Greta Thunberg immediately gives away €1 million from prize she won

Greta Thunberg is giving away €1 million (£900,000) to climate groups after winning the prize money from a new humanitarian award.

The 17-year-old Swedish activist said it was ‘more money than I can even begin to imagine’ in a video on Instagram, and she hoped it would help her ‘do more good in the world’.

Judges in the inaugural Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity described her as ‘one of the most remarkable figures of our days’.

She was selected from 136 nominees in 46 countries for the prize, which aims to recognise people and groups tackling climate change.

Since inspiring a global youth movement with her ‘school strike for climate change’, Greta has been named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year and nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The first projects to benefit from Greta’s prize money are indigenous communities battling the coronavirus pandemic in the Amazon and a campaign to make ‘ecocide’ an international crime.

Greta said: ‘All the prize money will be donated through my foundation to different organisations and projects who are working to help people on the frontlines affected by the climate crisis and ecological crisis, especially in the Global South.’

On Friday, Greta marked the 100th week of the student climate protests she started by holding a solitary vigil outside the Swedish parliament in mid-2018.

The protest inspired millions of young people around the world to skip classes on Fridays to hold marches calling for political attention to stop the warming of the planet. Coronavirus restrictions have now forced those efforts online.

Thunberg has also addressed UN summits and politicians, from Europe to North America, urging them to heed warnings on the need for a swift response to avert the worst effects of wilder weather and rising seas as the Earth heats up.

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