Prince William offering £50m to reward projects designed to save the planet

PRINCE William is offering £50million to reward innovative projects designed to save the planet.

The Duke of Cambridge, backed by the financial muscle of global philanthropists, today launches The Earthshot Prize.

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The scheme will hand £1million each to five winners — such as green businesses, cities or even planet-saving people movements — every year for a decade.

William said: “The plan is to bring together the best minds, the best possible solutions, to fixing and tackling some of the world’s greatest environmental challenges.

“We’ve got to harness our ingenuity and our ability to invent. The next ten years are a critical decade for change.

“Time is of the essence, which is why we believe that this very ambitious global prize is the only way forward.”

'TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE'

The Duke of Cambridge, who with wife Kate yesterday met Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, has fronted the documentary A Planet For Us All.

And today he will be interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Today with veteran campaigner Sir David Attenborough.

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William added: “Urgency with optimism creates action.

“Earthshot is about harnessing that optimism and that urgency to find solutions to some of the world’s greatest environmental problems.”

Palace sources said the project was sparked by William’s visit to Namibia, Tanzania and Kenya two years ago, seeing at first hand the wildlife destruction.

But the concept got fully under way only after he met Sir David, 94, in December 2018.

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It was named and inspired by JFK’s Moonshot bid to get a man on the Moon in the 1960s.

Five videos will be released today for each Earthshot Prize category — protect and restore nature, clean our air, revive our oceans, build a waste-free world, and fix our climate.

Nominators are scouring the world for Earth-saving ideas.

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