story by: George Spiteri, Rotary GB&I Board Member

The Earthshot Prize was launched by Prince William and The Royal Foundation ​in October 2020 to discover and help grow innovative solutions to repair and ​regenerate the planet.

Fifteen finalists receive a year’s fellowship and support to accelerate their ideas ​and find new funding and partnerships so they can scale their innovations to ​reach their full potential. The winners in five categories each receive a £1million ​Earthshot Prize. 

The Royal Foundation and Earthshot wanted to work with Rotary International on ​Earthshot; they are aware of the values and ethics of Rotary, believing that this ​matched their own and provided a sound foundation for partnership working.

Earthshot has many partners in different fields and expertise in a wide number ​of roles across the globe. One might argue that Rotary International too, has ​many members in different fields and expertise in a wide number of roles across ​the globe.

This is the story of how the Environmental Sustainability Rotary Action Group’s ​(ESRAG) Board appreciated what a great opportunity Earthshot offers for ​environmental solutions and agreed to serve as an official Earthshot nominator ​on behalf of the Rotary family.

In just a matter of weeks, we were able to announce this opportunity, review ​many applications, and nominate five which have been accepted into Earthshot’s ​2024 competition.

I got knocked back by Rotary International, so I then approached The Rotary ​Foundation and got knocked back again. In both cases the decisions were made ​in isolation with no dialogue with me.

I was most disappointed as I felt that those who had decided had clearly not ​understood and were dismissing a wonderful opportunity for Rotary; but I am a ​tenacious individual. It was suggested that I should look to ESRAG. 

As the Rotary Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire District Environment Lead, I ​was already linking with ESRAG members and attending the virtual meetings.

I joined ESRAG and approached the Great Britain & Ireland Chapter with a ​proposal to apply to be a nominator for Earthshot. This was agreed; it was ​suggested that we put the proposal to the wider ESRAG Board to give us ​worldwide opportunities. The Board agreed on the basis that I ran the initiative ​and took the lead role.

So, in September 2023, almost two years after starting this journey, I applied on ​behalf of ESRAG to be an Official Nominating Partner of Earthshot. In November ​2023, ESRAG was granted Official Earthshot Nominator status and could submit ​projects and initiatives for the 2024 prize.

I went back to the Board and suggested that we try to get some projects ​nominated for the 2024 prizes. The timescales were tight as the closing date for ​completing the nomination process was December 15th, 2023.

I designed a form for potential nominators to complete; I put together a panel of ​ESRAG members across the world to act as a scrutiny panel. We publicised this ​through our networks. We received over 40 expressions of interest.

After reviewing the applications, we put six projects through to the second stage ​of the Earthshot process. We met the deadline and have nominated five projects ​to go through to the selection phase for the Earthshot 2024 prize. 

Earthshot want to get as many nominations as possible put forward even if they ​are not ready to scale. They want to do this so that they can get a perspective of ​the sort of projects being run across the globe and the level of work being done ​to save our planet.

They look to their official nominators from across the globe to put these projects ​forward for consideration. Those that don’t make the top 15 can reapply in ​subsequent years.

Nominations are from across the globe and as a nominator you can nominate ​projects from your own organisations. We have projects in the pipeline, and we ​will be looking to develop some of these to be nominated in 2025 as ESRAG ​projects. 

The projects we have nominated for The 2024 Earthshot Prizes are at various ​stages of development. Three already have relationships with ESRAG.

The Cape Cod Watershed Institute project includes ESRAG members and Rotary ​Districts from Cape Cod on the coast of Massachusetts to the Great Lakes.

Bliss Natural and Carbosutra are both working with the Technoserve Foundation ​incubator which has a collaboration with ESRAG. The other nominee connected ​with ESRAG is that of Dr Mina Venkataraman in India.

Should one of our nominated projects reach the final of the 2024 Earthshot Prize, ​in the final 15, they will be given support to scale up even if they don’t win one of ​the five £1million prizes.

I would be looking for ESRAG and Rotary to use its members’ expertise and ​networks to support them too. 

George Spiteri is a member of ESRAG and the Rotary Club of Scunthorpe Pentagon in ​Linconshire and serves on the Rotary in Great Britain & Ireland Board.

This article first appeared on the ESRAG website.