Finalists for 2025-2026
We are delighted to announce that the finalists for the 27th St Andrews Prize for the Environment are the Sloth Conservation Foundation, South Rupununi Conservation Society, and IRIBA Water Group.
The finalists will present their projects to a panel of judges and students at the University of St Andrews on Tuesday 17 March 2026. The winner of the US$95,000 prize will be announced that evening.
Sloth Conservation Foundation
Connected Gardens
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.
"Working on the front lines of conservation is often emotionally heavy as we are constantly confronted with the many ways the world is breaking. Being named a finalist for the St Andrews Prize is powerful validation that what we are doing matters, and that others believe in this work. It has given our team renewed hope, energy, and confidence to keep going.
Over the past decade, we have built Connected Gardens into a model that genuinely works to protect wildlife in urban areas, and we are now ready to take it to the next level by expanding the project into three new regions. Winning the St Andrews Prize would give us the resources to do that. It would allow us to scale Connected Gardens from a proven local solution into a model for urban conservation more widely, while bringing attention to an overlooked problem that is currently slipping through the cracks of policy and planning."
- Founder, Sloth Conservation Foundation
South Rupununi Conservation Society
Transforming Environmental Education in Guyana
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.
"Being selected as a finalist for the St Andrews Prize for the Environment is both an honour and a powerful affirmation of the work SRCS is doing to embed environmental responsibility into everyday life. It tells us that our efforts to promote practical, community-driven solutions are making a meaningful impact, particularly in the promotion of local and Indigenous knowledge systems blended with formal scientific understandings.
Winning would strengthen our capacity to expand these initiatives and amplify our message that environmental stewardship begins with informed, empowered communities. For SRCS, this recognition represents important momentum towards building a more sustainable and resilient future."
- Environmental Education Coordinator, South Rupununi Conservation Society
IRIBA Water Group
IRIBA Tap&Drink Climate-Smart Water ATMs
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.
"I’m truly honoured to be selected as a finalist for the St Andrews Prize for the Environment. For us at IRIBA Water Group, this recognition affirms that locally-led climate solutions from Africa can play a meaningful role in protecting our planet. Our work focuses on reducing deforestation, cutting carbon emissions from boiling water, and eliminating single-use plastic waste through refill and reuse systems. Winning the Prize would allow us to accelerate this environmental impact at scale, helping more communities access safe water while safeguarding forests, lowering emissions, and building a more climate-resilient future."
- Founder, IRIBA Water Group