by Raeed Abd-Allah Chowdhury,
6 November, 2025
Friendship is honoured to be named a winner of the Earthshot Prize 2025 in the Fix Our Climate category. Beyond reflecting Friendship’s work, this extraordinary recognition above all celebrates the collective resilience and innovation of the people and communities we serve.
We extend our heartfelt congratulations to the other finalists in this category, Barbados and Form Energy (USA). Their pioneering efforts — from driving equitable climate finance for vulnerable nations to transforming the future of clean energy storage — represent the diversity of solutions our planet urgently needs. It has been a privilege to share this platform with them, and we look forward to future collaboration and mutual learning as we each continue our journeys towards a sustainable and resilient world.
For over two decades, Friendship has worked in some of the most climate-vulnerable regions of Bangladesh — from the shifting river islands in the north to the cyclone-prone coastal belt and the mangrove forests of the Sundarbans. Our mission has always been guided by an integrated, human-centred approach that links the environment with social and economic development, through scalable, replicable, nature-based and locally-led development solutions.
Friendship’s holistic development model is built on four interdependent commitments: saving lives, poverty alleviation, climate adaptation, and empowerment. These commitments are interwoven across all of our work in Health, Education, Climate Action, Inclusive Citizenship, Sustainable Economic Development, and Cultural Preservation, addressing all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in a unified framework. Friendship’s integrated development model has been specifically designed with the understanding that all 17 of the SDGs must be addressed to bring a substantive impact and foster long-term change.
From dismantlable, relocatable schools, to solar villages, to floating hospitals, raised plinths, each of Friendship’s many interventions works in congruence with the other. Friendship’s mangrove afforestation programme — recognised under the Earthshot Prize — is the largest privately led initiative of its kind in Bangladesh. It combines nature-based and locally led adaptation to create climate and livelihood resilience. To date, the programme has planted over 650,000 trees across more than 200 hectares of mangroves, prepared an additional 120 hectares for future planting, and safeguarded 62 kilometres of vulnerable shoreline. Beyond environmental restoration, the initiative supports community livelihoods, strengthens coastal protection, and builds lasting ownership through participatory management.
Winning the Earthshot Prize marks a milestone — not an endpoint — for Friendship. The support and visibility this recognition brings will allow Friendship to deepen its impact and replicate as well as share its practices within Bangladesh and across other deltaic and small-island ecosystems around the world, informing practices locally and nationwide and offering what HRH Prince William calls “adaptation governance”. This is an opportunity to forge new partnerships, share practical knowledge, and work alongside governments, researchers, and civil society to accelerate the global transition towards locally led, community-based climate solutions.
This award belongs to the thousands of community members, volunteers, and field staff whose dedication makes our mission possible. Their courage and commitment to protecting both people and planet continue to inspire our work every day.
Together with the fellow finalists and the broader Earthshot community, Friendship remains steadfast in its belief that meaningful, sustainable climate action begins at the grassroots — through trust, partnership, and the power of human dignity, opportunity and hope.
