Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, vice president, prime minister and ruler of Dubai, presented awards to the 10 winners of the 2022 Zayed Sustainability Prize on Jan. 17.
The awards ceremony coincided with the start of the 2022 Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week. The ceremony was also attended by Sheikh Maktoum bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, deputy ruler of Dubai, deputy prime minister and minister of finance.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum congratulated winners across the five categories reaffirming the prize’s key role in realizing the aspirations of participants to achieve sustainable development within their communities.
This year, the Zayed Sustainability Prize, along with ADSW, joined forces with Expo 2020 Dubai for hosting the ADSW Opening Ceremony and the 13th edition of the prize’s awards ceremony, both of which took place at the Dubai Exhibition Centre. The event brought thousands of attendees and more than 600 VIPs from around the world together, including heads of state, government ministers, industry leaders and country ambassadors, among others.
In his remarks at the awards ceremony, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid said: “The UAE continues to make important strides and contributions to advancing the global sustainability agenda to stimulate economic and human sustainable development, under the leadership of President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan. The Zayed Sustainability Prize remains at the forefront of these efforts as it continues to set the course for alleviating hardships and improving lives by rewarding impact and innovation through a platform that can reach a much larger number of beneficiaries.”
The $3 million prize is the UAE’s pioneering sustainability award that recognizes small to medium-sized enterprises, nonprofit organizations, and global high schools for their innovative, impactful, and inspirational sustainability and humanitarian solutions. Through its 86 former winners, the prize has transformed the lives of more than 370 million people, across 150 countries, since 2008. In the Health, Food, Energy, and Water categories, each winner receives $600,000, while the Global High Schools category has six winners, representing six world regions, with each winner receiving up to $100,000.
In the Health category, Argentina’s Mamotest was awarded the prize for its efforts to increase access to diagnoses and lifesaving services in tele-radiology and remote analysis.
S4S Technologies from India was the Food category winner for its work in food preservation and dehydration systems. They currently directly impact 35,820 people and the SME plans to scale this to 10 million individuals over the course of five years.
In the Energy category, the Bangladesh-based SOLshare created an interconnected microgrid for peer-to-peer energy exchange networks to enable more efficient distribution of electricity across rural communities in the country.
Wateroam, an SME from Singapore, secured the Water category win for its commitment to tackling the global challenge of contaminated water through portable water filters to serve disaster-hit and rural communities.
The six winners of the Global High Schools category are: Instituto Iberia (Dominican Republic), representing The Americas; Liceo Europeo (Spain), representing Europe and Central Asia; Eastern Mediterranean School (Israel), representing the Middle East and North Africa region; Sayidina Abubakar Secondary School (Uganda), representing Sub-Saharan Africa; Hira School (Maldives), representing South Asia, and UWC ISAK (Japan) from the East Asia and Pacific region.
