Six Visionary Leaders to Receive UNEP’s 2024 Champions of the Earth Award
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is set to announce the recipients of the 2024 Champions of the Earth award next week, celebrating six extraordinary individuals and initiatives making transformative contributions to combat land degradation and build resilience against drought and desertification. Established in 2005, the Champions of the Earth award is the UN’s most prestigious environmental honor, recognizing groundbreaking efforts from across public and private sectors, civil society, and academia.
This year’s awards focus on addressing one of the planet’s most pressing challenges: restoring degraded land and preventing desertification. With nearly 40 percent of the world’s land already degraded, desertification threatening a third of humanity, and drought projected to affect over three-quarters of the global population by 2050, the work of these environmental champions is both timely and critical.
The winners will be announced on 10 December 2024, coinciding with Human Rights Day and Resilience Day at the 16th Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP16) of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), being held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The awardees include a government minister from Brazil, an Indigenous rights advocate from the United States, an environmental defender from Romania, a scientist from China, an ecologist from India, and a sustainable agriculture initiative in Egypt. Each has demonstrated unparalleled commitment to addressing the complex challenges of land degradation and environmental restoration.
This year’s focus aligns with the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021–2030), a global effort led by UNEP and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to halt and reverse the degradation of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. By linking political support with scientific research and financial investment, the initiative aims to revive billions of hectares of degraded ecosystems worldwide.
The names and detailed achievements of the awardees will be released on 10 December 2024, at 9:00 a.m. East African Time (EAT).