring ecosystems.”

Barman says one of her biggest rewards has been the sense of pride that has been instilled in the Hargila Army and she hopes their success will inspire the next generation of conservationists to pursue their dreams. “Being a woman working in conservation in a male-dominated society is challenging but the Hargila Army has shown how women can make a difference,” she said.

Cécile Bibiane Ndjebet

Growing up in a remote part of Cameroon, Cécile Bibiane Ndjebet was acutely aware of the hardships endured by rural women. She saw her mother and others labouring from dawn to dusk, growing crops, tending to animals and raising children. Many did back-breaking work on land that, because of traditional sociocultural practices, they could never own.

“I realized that women were struggling a lot,” Ndjebet recalled “I wanted to protect my mother and to advocate for these rural women, to improve their lives. They were suffering too much.”

Those early experiences would shape Ndjebet's life. She would go on to become a leading voice for women’s land rights in Africa, spending three decades advocating for gender equality while also repairing hundreds of hectares of nature marred by development. This includes over 600 hectares of degraded land and mangrove forests which have been restored under her stewardship of Cameroon Ecology, an organization she co-founded in 2001.

For that work, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has named Ndjebet a Champion of the Earth for Inspiration and Action, one of the United Nations’ highest environmental honours.

Humanity has significantly altered three-quarters of Earth’s dry land, chopping down forests, draining wetlands, and polluting rivers at rates experts warn is unsustainable.

Ndjebet is among the leaders of the movement to repair that damage.

Her vision has resulted in a project by Cameroon Ecology to train women to revive more than 1,000 hectares of forest by 2030.

Since 2009, Ndjebet has also spearheaded efforts to promote gender equality in forest management across 20 African countries as the President of The African Women’s Network for Community Management of Forests (REFACOF), an organization she co-founded. Ndjebet’s advocacy both at home and abroad has focused on encouraging women’s interests to be represented more widely in environmental policies.

In 2012, she was elected Climate Change Champion of the Central African Commission on Forests for her leading role in mobilizing civil society organizations to sustainably manage forests. Ndjebet is also a member of the advisory board of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, a global push to revive degraded landscapes.

Keeping the forest alive

Women make up almost half the agricultural workforce in sub-Saharan Africa and can play a key role in fighting hunger and poverty. Yet women, especially in rural areas, often encounter problems owning land or inheriting it after their husband dies.

Despite this bias, women continue to protect forest ecosystems in countries such as Cameroon, where roughly 70 per cent of women live in rural areas and depend on gathering fruits, nuts and medicinal herbs from forests to earn income for the family.

“Women are really driving restoration. They are reforesting degraded areas, they plant trees, they develop nurseries. They do agroforestry. Even those engaged in livestock production have trees. They keep the forest alive,” Ndjebet said.

REFACOF has supported women’s groups to reforest degraded land and mangrove forests, establish nurseries and plant orchards across Cameroon and other member countries. It has also worked to persuade village chiefs to allow women to plant trees on coastal land as part of a buffer against rising sea levels caused by climate change.

Through its broader, continent-wide advocacy work, REFACOF has proposed forest policies to governments in 20 states to secure women’s rights in forestry and natural resource management.

Studies have found that if women in rural areas had the same access to land, technology, financial services, education and markets as men, agricultural production on their farms could increase by 20 to 30 per cent - enough to transform lives.

Ndjebet said when she asked women what their hopes were for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, they named three things: recognition and support of their role in restoration, access to funding, and knowledge sharing.

Ndjebet said she has been guided by a long succession of women, including her grandmother, mother and sisters. An encounter with Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan environmental activist and first African woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize, also left a lasting impression that has shaped her work ever since.

“She said, ‘Tell African women to care for their environment as they care for their babies. Tell them to plant fruit trees. They will give them food, money and the trees will stay there for the environment and for humanity’,” Ndjebet recalled.

Josefina Belmonte

Quezon City Mayor Josefina “Joy” Belmonte’s commitment to environmental protection can be traced to the aftermath of the worst storm to hit the Philippines in decades.

When Typhoon Ketsana struck in 2009, it unleashed ferocious downpours and floods that submerged roads and forced residents onto their rooftops for refuge. As the floodwaters receded, they left a river of plastic bags, sachets and other litter in their wake.

That sight left a lasting impact on Belmonte, who successfully ran for vice mayor of Quezon City in 2009 before becoming its mayor in 2019.

“I'm a good governance advocate,” Belmonte told the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). “Good governance involves good stewardship of the environment.”

Only the second female mayor in the history of Quezon City, home to 3.1 million, Belmonte has pursued a raft of policies to end plastic pollution, counter climate change and green the city.

For her efforts to transform Quezon City into an environmental trailblazer, Belmonte has been named the 2023 Champion of the Earth for Policy Leadership, one of the UN’s highest environmental honours.

"Mayor Josefina Belmonte’s passionate leadership and policy achievements exemplify how local authorities can solve global environmental problems,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP. “Cities can be the dynamic engines of change we need to overcome the triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste – and mayors can help to lead that charge.

