Shakira is joining forces with Prince William to help repair the planet. The Colombian star is a member of the Duke of Cambridge’s Earthshot Prize Council. The global team, which also includes Queen Rania of Jordan, Cate Blanchett, Yao Ming, Sir David Attenborough, Daniel Alves da Silva and more, are committed to championing positive action in the environmental space. “Excited to tell you about the @earthshotprize, the most ambitious environmental prize in history, and proud to join Prince William as a Prize Council member. The #EarthshotPrize was designed to inspire creative solutions to repairing our planet’s damage over these critical next 10 years, and to bring about real change-and I can’t wait to see it happen,” Shakira shared Thursday on social media.
During a video call with Prince William, Shakira told the future King: “I personally feel this is my duty as a citizen, as a human being and as a mother of two young children to bring attention to this issue right now before it’s too late.
“Your children, my children, they have to find ways to reduce carbon emissions, to repair our oceans, to clean the air. So we need young minds to be informed and invested, and that’s why education is so important, but we can’t just stand still. We have to lead the way and we have to do it now,” Shakira added. “I know it’s ambitious and I know that there will be so many challenges along the way, but I also know there will be so many who will rise to the occasion with creative solutions and those can then be the leaders who will inspire others to follow.”
Kate Middleton’s husband introduced his council on Kensington Palace’s Instagram writing: “The @Earthshotprize council is a diverse, broad range of people from all around the world who I’ve been talking to over the last few weeks and months. We’ve got a really fantastic council together.” The Earthshot Prize is being touted as “the most prestigious global environment prize in history.” The prize aims to incentivize change and “help to repair our planet over the next ten years – a critical decade for the Earth.”
The Earthshot Prize is centered around five goals called Earthshots: protect & restore nature, clean our air, revive our oceans, build a waste-free world and fix our climate. Every year from 2021 until 2030, the council will award The Earthshot Prize to five winners, one per Earthshot. “Five, one million-pound prizes will be awarded each year for the next 10 years, providing at least 50 solutions to the world’s greatest environmental problems by 2030,” according to The Earthshot Prize’s official website. The global prize for the environment is the result of two years of work by William and The Royal Foundation of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.