The Asahi Glass Foundation, which is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its international environmental Blue Planet Prize, announced that its two annual prizes will be awarded this year to Pavan Sukhdev of India and Markus Borner of Switzerland. Both recipients will receive a cash award of 50 million yen ($470,000).

 

The Asahi Glass Foundation established the Blue Planet Prize in 1992, the year of the pivotal Earth Summit, to recognize individuals or organizations for outstanding contributions toward solving global environmental problems.

 

Pavan Sukhdev is a UNEP Goodwill Ambassador, a founding trustee of the Green Indian States Trust (GIST), the founder & CEO of GIST Advisory and an associate fellow of Davenport College at Yale University. He was selected for his pioneering research into economic rationale and practical metrics for transitioning towards an inclusive green economy. He has drawn attention to the critical roles of corporations in this transition and has shown how to mainstream ecosystem services for improved public policies and business practices. By developing sustainability metrics for corporations on both local and national levels, he has hastened the evolution toward an inclusive green economy.

 

Markus Borner is a professor of University of Glasgow and the former director of the Frankfurt Zoological Society Africa Program. His Blue Planet Prize recognizes his four decades of leadership in conservation and management initiatives to protect endangered wildlife and protected-area ecosystems in Africa. He was among the first to recognize that the protection of individual species requires comprehensive protection of entire ecosystems, including a commitment by people to save their local ecosystems. He has drawn global attention to the fact that wilderness, biodiversity and beauty are essential for the survival and health of our planet.

 

The awards ceremony will be held at the Palace Hotel Tokyo in Tokyo on November 16. Commemorative lectures will be delivered by the prize recipients at the United Nations University in Tokyo on the following day.