The heir to the British throne is in Singapore to present a prize that promotes innovative solutions to tackle climate change. He and his Royal Foundation charity launched Earthshot in 2020 to highlight technology that could tackle the world’s most pressing issues, ranging from energy supply to water shortages.
He arrived at Changi Airport on Tuesday (October 2), where a 40-meter-high Rain Vortex was lit green to mark his arrival. He was also presented with a tree planted in his honour at the indoor garden, surrounded by other greenery. The 71-year-old was on his first solo trip to the city-state since his wedding in 2022.
On Wednesday, he will attend the awards ceremony for the inaugural Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize at the National Theater. It will honour the work of scientists and experts who used wastewater-based epidemiology processes to track COVID-19 cases during the pandemic, and “tighten the connections between the water and healthcare sectors”.
Prof Medema, who has an international reputation as a leading expert in environmental health, said his team worked with Singapore’s water agency PUB and the Home Team Science and Technology Agency to test for the virus in residential tapwater and in sewage, and use the data to alert the public when there was an outbreak of the disease.
Also on Wednesday, a total of 17 writers, translators and comic artists were awarded prizes by the Singapore Book Council across four languages at the TOTO Book Awards. The inaugural English comic or graphic novel category was won by Kenfoo’s self-published Cockman (2022), about a chicken from another dimension who finds itself stranded on Earth in human form. The book was praised for its “total lack of seriousness and compromise, and over-the-top audacity and absurdity”.
The NUS Singapore History Prize was founded in 2014 to spur interest in Singapore’s past and make its complexities and nuances more accessible to non-specialist audiences. It was mooted by NUS Asia Research Institute distinguished fellow Kishore Mahbubani in an opinion column he wrote in 2014, in which he called for philanthropists to donate money towards the prize for “the best history book written on Singapore”.
The winners of this year’s prize include a study of the life of a common Singapore family, which eschews the notion that history is simply a record of big-name movers and shakers. Another work, by Kamaladevi Aravindan, looks at an estate over the course of five decades. It is one of six works in the running for the award. The final winner will be announced on November 6. The prize’s inaugural edition is supported by the Christopher Bathurst KC, Viscount Bledisloe, fund, which was set up in memory of the late barrister who had a longstanding practice in Asia, including Singapore.