The prestigious Earthshot prize is heading to Singapore, where Prince William will attend the 2023 awards ceremony, bringing a welcome spotlight to the country’s efforts in climate change solutions. But how much is the jackpot? The top prize is $13 million, with the winning ticket sold at a supermarket chain and the Singapore Pools app.
The prize is awarded to entrepreneurs who have created “a new and transformative way to solve one or more of the biggest challenges facing our planet” — including making electric car batteries cleaner, protecting Andean forests, and deterring illegal fishing. Several of the winners are from Asia, but some come from around the world.
Besides the top prize, the 15 winners are also awarded with cash prizes ranging from $50,000 to $100,000 each. Winners include an Indian maker of solar-powered dryers, a soil carbon marketplace, and groups that restore Andean forests and deter illegal fishing. They are among the most promising solutions to address climate change, but they face many obstacles.
Singapore’s prize landscape is shifting, with a few new categories and an elimination of others. On Jan 11, the organizer of the biennial Singapore Literature Prize (SLP) introduced a new translation category for fiction, as well as a Best Debut award for debut authors, a Readers’ Favourite accolade based on consumer voting, and a Best Comics and Graphic Novels category for work in the four languages used in the nation.
Amid rising global concerns about the environmental impact of human activity, these new categories are intended to reflect the increasingly diverse literary production in Singapore. “These changes will further celebrate and promote our rich cultural diversity through writings,” the organizer says in a statement.
The prize landscape is also changing in Singapore’s arcades, where a government crackdown on gambling inducement took effect this month. The value of prizes offered at arcades and fun fairs is now limited to less than $100 to reduce the risk of gambling addiction. Previously, the prizes could be cash equivalents, credit, merchant vouchers, and coupons. One 35-year-old who works at the Cow Play Cow Moo arcade in downtown Singapore told the Straits Times she doesn’t mind the restrictions, because she doesn’t play for expensive rewards.
Shelly Bryant divides her year between Shanghai and Singapore, where she works as a writer and translator. Her translations of Sheng Keyi’s Northern Girls and You Jin’s In Time, Out of Place were both long-listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize, and she has edited poetry anthologies for Alban Lake and Celestial Books. She also writes on culture and politics, including op-eds for the Guardian. She has won the Singapore Arts Council’s Young Artist award twice. She is currently working on her first novel.