MapBiomas is one of the winners of the 2022 Skoll Award for Social Innovation

The Skoll Award is the largest and most traditional in the world for social innovators and the third sector

MapBiomas is one of six initiatives worldwide to receive the Skoll 2022 Award for Social Innovation. The prize is the largest global recognition of the third sector and includes a US$ 2.2 million donation to strengthen the project over three years. The announcement was made on Monday (April 4) and the award ceremony will take place in a virtual event on Wednesday (April 6). Registration to attend the event can be done here.

Each year the award is given to three social innovators whose work contributes to attacking 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. Therefore, six social innovators were selected this year.

MapBiomas was chosen for the impact that can be gained from the data it generates with its revolutionary use of technology to map land use. The data has been used to combat deforestation and fires, which are the main causes of Brazilian greenhouse gas 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 weighed for the recognition is the innovative format of MapBiomas, which operates through a collaborative multi-institutional network for knowledge production.

"This award is a recognition of the contribution of the MapBiomas Network for the promotion of conservation and sustainable use of natural resources not only in Brazil, but also in other South American countries and in Indonesia", says Tasso Azevedo, coordinator of MapBiomas. "We pursue in MapBiomas to produce quality information about how we use the land to drive 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 expand the monitoring themes, such as degradation, water surface, fire scars and regeneration.

Besides MapBiomas, the 2022 edition of the Skoll Award also elected another Brazilian organization, Nossas. Previously, only three Brazilian organizations had been awarded: Comitê para Democratização da Informática (2005), Instituto Dara (2006) and Imazon (2010).

About MapBiomas

Multi-institutional initiative, involving universities, NGOs and technology companies, focused on monitoring the 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 one country available in the world. All MapBiomas data, maps, methods and codes are publicly available 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 championing social entrepreneurs and other social innovators who together promote bold, equitable solutions to the world's most pressing problems. Since 1999, it has invested approximately $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. Each year from 2004-2019, nearly 1,000 of the world's leading social change thinkers and doers gathered at the Skoll World Forum. In 2020, it held the first Virtual Skoll World Forum, free and accessible to the global public.