Zayed Sustainability Prize winners bring light and hope to Earth’s future generations
Learn from the past and strive for better in future – the message from Sheikh Zayed, the Founding Father, to inspire future generations was clear.
For more than a decade, the Zayed Sustainability Prize has provided a stage for innovation that sets out to change the world and solve the riddles of climate change by learning from mankind’s mistakes.
Each of the four winners of the $600,000 (Dh2.2 million) prize presented new ideas and reworked solutions to some of the global community’s most pressing concerns.
Health was one of four new sub-categories – with food, energy and water – to challenge private enterprise to create sustainable innovations.
Dr Laura Stachel, co-founder and executive director of We Care Solar, won the health prize for her solar suitcase, a power device enabling vital services in maternity wards cut off from the national grid in developing countries.
“I first saw this problem in Nigeria and I could not turn my back on it,” said Dr Stachel, an American obstetrician and gynaecologist.
“I saw women with serious complications, having seizures and giving birth in the dark.
“I was a physician studying public health and had no idea how bad the situation was, with no one championing the cause.”
Dr Stachel went to Nigeria to study why so many women were dying during childbirth, at home but also in hospitals.
One hospital was doing 150 deliveries a month, with three of those women dying while giving birth.
In those communities, women faced a one-in-13 chance of dying during their reproductive years as a result of complications from pregnancy.
“I realised the hospital did not have electricity for more than 12 hours a day so it was not able to have a refrigerated blood bank.
“Lights would go out during a C-section procedure and incubators donated by other countries were being used as desks because there was no power,” she said.
It is a familiar scene in rural Africa and elsewhere in the developing world.
Dr Stachel worked with her husband, a solar power educator, to develop the device.
It can power up to six medical-grade LED lights, and has two 12-volt plug sockets and USB ports. It costs only $3,000 but can potentially save hundreds of lives, with a battery lasting about five years.
It can also power a foetal Doppler to monitor a baby’s heart rate. Communities are being trained to use the devices, maintain them and make repairs.
“These educational programmes to become solar installers are hugely important,” said Dr Stachel, who was a prize finalist last year.
“You can’t just drop gadgets into health centres. You need to provide holistic systems to support them. This is one lesson learnt from previous mistakes.”
Another winner in a new standalone category was Ecosoftt, a Singapore company that scooped the water award.
The company has used innovation to help rural communities effectively re-use waste water.
“This can be used in homes, schools, hotels and villages,” said Marcus Lim, co-founder and managing director.
“We enable them to collect rainwater and make it safe to use. It has been trialled all over the world, including India – which is the biggest market where there is huge demand.
“We have been limited by our own resources, so hopefully the prize will help us to expand the idea to the next level. Our idea is to reduce the size of the pipework required to make it cheaper and more efficient to bring recycled water into communities.”
In the energy sector, the winner was Bboxx from Rwanda, which helps people living off the grid to electrify their households.
Sanku was the winner in the food category. It is a project in Tanzania that addresses malnutrition by providing sustainable food solutions for mothers and children.