The two new recipients of the award were announced on Wednesday by the US-based Climate Breakthrough Project, an initiative of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, in partnership with the Oak Foundation and Good Energies Foundation.
launched in 2016, the Climate Breakthrough Project award has been given to 11 outstanding leaders from around the world, affording them the time, space, and resources to develop and implement bold new strategies to confront and mitigate the growing climate crisis.
“The Climate Breakthrough Project finds exceptional leaders capable of pursuing strategies that would affect entire industries or countries and materially change the lives of millions of people. Mohamed and Nicole have the drive and the rare ability to make change at an immense scale,” said Climate Breakthrough Project Executive Director Savanna Ferguson. “It is truly an honor to support Mohamed and Nicole with their visionary work and help bring their breakthrough strategies to life.”
Nicole Rycroft – Vancouver, Canada
Rycroft is the Founder and Executive Director of the Canada-based NGO Canopy. Over the last two decades, she has transformed the supply chains of some of the world’s biggest fashion brands and publishers by collaborating with businesses to promote options to replace traditional wood fiber products.
She plans to use her $3 million award, which is given out over a three year period, to catalyze investment in creating commercially viable, low-carbon fiber alternatives that will rapidly shift paper, packaging, and clothing production away from forests.
She has an aggressive plan that’s focused on shifting paper, packaging, and clothing production away from high-carbon forest ecosystems entirely by developing markets for disruptive new technologies.
“We forget that forests are part of the lungs of our planet and that conserving forests is the fastest, cheapest and most immediate thing for us to stabilize our climate,” said Rycroft.
“There are 200 million trees that are logged every year to make rayon and viscose clothing. There are three billion trees — billion with a “b” — that are logged every year to make packaging for everything from pizza boxes to shipping boxes to wrappings,” said Rycroft, according to CBC News Canada.
“We have alternatives,” Rycroft says. “There are millions and millions of tonnes of straw that are leftover every year after the food grain harvest … Straw has excellent qualities for making paper and for making packaging, and it can help provide a value-added revenue stream for farming communities.”
Mohamed Adow – Nairobi, Kenya
Adow is the Director and Founder of the think tank, Power Shift Africa, formed in 2018. Mr. Adow is an international climate policy expert and ardent advocate for the people of developing nations.
Before founding Power Shift Africa, Mr. Adow spent a decade at the intersection of international development and climate as the Global Climate Policy Lead for Christian Aid, according to Citizen TV.
Adow has a striking and ambitious vision for Africa. Growing up in a pastoralist community in Northern Kenya, he knows first-hand the effects that climate change. He intends to build up the collective moral, economic, and political voice of Africa to exert pressure in the international community around climate action.
“It’s such a privilege to be chosen for the Climate Breakthrough Award. For a long time, Adow said, “Africa has been the victim of a climate crisis its people did almost nothing to cause. Now the continent is emerging as an example for the rest of the world as it starts to power its development using clean, renewable energy, rather than dirty fossil fuels. But this seismic shift in approach is far from guaranteed and requires African leadership to make it happen.”
“I will use this award to help build a platform that brings together leading political and economic voices from the continent, along with experts and grassroots organizers, to ensure Africa fulfills its true potential as a progressive force for climate action. With Africa hosting the UN climate negotiations in 2022, there has never been a more crucial time to put the African voice at the heart of the global climate conversation.”
