The United Nations Environment Programme on Dec. 10 announced its five “2025 Champions of the Earth,” the U.N.’s highest environmental honor.
Since 2005, UNEP’s Champions of the Earth has recognized individuals, groups and organizations who have contributed significantly toward transforming the environment for the better. The award celebrates four categories of contribution: policy leadership, inspiration and action, entrepreneurial vision, and science and innovation.
This year’s awardees are engaged in issues of climate change, from seeking climate justice within courts and designing climate-resilient buildings, to combating deforestation, supporting ecosystem restoration and shaping action on methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
Previous awardees include Honduran Indigenous activist Berta Cáceres, former U.S. vice president Al Gore, Indian ecologist Madhav Gadgil, the South Africa-based woman-majority Black Mamba Anti-Poaching Unit, and Sônia Guajajara, Brazil’s first minister of Indigenous peoples.
The following are the 2025 Champions of the Earth:
The Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change, a youth-led NGO, was recognized for policy leadership. The NGO represents students from Pacific island states who campaigned for and secured a historic ruling on climate justice from the International Court of Justice this year.
“These students are inspiration to us all and show that we all have the potential to be changemakers,” Inger Andersen, executive director of UNEP, said in a statement.
Supriya Sahu, a forest official in India, was recognized in the “inspiration and action” category for her work on climate-resilient schools and social housing projects as well as ecosystem restoration to expand forest and mangrove cover. “We cannot separate nature from people,” Sahu said.
Mariam Issoufou, founder of Mariam Issoufou Architects, was honored in the “entrepreneurial vision” category. Issoufou, a Nigerian architect, has reimagined traditional ways of climate-resilient buildings incorporating passive cooling techniques across the Sahel, according to a statement.
“Her locally appropriate and culturally sensitive designs are keeping buildings sustainable and cool, and setting models that many across the continent of Africa can follow,” Anderson said.
Imazon (Amazon Institute of People and the Environment), a Brazil-based nonprofit research institute, was recognized in the science and innovation category, for “combining science and AI-driven geospatial tools to curb deforestation.” Imazon’s research has helped shape public policies and supported legal cases around forest cover in the Amazon.
“Brazil will not be the same without the Amazon rainforest. And the planet will not be the same,” Carlos Souza, an associate researcher at Imazon, said in a statement.
UNEP also posthumously honored Manfredi Caltagirone, former head of UNEP’s International Methane Emissions Observatory, for lifetime contribution toward shaping action and policy on methane. Caltagirone died in June this year.
“A deeply talented climate specialist determined to make a real difference, Manfredi understood that urgent action on critical priorities such as methane could be make or break for a safer world,” Anderson said. “He is sorely missed, but UNEP will honour his legacy by continuing to push for rapid reductions to methane emissions.”
Banner image: Aerial view of the Amazon Rainforest, near Manaus, Brazil. Image by CIFOR-ICRAF via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
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