by Friendship News Desk,
4 October, 2025
Friendship, an NGO based in Bangladesh, is today revealed as a 2025 Finalist for the world’s most prestigious environmental award, The Earthshot Prize. Friendship joins a historic coalition of leaders recognised for driving climate action and inspiring everyone to build a better future for people and planet.
Founded by HRH Prince William in 2020, The Earthshot Prize recognises solutions from different geographies, sectors, and stages in their life cycle, and is dedicated to solving our planet’s greatest challenges. The Prize in 2025 marks the halfway point in the Earthshot decade, as the mission gathers pace in this next critical juncture.
Bangladesh is one of the most climate-vulnerable countries on Earth, facing recurring climate-induced disasters that threaten millions of people and fragile ecosystems. Between 2014 and 2023, disasters displaced people within Bangladesh 14.7 million times. In response, Friendship takes a holistic approach – delivering healthcare, education, climate-resilient infrastructure, enabling community financial independence, providing access to legal and government services; rebuilding mangrove ecosystems, and restoring coastal communities – to support some of the most isolated and disaster-prone communities.
Founded by Runa Khan in 2002, Friendship goes beyond aid to equip people to withstand the next crisis, transforming fragile communities into models of resilience.
From building raised plinth settlements and schools that can be dismantled and reassembled to withstand rising waters, Friendship has also planted over 62 kilometres of mangroves through the reafforestation of 650,000 trees across more than 200 hectares near the Sundarbans in Bangladesh’s southern coastal area. These mangroves shield villages from the devastating impacts of deadly cyclones – protecting more than 125,000 people to date – while also supporting livelihoods and acting as a vital carbon sink, absorbing and storing carbon dioxide. This contributes to a sustainable future based on blue carbon ecosystems and a thriving blue economy.
From its beginnings as a single floating hospital, Friendship has grown into a dedicated social purpose organisation, giving direct services to more than 7.5 million people annually. It has delivered over 24 million healthcare services and 8.3 million days’ worth of emergency food support, and gives over 80,000 people daily access to safe drinking water in coastal areas.
By 2030, Friendship aims not only to reduce the climate vulnerability of the population but to ensure lasting improvements in community resilience, dignity, socioeconomic opportunities, and quality of life, driven by systems that are locally owned, ecologically sustainable, replicable, and scalable across similar fragile geographies.
It is this leadership, progress and future potential that impressed The Earthshot Prize during the selection process in the search for outstanding leadership for the 2025 Prize.
HRH Prince William, Founder and President of The Earthshot Prize, said: “As we reach the halfway point of the Earthshot decade, I am truly inspired by this year’s Finalists, which embody the urgent optimism sitting right at the heart of our mission. In just five years, The Earthshot Prize has shown that the answers to our planet’s greatest challenges not only already exist, but that they are firmly within our grasp.”
Runa Khan, Founder of Friendship, said: “Being recognised as an Earthshot Prize Finalist is an honour that highlights the resilience and innovation of communities in Bangladesh living on the frontline of climate change. From our first floating hospital to restoring mangroves and building flood-resilient villages, we have proven that community-led, nature-based solutions can transform lives. This recognition amplifies the voices of those most affected and shows that locally driven adaptation is both possible and essential.”
The new Finalists join a community of 60 Finalists who are making significant progress in protecting and restoring our natural world. This includes progress by:
- d.light (Clean our Air 2024 Finalist), which has transformed 200 million lives in Africa with its solar-powered products.
- Notpla (Waste Free World 2022 Finalist), which has replaced 21.5 million single-use plastic items with sustainable seaweed packaging, and 11.6 million in 2024.
- Pristine Seas (Revive our Oceans 2021 Finalist), which has established 30 of the largest marine protected areas in the world, covering a total area of 6.9 million square kilometres, more than twice the size of India, and helped to create David Attenborough’s groundbreaking Ocean Film.