Mayor Josefina Belmonte stands next to a resident in front of a convenience store. Both are looking at refill pumps for detergent and other daily essentials. — Convenience stores around Quezon City are introducing refill pumps, reducing plastic pollution and making essential goods more affordable. (UNEP/Pau Villanueva)

Fighting the throwaway culture
Quezon City was the Philippines’ capital for 27 years until the title returned to Manila in 1976. Today, it is the country’s most populous city and is part of Metro Manila.

Belmonte’s connections to this place run deep. Not only was she born and raised here, but her father, Feliciano “Sonny” Belmonte, was its ninth mayor.

Despite an early exposure to politics, Belmonte’s interests initially led her elsewhere – including to a career as an archaeologist. But in the end, the call to public service proved too strong.

“If you can be in a position where you can be a source of inspiration to others and become the root of positive change for millions of people, then it is worth it,” she said.

For Belmonte, positive change means prioritizing action on the environment to create a liveable, green and sustainable city.

Under Belmonte’s leadership, Quezon City has focused on reducing plastic pollution and extending the life of plastic products already in circulation.

“Plastic pollution is a major problem in the Philippines, as in many parts of the world, because of the throwaway culture,” Belmonte said. “Plastics clog our drainage systems and end up in the oceans. We know that plastic waste becomes microplastics that can be consumed in the food we eat, the air we breathe and even in the water we drink, which affects our health.”

Globally, humanity’s addiction to short-lived plastic products has created an environmental catastrophe . Around 19 to 23 million tonnes of plastic annually leaks into aquatic ecosystems, polluting lakes, rivers and seas. To stem that flow, experts say the world must fundamentally alter its relationship with plastic by using less of the material, eliminating single-use products, reusing what plastics are produced and finding environmentally friendly alternatives.

Under Belmonte, Quezon City has banned single-use plastic bags, cutlery, straws and containers in hotels, restaurants and fast-food chains for dine-in customers, as well as single-use packaging material.

Since 2021, residents have been able to trade in their recyclables and single-use plastic products for environmental points that can be used to buy food and pay electricity bills under the “Trash to Cashback” scheme. City authorities have even started a “Vote to Tote” programme to turn tarpaulins used in election campaigning into bags.

Still, millions of single-use plastic sachets are thrown away every day in the Philippines, which is a major source of ocean plastics. Though sachets allow households more affordable access to essentials for cooking, hygiene and sanitation, they cannot be recycled effectively, causing serious environmental harm, experts say.

“Sachet culture really gets to me. It really is something that makes me angry because it is there because we are a poor country,” Belmonte said. “Major manufacturers need to do their part and change the way they package products to make them more environmentally friendly.”

To combat plastic pollution, Belmonte launched in 2023 an initiative to help put refill stations for essentials, such as washing-up liquid and liquid detergent, in convenience stores across the city. With products that are often less expensive than their packaged counterparts, the stations have been received positively and will be piloted in over 6,000 stores next year, Belmonte said.

Last year, a historic UN resolution was passed to develop a legally binding international instrument to end plastic pollution. Belmonte has been vocal about the need for a “truly ambitious” global instrument.

“Mayors want to be part of the negotiating table because we have very practical experience to bring,” she said. “The real work is at the level of cities. We already know that when change happens at the level of cities, it happens much more rapidly.”

Earning trust

Under Belmonte, Quezon City has also developed an ambitious plan to reduce its carbon emissions by 30 per cent in 2030 and reach net-zero by 2050. It has declared a state of climate emergency to unlock spending, amounting to 11–13 per cent of the city’s annual budget, on programmes that mitigate the impacts of the climate crisis.

There are plans to double the number of parks in the city, introduce more electric buses and almost quadruple the network of bike lanes by 2030 to fight pollution. Other green initiatives include promoting urban farming and deploying equipment that allows community farms to transform organic waste into methane gas that can be used for cooking.

Although Belmonte has worked hard to forge her own path, she considers one piece of advice from her father to be priceless: “Always spend time with the people. Especially go to the poor communities, because when you go to the communities and you see how difficult life is for people in the grassroots, you'll never think of abusing power.”

It is advice that has shaped her political approach, helped her to build public trust and contributed to her popularity among voters. She was re-elected mayor in 2022 and regularly scores the highest approval ratings among metro Manila’s mayors.

“People will buy into your vision if you value what they have to say. That is the best way to get all of our environmental issues across,” Belmonte said.

Four women hold up green cards. — Through Mayor Belmonte’s “Trash to Cashback” programme, citizens can return recyclable plastic products for points that can be used to buy food and pay electricity bills. (UNEP/Duncan Moore)

About the UNEP Champions of the Earth

The United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP)Champions of the Earth honours individuals 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. #EarthChamps

About the #BeatPollution campaign

To fight the pervasive impact of pollution on society, UNEP launched #BeatPollution , a strategy for rapid, large-scale and coordinated action against air, land and water pollution. The strategy highlights the impact of pollution on climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and human health. Through science-based messaging, the campaign showcases how transitioning to a pollution-free planet is vital for future generations.