The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) established Champions of the Earth in 2005 as an annual awards programme to recognize outstanding environmental leaders from the public and private sectors and from civil society.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) established Champions of the Earth in 2005 as an annual awards programme to recognize outstanding environmental leaders from the public and private sectors and from civil society.
Typically, five to seven laureates are selected annually. Each laureate is invited to an award ceremony to receive a trophy, give an acceptance speech and take part in a press conference. No financial awards are conferred. [1] [2] This awards programme is a successor to UNEP's Global 500 Roll of Honour. [2]
The prize includes $15,000 of financial support. [3]
In 2017, the program was expanded to include Young Champions of the Earth – a forward-looking prize for talented innovators, 18 to 30, who demonstrate outstanding potential to create positive environmental impact. The initiative is run in partnership with the Covestro, a plastics company. [4] It is awarded every year by UNEP to seven young environmentalists from around the world between the ages of 18 and 30, for their outstanding ideas to protect the environment. [5] [6]
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is responsible for coordinating responses to environmental issues within the United Nations system. It was established by Maurice Strong, its first director, after the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in June 1972. Its mandate is to provide leadership, deliver science and develop solutions on a wide range of issues, including climate change, the management of marine and terrestrial ecosystems, and green economic development. The organization also develops international environmental agreements; publishes and promotes environmental science and helps national governments achieve environmental targets.
Jeremy Leggett is a British social entrepreneur and writer. He founded and was a board director of Solarcentury from 1997 to 2020, an international solar solutions company, and founded and was chair of SolarAid, a charity funded with 5% of Solarcentury's annual profits that helps solar-lighting entrepreneurs get started in Africa (2006–2020). SolarAid owns a retail brand SunnyMoney that was for a time Africa's top-seller of solar lighting, having sold well over a million solar lights, all profits recycled to the cause of eradicating the kerosene lantern from Africa.
Carousel Productions, Inc. is the organization that currently owns and runs the Miss Earth and Miss Philippines Earth beauty contest. The annual events are produced in partnership with ABS-CBN Corporation. The organization is based in the Philippines.
Environmental governance (EG) consists of a system of laws, norms, rules, policies and practices that dictate how the board members of an environment related regulatory body should manage and oversee the affairs of any environment related regulatory body which is responsible for ensuring sustainability (sustainable development) and manage all human activities—political, social and economic. Environmental governance includes government, business and civil society, and emphasizes whole system management. To capture this diverse range of elements, environmental governance often employs alternative systems of governance, for example watershed-based management.
The United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative is a partnership between the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the global financial sector to catalyse action across the financial system to align economies with sustainable development. As the UN partner for the finance sector, they convene financial institutions on a voluntary basis to work together with them, and each other, to find practical solutions to overcome the many sustainability challenges facing the world today. UNEP FI does this by providing practical guidance and tools which support institutions in the finance sector to find ways to reshape their businesses and commit to targets for limiting greenhouse gas emissions, protecting nature, promoting a circular economy and supporting financial inclusion to address inequality. The solutions developed effectively form a blueprint for others in the finance sector to tackle similar challenges and evolve their businesses along a sustainable pathway. The creation and adoption of such a blueprint also informs policy makers concerned with sustainability issues about what would constitute appropriate regulation for the finance sector at large. Founded in 1992, UNEP FI was the first organisation to pioneer engagement with the finance sector around sustainability. The Finance Initiative was responsible for incubating the Principles for Responsible Investment and for the development and implementation of UNEP FI's Principles for Responsible Banking and Principles for Sustainable Insurance as well as the UN-convened net-zero alliances. Today, UNEP FI provides sustainability leadership to more than 400 financial institutions, with assets of well over $80 trillion headquartered around the world.
Anitra Thorhaug is an American marine biologist, plant ecophysiologist and chemical oceanographer whose extensive work on the rehabilitation of coastal ecosystems has had a substantial influence on national and international policies on conservation around the world. She is president of the Greater Caribbean Energy and Environment Foundation working with the State of Texas on Coastal regeneration, and president of the Institute for Seagrasses. She has had a series of professorships at universities and presently works with the Center for Natural Carbon Capture at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. She is a member of the International Club of Rome and has four times been president of the US Association for the Club of Rome.
Boyan Slat is a Dutch inventor and entrepreneur. A former aerospace engineering student, he is the CEO of The Ocean Cleanup.
