2025-2026 winner

We are delighted to announce that the winner of the 2025-2026 St Andrews Prize for the Environment is the South Rupununi Conservation Society, for their work to transform environmental education for Indigenous schoolchildren in Guyana.

They will receive a $95,000 (US dollars) cash prize to support their efforts to integrate their locally-proven model into the formal national education curriculum. The runners-up will each receive $20,000 (US dollars) to enable them to scale and expand their work. The three organisations will also be awarded a two-week internship visit from a University of St Andrews student, which will take place later this year.

We are grateful to the South Rupununi Conservation Society, Sloth Conservation Foundation and IRIBA Water Group for sharing their inspirational work with the St Andrews Prize and the wider University of St Andrews community. We look forward to following their progress and strengthening our connections with them in the years to come.

South Rupununi Conservation Society – Winner

The South Rupununi Conservation Society (SRCS) is one of the leading grassroots, Indigenous-led conservation NGOs in Guyana. It aims to preserve the wildlife, environment, and culture of the Rupununi through community-based conservation, environmental education, and research.

To address the global biodiversity and climate crisis, the world needs to produce populations who are nature positive, environmentally literate, and who are equipped with the relevant skills to address the environmental challenges facing their communities and our world. This is particularly true for Indigenous people, who are responsible for safeguarding over 25% of the world’s land mass and more than 80% of its biodiversity.

Working with local communities, the SRCS created an environmental education curriculum which teaches Indigenous youth about their local wildlife, environment, and culture through a combination of scientific and Traditional knowledge and a mix of practical and theoretical activities. Students later learn about citizen science and implement a project of their own, in their own community, which creates positive environmental change.

Since its creation in 2019, the curriculum has been implemented in 20 Indigenous communities, reaching over 2,000 students. This success has led to partnerships with the Guyana Wildlife Conservation and Management Commission, Guyana Marine Conservation Society, and Sophia Point research centre, enabling it to reach further communities and work towards incorporation into the formal national education curriculum.

Sloth Conservation Foundation – Runner-up

The Sloth Conservation Foundation (SloCo) was founded in Costa Rica in 2017 by Dr Rebecca Cliffe with the mission to protect sloths and the ecosystems they depend on. While sloths are its flagship species, its work benefits entire ecosystems by reducing habitat degradation and restoring connectivity.

Across Costa Rica, the human population has doubled in 40 years and urban development has risen by 250%, and similar trends threaten biodiversity throughout Central and South America. Through its Connected Gardens project, SloCo restores degraded and fragmented forest by creating networks of small biological corridors running through urban areas that link back to protected forests.

Connected Gardens helps arboreal species move safely through human-dominated landscapes by tackling the often overlooked challenge of canopy ‘microfragmentation’, caused by buildings and linear infrastructure. To date, it has:

• installed 378 canopy bridges which have reconnected over 8,000 hectares of previously isolated rainforest
• partnered with over 1,000 landowners, and planted 13,000 trees, resulting in an 82% reduction in wildlife conflict events
• recorded 8351 wildlife bridge crossings by 21 species

Connected Gardens empowers the private landowners who control 80% of Costa Rica’s land to become active stewards, regardless of property size. By focusing on collective impact across communities, Connected Gardens demonstrates that species protection does not need to begin on a massive scale. It can start with one person and one patch of forest, and grow into a model with global relevance.

IRIBA Water Group – Runner-up

Founded in 2017 by Yvette Ishimwe, IRIBA Water Group is a Rwandan social enterprise delivering climate-smart safe drinking water solutions while creating green jobs for youth and women. Its flagship innovation, IRIBA Tap&Drink, is a smart water ATM system that reduces carbon emissions, eliminates single-use plastics, and makes safe water affordable for schools and communities.

To have safe water, millions of families across Africa are required to boil water using firewood or charcoal. At the same time, single-use plastic bottles and sachets dominate the water market, creating waste that will clog rivers and landfill for generations. IRIBA Tap&Drink was created to break this cycle.

In schools and communities, climate-smart water ATMs are installed, which purify available water sources using energy-efficient reverse osmosis, UV, and ultrafiltration technologies. ATMs are provided free of charge in schools, ensuring every child has safe drinking water, while households pay an affordable subscription for unlimited safe water, creating a model that is inclusive and sustainable. To sustain these operations, IRIBA Water Group leverages climate finance, with each machine generating verified carbon credits, sold as high-integrity credits with strong co-benefits.

IRIBA Water Group has installed 203 ATMs across Rwanda, reaching more than 517,000 people per year, and creating 194 jobs – almost 90% of which are held by women. Through its IRIBA Water Access Program, it aims to have deployed 2,500 ATMs by 2027, serving 2.8 million people across Rwanda, creating over 800 green jobs, and avoiding 75,000 tCOe each year.