Climate solutions at the Ashden Awards

Last night the annual Ashden Awards took place, celebrating pioneering climate solutions and the people working on them. If you’ve ever come across Ashden’s work before, you’ll know that they have a certain way about them. They’re global in scope, and they’re not dazzled by showy start-ups or advanced technology. You won’t get the kind of ‘hydrogen fuel-cell toilets for the poor’ distractions that some awards go for (here’s looking at you Mr Gates.)

Instead, Ashden winners tend to embody community, collaboration, and sheer hard work. Every year, Ashden goes looking for such people and then uses the awards to amplify their efforts, grow their reach and bring them a bit of international attention and funding. Winning isn’t easy. The judges interview the nominees, visit and get to know them, examine their finances and assess their impact. It means that a win isn’t just a prize for having a good idea. It’s a significant endorsement based in partnership: these people are doing excellent work and deserve your support.

So it’s always worth looking up the award winners, and last night I got to go along the ceremony itself at the Royal Geographical Society. I won’t mention all of them, but among the winners are CERAF-Nord, a charity in Cameroon that plants trees and supports local people to set up businesses to produce honey, nuts and forest products. They won the award for natural climate solutions. Also from Africa, BuraSolutions Academy trains young people in solar power and supports them to start their own businesses. And USAFI Green Energy makes sustainable cooking stoves and the briquettes for them on Kenya’s Kakuma Refugee camp.

There are projects in the UK too. Enfield Council and Thames21 won for their work in restoring local wetlands and reducing flood risk. FarmED won the Future Farmers award for their wok at Honeydale Farm in the Cotswolds, where they run an education centre on regenerative farming.

Perhaps the project most relevant to my own work would be the Housing Associations Charitable Trust (HACT), who won an award for energy innovation. They have developed a carbon credit based on locally retrofitted homes, a scheme that unlocks finance for retrofits that people might not otherwise afford. It’s the kind of thing we’ve been talking about in Luton for several years, and HACT have proved that it can be done.

There are profiles and videos for all the winners on the Ashden website if you want to explore any more.