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As a single parent in her late 30s, Ganga Didi long worried about being able to provide for her child. Barely able to survive on her wages from cleaning office buildings in Kathmandu, she started looking for better opportunities. 

As a single parent in her late 30s, Ganga Didi long worried about being able to provide for her child. Barely able to survive on her wages from cleaning office buildings in Kathmandu, she started looking for better opportunities.  One option was to learn to drive a safa tempo, a small three-wheel electric bus that is a common feature of Nepal’s congested capital. In the 1990s, Kathmandu introduced around 700 of these buses as a pollution-busting measure, a move that also helped reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

The recent UN Environment Assembly (UNEA-5.2) will go down in history for its historic agreement to end plastic pollution.

Next month, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) will announce the award of the United Nations’ top environmental honour to the 2021 Champions of the Earth. But before the 2021 Champions are unveiled, three past winners took centre stage in Glasgow at COP 26.

In the wake of a global pandemic, micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) are crucial to economic recovery.

Drive through northern India in winter and you'll find a landscape shrouded in smoke. The haze, which at times is so thick it can be seen from space, is the by-product of the widespread burning of crop leftovers across India's sprawling farm belt. But the smoke is more than an eyesore – it's also hazardous. During the burning season, the air pollution in Delhi, India's capital, is 14 times the safe limit.

When Max Hidalgo was 13 years old, his parents sent him away. Not as a punishment – even though the homesickness was sometimes so intense he could not bear it – but as a gift. Hidalgo was dispatched to school where his parents hoped he’d get a quality education, which was not available in his remote Peruvian village.

Per capita, Kuwait is among the wealthiest countries in the world. But, despite having the means, it has yet to embrace modern waste management techniques, such as recycling or the sorting of trash before it’s discarded.

Niria Alicia Garcia is standing on the banks of California’s Sacramento River, holding her phone. It’s mid-summer and the wide, steady waterway is flanked by willow trees, their branches trailing to the ground.

Lefteris Arapakis comes from a long line of fishers. For five generations his family has plied the bountiful waters off southern Greece, netting the same cod and red mulls that have sustained Greeks for millennia.

For many people in rural China, drinking a glass of water is often a roll of the dice. Agricultural runoff and chemical waste from factories have left about 50 per cent of the country’s shallow groundwater polluted, according to some estimates. Every year, tainted water makes millions of people ill around the world, a fact that Xiaoyuan “Charlene” Ren knows all too well.

Nzambi Matee’s small workshop in Nairobi, Kenya is chock-a-block with metal pipes and machine cogs. It may seem chaotic to outsiders but the 29-year-old Matee, an inventor and entrepreneur, is at home here. This is where she developed the prototype for a machine that turns discarded plastic into paving stones – an invention that underpins her company, Gjenge Makers.

An engineer who turns plastic rubbish into paving stones. An activist who is fighting to save endangered salmon. And an inventor who developed a machine capable of pulling water out of the air. These are just some of the winners of the 2020 Young Champions of the Earth prize, announced on 15 December by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The word champion is a powerful one; it can be a noun, or a verb, or even a descriptor of something excellent, someone extraordinary, the best of the best. All three meanings befit the winners of this year’s Champions of the Earth award and the Young Champions of the Earth prize.

Asia and the Pacific winner Sonika Manandhar, software engineer, Chief Technology Officer of Aeoli (Green Energy Mobility);

Schools and gatherings are being cancelled around the world as a result of the Novel Coronavirus Covid-19 Outbreak. It can be difficult to occupy your children with exciting activities for hours on end, especially when you may also be working from home.

Today the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) confirmed over 1,500 nominations from around the world were received for the 2020 Champions of the Earth award. The online nomination portal for the prestigious environmental award closed yesterday, after being open for two months from 21 January to 20 March 2020. Established in 2005, Champions of the Earth is an award celebrating visionaries in four categories:

The humanitarian crisis in Yemen is considered to be among the worst in the world. In 2019, 80 per cent of Yemen’s people were in need—an estimated 24 million people.

In the two years since Adam Dixon won the Young Champions of the Earth prize back in 2017, he has taken great strides in his mission to grow food using fewer resources.

Sitting at a bus stop one day when she was 16, When Miranda Wang saw someone throw a plastic bottle into a trash bin, even though the recycling bin was right next to it.

Like the popular fitness apps, which help users track their exercise activities, food intake and more, an app called Evocco aims to give consumers information about their shopping habits to help cut their carbon footprint by estimating the climate impact of their choices.

Sonika Manandhar’s Green Energy Mobility platform is a big data solution developed by 2019 Young Champion for Asia and the Pacific to combat climate change in Nepal.

Since winning the Young Champions of the Earth prize in Asia and the Pacific in 2019, Sonika Manandhar’s big data solution has taken off. Her Green Energy Mobility platform strives to combat climate change in Nepal by helping women own and upgrade their three-wheeler electric minibuses through low-interest impact financing.

Musician Shady Rabab had an idea: to get kids off the streets through making musical instruments from plastic waste.

If you’re passionate about the environment and want to take your message far and wide in 2020, this could be your chance.