Singapore Prize 2024 Winners Announced
This year, the prize honors an individual or team that is working to solve the world’s biggest challenges. It recognizes innovative ideas that can have a significant impact on the world, and inspires people to come up with their own solutions for problems in their communities and beyond. The prizes are awarded to ideas addressing five categories: Nature Protection, Clean Air, Ocean Revitalization, Waste Elimination and Climate Change. Winners are announced in a ceremony in Singapore, with celebrity presenters such as Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett and actors Donnie Yen and Lana Condor, as well as Australian wildlife conservationist Robert Irwin.
The Singapore prize winners are:
SINGAPORE — Celebrities joined Britain’s Prince William on a “green carpet” in Singapore this week to celebrate the 2024 winners of the Earthshot Prize, a global competition that honors ideas to protect the planet from threats such as climate change and pollution. The ceremony, the first to be held in Asia, saw a host of stars including actors Donnie Yen and Lana Mbatha, as well as environmentalists and animal conservationists from around the region. Prince William praised the five winning teams, whose ideas ranged from solar-powered dryers to combat food waste to making electric car batteries cleaner, saying that their work showed that hope does still exist as the effects of climate change become more and more severe.
This year’s Singapore prize honours an individual or team that has demonstrated exemplary acts of kindness and caring over a sustained period of time, inspiring others to do the same. Those nominated have helped to make the world a better place and, in doing so, have strengthened Singapore’s social fabric. They have also shown commitment to a long-term vision for their work, leveraging a larger base of support to make sustainable change possible.
The prize is awarded by the Harvard Prize Book Foundation, in collaboration with the Government of Singapore and Singapore Pools. In addition to the top prize, there are three runner-up awards and a readers’ choice award.
SINGAPORE — An array of local writers are in the running for the inaugural $30,000 book prize for their works that champion mindsets important to Singapore’s identity. Founded through a $1 million donation by Confucian scholar Alan Chan, the Dr Alan HJ Chan Spirit of Singapore Book Prize was launched by the Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS) on April 18.
The judging panel is chaired by NUS Asia Research Institute distinguished fellow Kishore Mahbubani, who says the prize seeks to highlight “a sense of belonging among Singaporeans through a shared imagination of our past.” The shortlist features historical tomes and novels with personal slants that forgo a traditional view of history as a record of big-movers and shakers, he adds.
The shortlist for this year’s Singapore prize includes authors from both fiction and nonfiction, with works that explore issues ranging from immigration to terrorism. The prize is open to Singapore citizens and permanent residents, who can vote for their favourite book online until July 22. The winner will be announced in October.