- Altyn Dala Conservation Initiative (Protect and Restore Nature 2024 Winner), which has helped bring the Saiga Antelope back from the brink of extinction, growing the population from around 40,000 to over 4 million in 20 years. They’ve also reintroduced Przewalski’s horses to Kazakhstan’s wild after more than 200 years.
- Boomitra (Fix Our Climate 2023 Winner), which has worked with over 10,000 farmers in Africa, India, the Americas and Mongolia to adopt regenerative agricultural processes and remove nearly a million cars’ worth of CO2 from the atmosphere.
This year’s cohort was selected from nearly 2,500 nominees submitted by the Prize’s network of 575 nominators from 72 countries. The 15 Finalists were chosen based on assessments done by The Earthshot Prize’s selection partners and Expert Advisory Panel, a global group of more than 100 subject-matter experts with deep backgrounds in conservation, science, technology, business, finance, academia and policy.
As in previous years, the five Winners of this year’s Prize will be selected by Prince William and fellow members of the prestigious Earthshot Prize Council, a diverse group of individuals dedicated to protecting the climate and our natural environment. The Earthshot Prize Council is chaired by The Earthshot Prize Board of Trustees Chair, Dame Christiana Figueres, architect of the Paris Climate Accord.
Members of The Earthshot Prize Council are Prince William, Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah, Cate Blanchett, Indra Nooyi, José Andrés, Wanjira Mathai, Nemonte Nenquimo, Luisa Neubauer, Naoko Yamazaki, Ernest Gibson, and Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
Solutions selected align with the five ‘Earthshots’ – simple, ambitious and aspirational goals but more relevant than ever before.
To find out more about this year’s Finalists, please visit the website.
About The Earthshot Prize
For more information about The Earthshot Prize, visit: www.earthshotprize.org
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Founded by HRH Prince William and incubated in The Royal Foundation in 2020 for a year before becoming an independent organisation, The Earthshot Prize is the world’s most prestigious and impactful award designed to identify, back and celebrate groundbreaking leadership in environmental action. Inspired by President John F. Kennedy’s Moonshot, which united millions of people around the goal of reaching the moon, The Earthshot Prize is designed to mobilise a decade of action for the planet. The five challenges are: Protect and Restore Nature; Clean Our Air; Revive Our Oceans; Build a Waste-Free World; and Fix Our Climate.
The Earthshot Prize aims to turn the current pessimism surrounding environmental issues into optimism by championing inspiring leadership and helping to scale incredible, cutting-edge solutions. It will discover 50 Winners over 10 years with the power to repair the planet. More than an award, The Earthshot Prize works in partnership with a Global Alliance of Partners to support the scaling of the solutions discovered and selected each year.
The Global Alliance Founding Partners are a group of leading global organisations and philanthropists, which act as strategic funding partners to the Prize, including Aga Khan Development Network, Allen Family Philanthropies, Bezos Earth Fund, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Breakthrough Energy Foundation, Builders Vision, Coleman Family Ventures, DP World, Elaine and Eduardo Saverin Foundation, Eleven Eleven Foundation, Giving Grousbeck Fazzalari, Holch Povlsen Foundation, Law Family Charitable Foundation, Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, Rob Walton Foundation, Sandy and Paul Edgerley, Standard Chartered Bank, Stelios Philanthropic Foundation, Temasek Trust, and Uber.
Global Alliance Partners are non-profit environmental and sustainable development organisations that bring expertise, global reach, and serve as nominating organisations each year. For a full list of our Global Alliance Partners, visit: https://earthshotprize.org/people-partners/global-alliance/
Global Alliance Members are some of the world’s largest and most influential companies and brands that will support The Earthshot Prize, implement ambitious changes within their businesses and accelerate the advancement of the solutions of The Earthshot Prize Finalists and Winners. They are Arup, Bloomberg L.P., British Airways, Deloitte, Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer, Hitachi, Ingka Group (IKEA), Microsoft, The Multichoice Group, Natura &Co, Safaricom, Salesforce, Unilever, Vodacom Group, and Walmart.
