The challenge of minimising our impact on the planet is the most urgent issue of our era–and perhaps the hardest to solve. Earthna Center for a Sustainable Future (Earthna), a non-profit policy research and advocacy centre emerged from Qatar Foundation’s (QF) mission to address those challenges, by promoting and enabling a coordinated approach to environmental, social, and economic sustainability and future prosperity, writes Sebastien Turbot**.
Supporting Qatar and other hot, arid nations towards a sustainable future, Earthna focuses on sustainability frameworks, circular economies, energy transition and climate change, biodiversity and sustainability and traditional knowledge.
The challenge with sustainability policies, regardless of their scale, is that they demand a leap of commitment from a diverse set of actors. Since its formation in 2022, Earthna has been steadfast in initiating several initiatives to bring together Qatar’s community of policymakers, technical experts, academia, businesses and civil society, to collaborate with leading regional and international organisations and enhance the country’s sustainability efforts.
For example, September 28 sees the start of the 9th Qatar Sustainability Week (QSW), a National Campaign which engages the community in sustainability activities, to achieve the global sustainability goals outlined in Qatar National Vision 2030. The resounding success of QSW over the past 8 years has seen more than 600,000 people engaging in initiatives and activities across Qatar.
Exchanging insights
From October 1-2, Earthna will bring together leaders from key stakeholders in Qatar and beyond to exchange insights and advance solutions to meet Qatar’s environmental challenges at the 4th edition of the Qatar National Dialogue on Climate Change.
Similarly, in 2023 Earthna held its inaugural Earthna summit at Msheireb Downtown Doha. The international public event under the theme of ‘Building New Sustainability Pathways for Hot and Arid Environments’ explored a wide range of topics through interactive activities to initiate the dialogue of climate change.
One of its newest initiatives is the Earthna Prize, an initiative to celebrate and support projects, actors and systems that are working towards the preservation, integration, adaptation, and adoption of ancestral knowledge and cultural heritage in addressing contemporary environmental challenges. The Earthna Prize will recognise communities and organisations globally whose work aligns with one or more of the prize’s themes: water resource management, food security, sustainable urbanism, and land stewardship. With a prize pool of US$1 million, winners will be announced at the Earthna Summit in 2025 and can use the award to support the development of their work.
**Sebastien Turbot is director, content development, at Earthna developing the centre’s overarching editorial approach and defining advocacy campaigns, with his work being focused on building collaborative learning and living ecosystems that help communities develop the knowledge, skills and talents they need to inject sustainability into current and future societies.
