ConocoPhillips’ North Sea business unit – together with Scotland’s University of St. Andrews – annually presents the St. Andrews Prize for the Environment, aimed at helping ordinary people from all walks of life identify innovative solutions to environmental problems.
Launched in 1998, the annual competition is now recognized internationally and attracts entries from approximately 50 countries. Winners receive a US$30,000 prize, with US$5,000 each going to two runners-up. In each case, winning the prize has led to further financial backing or recognition.
A high-level panel of trustees representing science and academia (to assess and evaluate ideas), industry (to look at economics and practicality), and government (to consider political feasibility) judge more than 100 applications each year. Past winning entries include programs to reverse environmental damage done by old mining works in South Africa (1999); turn waste from olive oil production to valuable byproducts in Palestine (2000); use song, dance and drama to educate rural communities about environmental hazards in Kenya (2001); persuade rice farmers in Vietnam to use safer, more productive ways of working (2002); train semi-illiterate young people to install solar power in remote Himalayan villages (2003); and use mapping technology to further protect the traditional culture and biodiverse lands of a remote tribe in Peru (2004 award recipient pictured above).
According to Sir Crispin Tickell, an international environmentalist and former British Ambassador to the United Nations who chairs the panel of trustees, “The Prize has given a start to many excellent environmental initiatives around the world that otherwise might never have gotten off the ground.”