It is the world's largest and most traditional award for social innovators and the third sector

MapBiomas is one of six initiatives worldwide to receive the 2022 Skoll Prize for Social Innovation. The award is the highest global recognition of the third sector and comes with a donation of US$ 2.2 million to strengthen the project over three years. The announcement was made on Monday (4/4) and the award ceremony will take place virtually on Wednesday (6/4). You can register to attend the event here.

Each year, three social innovators are selected whose work contributes to tackling the root causes of social and environmental problems with scalable and transformational solutions. In 2021, there were no awards due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This year, therefore, six social innovators were selected.

MapBiomas was selected for the impact that can be achieved through the data it generates with the revolutionary use of technology to map land use. The data has been used to combat deforestation and fires, which are the main causes of Brazil's carbon emissions, to protect conservation units and Indigenous Lands, to monitor water resources, to plan the sustainable use of rural properties and to monitor tropical disease vectors, among other applications. Another factor that contributed to the recognition is the innovative format of MapBiomas, which operates through a multi-institutional collaborative network for the production of knowledge.

"This award is recognition of the MapBiomas Network's contribution to promoting the conservation and sustainable use of natural resources not only in Brazil, but also in other South American countries and Indonesia," says Tasso Azevedo, MapBiomas coordinator. "At MapBiomas we seek to produce quality information on how we use the land to guide the decisions of governments, companies, civil society organizations and individuals so that each of us can leave the world better than we found it for the next generation."

The prize money will be used to expand the MapBiomas project beyond the current areas in South America and Indonesia and to broaden the monitoring themes, such as degradation, water surface, fire scars and regeneration.

In addition to MapBiomas, the 2022 edition of the Skoll Prize also elected another Brazilian organization, Nossas. Previously, only three Brazilian organizations had won the award: Comitê para Democratização da Informática (2005), Instituto Dara (2006) and Imazon (2010).

About MapBiomas

A multi-institutional initiative, involving universities, NGOs and technology companies, focused on monitoring transformations in land cover and land use in Brazil. This platform is today the most complete, up-to-date and detailed spatial database of land use in a country available in the world. All MapBiomas data, maps, methods and codes are available publicly and free of charge on the initiative's website: mapbiomas.org.

About the Skoll Foundation

Jeff Skoll created the Skoll Foundation in 1999 to catalyze transformative social change by investing in, connecting and advocating for social entrepreneurs and other social innovators who together promote bold and equitable solutions to the world's most pressing problems. Since 1999, it has invested approximately US$ 935 million worldwide, including the Skoll Prize and the Skoll Global Threats Fund, benefiting 165 social entrepreneurs and other social innovation organizations on 5 continents. Every year between 2004-2019, around a thousand of the world's leading thinkers and social change-makers gathered at the Skoll World Forum. In 2020, it held the first Virtual Skoll World Forum, free and accessible to the global public.