Ashok Khosla is an Indian environmentalist currently based in Delhi. He received his PhD in experimental physics from Harvard University with a doctoral dissertation in the hyperfine structure of hydrogen halide isotopes. He is the co-chair of United Nations Environment Programme’s International Resource Panel (UNEP-IRP) and is internationally known for pioneering and contributing to sustainable development. He is recognized for popularizing the word and concept of "sustainability" in international forums. He was actively involved in various projects that defined the environmental views and activities of institutions such as UNEP, UNESCO, UNU, the U.S. Academy of Sciences, IUCN, and the ICSU/SCOPE. He was also the President of IUCN and Club of Rome. Ashok Khosla is member of the World Future Council.
SEED is a global partnership for action on sustainable development and the green economy. It was initiated in 2001 by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB). Under the name SEED Initiative it was presented as an “Example of Excellence” partnership inter alia by UNEP and BMUB at the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002 where it was also registered by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as a Type II Partnership. SEED was originally conceived as an acronym for Supporting Entrepreneurs for Environment and Development.
Leyla Acaroglu is an Australian designer, sustainability innovator, and educator. She is the founder of two design agencies, Disrupt Design and Eco Innovators. She also founded the UnSchool, a pop-up program that disrupts the mainstream way that knowledge is gained and shared; the program won the Core77 Design Education Initiative Award.
Ant Forest is a tree planting initiative launched in 2016 by Ant Financial Services Group, an Alibaba affiliate. It encourages users to lower carbon emissions by planting trees when users engage in activities that reduce carbon emissions.
Sonika Manandhar is a Nepali computer engineer and a social entrepreneur. She co-founded a fintech company named Aeloi Technologies, an organization that helps fund women micro-entrepreneurs using digital tokens. She received the award "Young Champions of the Earth" from the United Nations Environment Programme's in 2019 and the National Geographic Society 2020 Emerging Explorer.
Louise Emmanuelle de Guzman Mabulo is a Filipino environmentalist, social entrepreneur, and chef. She is the founder of The Cacao Project, a seed-exchange and social business that works with over 200 farmers from the San Fernando area in the Philippines. She is the host of a National Geographic mini-documentary, Nat Geo Presents: Food Costs: DIET VS PLANET, exploring sustainable diets.
Anna Luísa Beserra Santos is a Brazilian environmental entrepreneur. She is the founder and CEO of Sustainable Development & Water for All, a filtering system to disinfect rainwater collected in cisterns. She received the award "Young Champions of the Earth" from the United Nations Environment Programme in 2019, being until now the only Brazilian to receive the prize. Shell Company awarded her a prize in their LiveWIRE programme, in the category "Local prosperity" for her work on SDW. Anna Luísa is also a Fellow at the international organization Young Water Solutions.
Adjany da Silva Freitas Costa is an Angolan biologist and conservationist from Huambo who served as the Angolan Minister of Culture, Tourism and Environment from April to October 2020.
Nora Wilhelm is a Swiss activist and social entrepreneur for the goals of the 2030 Agenda. She is a co-founder of the “collaboratio helvetica” initiative and has been honoured as Young Leader by UNESCO.
Natalie Anne Kyriacou OAM is an Australian environmentalist, social justice advocate and social entrepreneur. She was appointed the Medal of the Order of Australia for her ‘services to wildlife and environmental conservation and education’ in 2018. She serves on the board of the Foundation for National Parks and Wildlife and is a Board Committee member at CARE Australia. In 2023, she joined the UNESCO Green Citizens initiative as a Pathfinder. She has served on the board of University of Melbourne’s Animal Ethics Committee and is presently a member of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. She is serving on the advisory board of the Women Leaders Institute. She is also known as the founder and current CEO of My Green World which she founded in 2012 to promote wildlife and environmental conservation issues.
Charlene Ren, also known as Xiaoyuan Ren, is a Chinese environmental engineer and social entrepreneur. She is the founder of MyH2O, an information platform that uses data to monitor water quality and improve access to clean water resources for rural communities in China.
Mariama Mamane is an environmentalist and engineer from Niger.
Vidyut Mohan is an Indian social entrepreneur. He is the co-founder of Takachar, a company that recycles agricultural waste into marketable carbon products, offering an alternative to the heavily polluting practice of burning agricultural byproducts.
