Mohan Munasinghe, a senior adviser with the Green Growth Knowledge Partnership (GGKP), has been awarded the 2021 Blue Planet Prize in recognition of his pioneering work in solving global environmental and sustainability problems, which is considered equivalent to an “Environmental Nobel Prize”.
“I am deeply grateful and honoured to receive the 2021 Blue Planet Prize, the premier global environmental sustainability award,” said Munasinghe, who is the Founder Chairman of the Munasinghe Institute for Development (MIND). “It is encouraging to learn that the award committee has specifically acknowledged several key concepts I developed and their practical application worldwide, during almost five decades of my career.”
Munasinghe is known for having developed the “Sustainomics” framework at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, which applies trans-disciplinary, holistic thinking to make development more sustainable. He is also known for identifying the balanced inclusive green growth (BIGG) path to achieve sustainability and proposing the novel idea of Millennium Consumption Goals (MCGs). BIGG calls for each country to take a sustainable development path in accordance with its development stage, while the MCGs ask the affluent, who consume most global output, to adopt consumption goals to reduce the burden on planetary resources.
Applying these concepts has become more pressing during the coronavirus crisis.
“COVID-19 has shown that green growth alone will not ensure sustainability as the pandemic is causing a massive economic distortion and deepening global inequality,” said Munasinghe. “Actively seeking BIGG policies that simultaneously yield economic, environmental and social gains will help to operationalize the Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”
The Blue Planet Prize was established in 1992 by the Asahi Glass Foundation in the hope of encouraging efforts to bring about the healing of the Earth's fragile environment. Two recipients are selected annually, and this year, a total of 127 candidates were nominated for the award. Munasinghe’s fellow award recipient is Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a renowned climate and atmospheric scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.
“Drawing on my past work and the global platform provided by the prestigious Blue Planet Prize, I will continue my modest efforts to make our planet more sustainable for all,” Munasinghe added.
Munasinghe is currently serving as a senior adviser at GGKP, providing critical advice on overall strategies and activities. Throughout his career, he has won many international research prizes, including sharing the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize as Vice-Chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He has authored more than 120 books and over 350 technical papers, and is a fellow of several international academies of science, as well as editorial board member of over a dozen journals.