XPRIZE and Alana Foundation Announce Semifinalist Teams in $10M Rainforest Competition

Today at the World Biodiversity Forum in Davos, XPRIZE, the global leader in designing and operating incentive competitions to solve humanity’s grand challenges, officially announced the $10M XPRIZE Rainforest Semifinalist teams working to improve our understanding of the rainforest ecosystem.

Sponsored by Alana Foundation, the five-year XPRIZE Rainforest looks to identify solutions that will accelerate the innovation of autonomous technologies needed for biodiversity assessment. These solutions will provide new wisdom about the rainforest as well as inspire new investment and exploration in that area of the world, revealing the true potential of the standing rainforest and encouraging the development of new sustainable bioeconomies.

“The XPRIZE Rainforest competition is instrumental to reshaping the narrative around environmental justice and conservation between key stakeholders in the environmental industry,” stated Peter Houlihan, Executive Vice President of Biodiversity & Conservation at XPRIZE. “Partnering and collaborating alongside Indigenous Peoples and local communities work toward shared goals of solving challenges associated with rainforest biodiversity to help ensure future equitable access to technology and innovative solutions.”

The Semifinals testing will take place in spring 2023 in Singapore, chosen based on the city’s conservation efforts and its support to harness science to address biodiversity in an urban landscape. Singapore's Minister for National Development Desmond Lee said, "Singapore is honoured to host the Semifinals of the XPRIZE Rainforest competition. We are a small city-state. Because of that, we have always had to be disciplined in our long-term city planning and stewardship of our land and natural spaces. We aspire to be a City in Nature, by weaving nature more intensively into our urban fabric, so that the city and nature can thrive side-by-side. The National Parks Board, which manages Singapore’s natural heritage, and the National University of Singapore are developing and using new technologies to carry out nature conservation and research. The autonomous technologies that the XPRIZE teams are developing for rapid biodiversity assessments can help to enhance our collective understanding of rainforest ecosystems, both in Singapore and around the world.”

Additionally, the proximity of Singapore’s rainforests to the resources and of the city will be a critical asset for teams at this still early stage of testing. It’s vastly different from the typical field sites where autonomous technologies like the ones being developed in the prize will be most useful, but the teams that succeed at Semifinals testing will move on to test their tech in a remote location, without those helpful and accessible resources, at the competition Finals in 2024.

Successful teams must develop technologies that can demonstrate scalable and affordable capabilities that measurably improve biodiversity monitoring. Specifically, the technology must include a process for improving autonomous operations, new detection methodologies and methods for rapid data integration that provide unprecedented levels of detail in real time.

“The time is now to make bold investments in the conservation of our planet's biodiversity and support our indigenous and local communities. This prize will generate critical data and insight for preserving our rainforests, its culture and people, which are essential for stabilizing our Earth's climate,” said Ana Lúcia Villela, founder and president of Alana Foundation.

Semifinalist teams will split a milestone prize totaling $250,000 to recognize their work and continued efforts in conservation. The XPRIZE Rainforest Semifinalist teams are as follows:

• ACT NOW - Amazonas Action Alliance, Ecuador
• Alouatta, Mexico
• AraceEye, Canada
• ETH BiodivX, Switzerland
• BioSTREAM, United Kingdom
• Bioverse, Brazil
• Blue Devil Rainforest Divers, United States
• Brazilian Team, Brazil
• Lorax, United States
• Map of Life, United States
• Providence Plus, Spain
• Reforester, Netherlands
• Team Waponi!, United States
• Welcome to the Jungle, United States
• XiniX AI, Belgium

“The XPRIZE Rainforest and its Semifinalist teams have the potential to advance the way humanity understands and preserves the world we live in,” said Anousheh Ansari, XPRIZE CEO. “Through collaboration, it is possible to scale this vision to provide new wisdom about the rainforest ecosystem and inspire new exploration, protection and investment.”

There will be a Finals round of testing in 2024 to determine the grand prize decision. To ultimately win the competition, a team will survey the most biodiversity contained in 100 hectares of tropical rainforest in 24 hours and provide the most impactful insights within 48 hours.

Atossa Soltani, one of the XPRIZE Rainforest judges and the Founder and President of Amazon Watch, shared her excitement for the technologies in development: "We're really hopeful that the teams' technologies will be beneficial for assessing and protecting rainforest biodiversity, and not only involve Indigenous Peoples, but ultimately benefit them once they come online."

For more information on XPRIZE Rainforest, please visit xprize.org/prizes/rainforest.

ABOUT XPRIZE

XPRIZE is a global future-positive movement, delivering truly radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity. XPRIZE inspires and empowers a global community of problem-solvers to positively impact our world by crowdsourcing solutions through large-scale competitions, tackling the world’s grandest challenges in exploration, environment and human equity. Active competitions include the $100 Million XPRIZE Carbon Removal with Elon Musk, $15 Million XPRIZE Feed the Next Billion, $10 Million XPRIZE Rainforest, $10 Million ANA Avatar XPRIZE, $5 Million XPRIZE Rapid Reskilling, and $1 Million Digital Learning Challenge. Donate, sign up or join a team at xprize.org.

ABOUT ALANA FOUNDATION

Alana Foundation is an independent philanthropic organization founded in 2012 in the United States. The Foundation supports initiatives in the areas of environment, inclusive education and health science research through grants and co-funding partnerships. It also engages with networks and global movements in those areas.

ABOUT NATIONAL PARKS BOARD

The National Parks Board (NParks) is responsible for enhancing and managing the urban ecosystems of our City in Nature. We are the lead agency for greenery, biodiversity conservation, and wildlife and animal health, welfare and management. We are also working closely with the community to enhance the quality of our living environment.

NParks manages some 400 parks, 3,347 hectares of nature reserves, the Singapore Botanic Gardens, Pulau Ubin and the Sisters' Islands Marine Park. Adding to this is the extensive network of Nature Ways, and the over 300 km Park Connector Network that links major parks, nature areas and residential estates island-wide. Every year, we run over 3,500 educational and outreach programmes across our various green spaces.

NParks has developed an urban biodiversity conservation model, which aims to conserve representative ecosystems in land-scarce Singapore. NParks also monitors and coordinates measures to enhance the presence of biodiversity in our urban landscape.

NParks is working closely with partners in the landscape, horticulture, veterinary and animal sectors to increase productivity, and provide training for all levels of the workforce. Enhancing competencies of the industry will support Singapore’s vision of being a City in Nature.

For more information, visit www.nparks.gov.sg and www.facebook.com/nparksbuzz

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