- The Earthshot Prize, a global environmental prize launched by HRH Prince William to identify, celebrate and back solutions to repair the planet, reaches a pivotal milestone in 2025, marking the halfway point in its ambitious ten-year mission
- Brazil’s Tropical Forest Forever Facility, which ensures that maintaining tropical forests is valued more than their destruction, is a Finalist in the Protect and Restore Nature category
- Winners announced at Awards Ceremony in Rio on Nov 5, as one-month countdown begins
BRAZIL, 4 October 2025: Brazil’s Tropical Forest Forever Facility is today revealed as a 2025 Finalist for the world’s most prestigious and impactful environmental award, The Earthshot Prize. The Tropical Forest Forever Facility joins a historic coalition of leaders recognised for driving climate action and inspiring everyone to build a better future for people and planet.
Founded by HRH Prince William in 2020, The Earthshot Prize recognises solutions from different geographies, sectors, and stages in their life cycle, and is dedicated to solving our planet’s greatest challenges. The Prize in 2025 marks the halfway point in the Earthshot decade, as the mission gathers pace in this next critical juncture.
For decades, tropical forests – essential to the planet’s health – have been destroyed at an alarming rate (6.7 million hectares lost in 2024) despite global pledges and numerous promises being made. The core issue is economic: it has simply been more profitable to clear forests than to conserve them. But when forest conservation becomes commercially viable, both people and markets respond.
Described as the most ambitious forest finance innovation in history, the Tropical Forest Forever Facility is a new finance mechanism led by the Government of Brazil that puts real value on standing forests by reshaping how forest protection is financed. Designed with the support of ten countries from the global south and global north, as well as representatives from Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities, it is set to formally launch at COP30. The Facility offers tropical forest countries long term incentives to continue their efforts to conserve these vital ecosystems. It will establish a $125 billion global investment fund (comprising $25bn from sovereign investment and philanthropy, and $100bn from private investors) to provide tropical forest countries with a permanent income in exchange for lasting forest protection. If successful, it could safeguard over a billion hectares of forest by 2030 in over 70 countries.
On September 23, 2025, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced Brazil’s $1 billion commitment to the Tropical Forest Forever Facility during his address to the 80th United Nations General Assembly in New York, making Brazil the first country to commit funding to the initiative.
The Tropical Forest Forever Facility combines public and private funding to tackle the challenge of protecting forests, traditionally seen as too risky or complex for private investors alone, by pooling funds from governments, philanthropists, and private investors; reducing risks through financial mechanisms like guarantees or concessional capital; and mobilising larger investments to support sustainable forest conservation projects. This structure helps tropical forest countries get the financing they need to preserve forests while attracting private capital that might otherwise avoid these high-risk areas.
The Facility’s long-term global investment fund grows through diversified investments, with annual profits going to tropical forest countries at a fixed rate for every hectare of standing forest. Using satellite technology to track progress, the Facility will reward countries that have conserved tropical forests and provide payments to help them maintain their standing forests. Crucially, at least 20% of this will go directly to indigenous peoples and local communities.
It is this leadership, progress and future potential that impressed The Earthshot Prize during the selection process in the search for outstanding leadership for the 2025 Prize.
Prince William, Founder and President of The Earthshot Prize, said: “As we reach the halfway point of the Earthshot decade, I am truly inspired by this year’s Finalists, which embody the urgent optimism sitting right at the heart of our mission. In just five years, The Earthshot Prize has shown that the answers to our planet’s greatest challenges not only already exist, but that they are firmly within our grasp.”
Marina Silva, Minister of the Environment and Climate Change of Brazil, said: “We need to establish a new relationship with tropical forests and significantly change the way we value them. They are part of our culture and heritage and are essential to our lives. The Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) will bring the resources needed to preserve them.
Being an Earthshot Prize Finalist on the eve of COP30 is an honor that will help raise global awareness of this initiative, contributing to our efforts to secure public investors and private capital, as well as spreading the message to people around the world about the vital importance of tropical forests to our lives and economies. It is an unprecedented opportunity to finally ensure that maintaining tropical forests is valued more than their destruction. Through the Tropical Forest Forever Facility, we can change the future of tropical forest conservation and provide long-term funding for those who protect them.”
Jason Knauf, Chief Executive Officer of The Earthshot Prize said: “The Tropical Forest Forever Facility offers a once-in-a-generation chance to flip the script to make living forests more valuable than dead ones and provide crucial support to the forest guardians around the world who call them home. The Tropical Forest Forever Facility has unlocked a huge opportunity for people and the planet by attaching long-term value to forest protection in order to accelerate climate action and community wellbeing.’’
The new Finalists join a community of 60 Finalists who are making significant progress in protecting and restoring our natural world. This includes progress by:
- d.light (Clean our Air 2024 Finalist), which has transformed 200 million lives in Africa with their solar-powered products.
- Notpla (Waste Free World 2022 Finalist), which has replaced 21.5 million single use plastic items with sustainable seaweed packaging, and 11.6 million in 2024.
- Pristine Seas (Revive our Oceans 2021 Finalist), has established 30 of the largest marine protected areas in the world, covering a total area of 6.9 million square kilometers, more than twice the size of India, and helped to create David Attenborough’s groundbreaking Ocean Film.
