This summer’s wildfires have been devastating. The damage they have caused has been, frankly, alarming. We are deeply grateful to the brave fire and emergency service crews, farmers and local responders who have been battling the fires, and to the NHS staff, local communities and others supporting those affected.
For many, the priority now is recovery and rebuilding. But these fires are also a powerful reminder of the risks associated with a warming climate. They bring into focus the challenges posed by weather patterns that are becoming less predictable and more extreme.
Less visible is the huge amount of work already underway to address those risks and build a safer future. Across every sector, people are developing solutions, restoring nature and accelerating the transition to clean energy.
The crisis demands urgency. But without a belief that change is possible, its scale can leave us feeling overwhelmed. Optimism gives us confidence that our actions can make a difference. We need both.
This is what I mean by urgent optimism; seeing the danger clearly while believing in our ability to respond. For the first time in history, our greatest challenge is not inventing the answers. It is deploying and scaling the solutions we already know work.
It is not naivety or blind hope. It is optimism grounded in evidence. I believe that our ability to respond can be the biggest story of this decade.
Since The Earthshot Prize began, one of my greatest privileges has been meeting the people behind solutions that are already making a difference.
They come from different countries, cultures and generations, from laboratories, businesses, public institutions and communities on the frontline. Some are scaling new ways to produce, store and use energy. Others are restoring ecosystems, creating healthier, more sustainable cities, or drawing on knowledge refined over generations to meet challenges that have become more urgent in our own time.
Many have witnessed the human and environmental costs of the crisis at close quarters. They understand the obstacles and urgency deeply. They have spent years testing ideas, building coalitions, learning from setbacks and improving what works.
Their stories rarely make front-page news, but quietly they are changing the world. Collectively, they show that progress is not an abstract hope.
Earthshot finalists have already helped avoid or capture 18 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions, protected and restored over 85 million hectares of ocean and coastline and improved air quality in regions home to 600 million people.
These numbers matter because they describe changes that can be felt today, including cleaner air, healthier seas, reliable power and better livelihoods.
In Bogotá, successive city leaders have invested in cleaner public transport and made it easier for people to walk and cycle. Since 2018, toxic air pollution has fallen by 24 per cent, even as the city has grown.
Across Africa, the social enterprise company d.light has brought affordable solar to over 200 million people. That access to clean power does more than reduce pollution. It means light after sunset for everyone from midwives and shop owners to 90 million children studying. It aims to reach one billion people by 2030.
In Kazakhstan, the conservation initiative Altyn Dala has brought the saiga antelope from the brink of extinction to a population of over 3 million, and returned the Przewalski horse to the steppe after an absence of 200 years. It is a powerful reminder that the recovery of a single species can help bring an entire ecosystem back to life.
And, after two decades of diplomacy, the High Seas Treaty has created the first global framework for establishing protected areas in the two-thirds of our oceans that lie beyond national borders. It is work such as this that will turn the global ambition to protect 30 per cent of land and sea by 2030 into reality.
No country or continent has a monopoly on the answers. Solutions can come from anywhere, and that should encourage us all.
That requires people willing to fund them, adopt them and take them further. When that happens, one success can make the next easier; costs fall, confidence grows and solutions spread. Progress begins to reinforce progress.
This November, Mumbai will host The Earthshot Prize at a moment when India itself is demonstrating what change at scale can look like. India is home to more Earthshot finalists and winners than any other country, and it combines extraordinary creativity, scientific talent and a remarkable capacity for change at scale.
Previous Indian finalists show what this means in practice. Kheyti’s low-cost greenhouses help smallholder farmers, who are central to India’s food system, protect their crops and incomes from increasingly extreme weather patterns. It is now backed by six of the regional governments there. S4S uses solar equipment to prevent food waste, working with 10,000 female entrepreneurs. On the west coast of India, the state of Gujarat’s pioneering market for reducing harmful air pollution is now being replicated in two other large areas, Rajasthan and Maharashtra – and soon by other cities in the Global South.
These are responses to challenges with implications far beyond India.
This week, we will introduce 15 new Earthshot finalists. Each an exemplar in their field, their work addresses some of the pressures we have seen dominate this summer, alongside many others that remain out of sight.
Wildfires have captured the world’s attention, but work to reduce their risk and limit their impact is already underway – as are solutions to clean our air, fix our climate, revive our oceans, eliminate waste and restore nature.
I have seen solutions already working and the impact they are capable of. That gives me optimism. Knowing that we no longer have time for inch-by-inch improvements, that change must be systemic and at scale, gives me urgency.
That is urgent optimism; the confidence to act because we can already see what works, and the determination to take it to the scale this moment demands. The wildfires we have witnessed this summer are a reminder of why that matters. We can, and must, make the remainder of this decade count.