- Altyn Dala Conservation Initiative (Protect and Restore Nature 2024 Winner), which has helped bring the Saiga Antelope back from the brink of extinction, growing the population from around 40,000 to over 4 million in 20 years. They’ve also reintroduced Przewalski’s horses to Kazakhstan’s wild after more than 200 years.
- Boomitra (Fix Our Climate 2023 Winner), which has worked with over 10,000 farmers in Africa, India, Americas and Mongolia to adopt regenerative agricultural processes and remove nearly a million cars’ worth of CO2 from the atmosphere.
This year’s cohort were selected from nearly 2,500 nominees submitted by the Prize’s network of 575 nominators from 72 countries. The 15 Finalists were chosen based on assessments done by The Earthshot Prize’s selection partners and Expert Advisory Panel, a global group of more than 100 subject-matter experts with deep backgrounds in conservation, science, technology, business, finance, academia and policy.
As in previous years, the five Winners of this year’s Prize will be selected by Prince William and fellow members of the prestigious Earthshot Prize Council, a diverse group of individuals dedicated to protecting the climate and our natural environment. The Earthshot Prize Council is chaired by The Earthshot Prize Board of Trustees Chair, Dame Christiana Figueres, architect of the Paris Climate Accord.
Members of The Earthshot Prize Council are Prince William, Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah, Cate Blanchett, Indra Nooyi, José Andrés, Wanjira Mathai, Nemonte Nenquimo, Luisa Neubauer, Naoko Yamazaki, Ernest Gibson, and Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
Solutions selected align to the five ‘Earthshots’ – simple, ambitious and aspirational goals but more relevant than ever before.
To find out more about this year’s Finalists, please visit the website.
ENDS
Media contacts
María Dolben Mantilla, The Earthshot Prize (press@earthshotprize.org)
Lydia Watt, Lansons (tep@lansons.com)
Notes to Editors
About TFFF
For more information on TFFF, please visit: TFFF – Tropical Forest Forever Facility
The Tropical Forest Forever Facility is a once-in-a-generation initiative that seeks to secure the future of tropical forests via an innovative financing mechanism. It is designed as a permanent facility to support the long-term conservation of tropical forests and will be formally launched at the Leaders’ Summit of UNFCCC COP30, to be held in Belém, Brazil, in November 2025. The need for such a facility is urgent and clear. Humanity has already transgressed six of the nine planetary boundaries, which define the safe operating space for our planet. Four of them — biosphere integrity, climate change, land systems change, freshwater change — are directly linked to the state of tropical forests. The TFFF provides sustained long-term monetary incentives for maintaining and expanding tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests (TSMBF) in developing countries. Crucially, it also seeks to direct funds into the hands of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities, who have been stewards of our tropical forests since time immemorial.
About The Earthshot Prize
For more information about The Earthshot Prize, visit: www.earthshotprize.org
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Founded by HRH Prince William and incubated in the The Royal Foundation in 2020 for a year before becoming an independent organisation, The Earthshot Prize is the world’s most prestigious and impactful award designed to identify, back and celebrate groundbreaking leadership in environmental action. Inspired by President John F. Kennedy’s Moonshot, which united millions of people around the goal of reaching the moon, The Earthshot Prize is designed to mobilise a decade of action for the planet. The five challenges are: Protect and Restore Nature; Clean Our Air; Revive Our Oceans; Build a Waste-Free World; and Fix Our Climate.
The Earthshot Prize aims to turn the current pessimism surrounding environmental issues into optimism by championing inspiring leadership and helping to scale incredible cutting-edge solutions. It will discover 50 Winners over 10 years with the power to repair the planet. More than an award, The Earthshot Prize works in partnership with a Global Alliance of Partners to support the scaling of the solutions discovered and selected each year.
The Global Alliance Founding Partners are a group of leading global organisations and philanthropists, which act as strategic funding partners to the Prize, including Aga Khan Development Network, Allen Family Philanthropies, Bezos Earth Fund, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Breakthrough Energy Foundation, Builders Vision, Coleman Family Ventures, DP World, Elaine and Eduardo Saverin Foundation, Eleven Eleven Foundation, Giving Grousbeck Fazzalari, Holch Povlsen Foundation, Law Family Charitable Foundation, Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, Rob Walton Foundation, Sandy and Paul Edgerley, Standard Chartered Bank, Stelios Philanthropic Foundation, Temasek Trust, and Uber.
Global Alliance Partners are non-profit environment and sustainable development organisations that bring expertise, global reach and serve as nominating organisations each year. For a full list of our Global Alliance Partners, visit: https://earthshotprize.org/people-partners/global-alliance/
Global Alliance Members are some of the world’s largest and most influential companies and brands that will support The Earthshot Prize, implement ambitious changes within their businesses and accelerate the advancement of the solutions of The Earthshot Prize Finalists and Winners. They are Arup, Bloomberg L.P., British Airways, Deloitte, Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer, Hitachi, Ingka Group (IKEA), Microsoft, The Multichoice Group, Natura &Co, Safaricom, Salesforce, Unilever, Vodacom Group, and Walmart.
