An evolutionary Indian ecologist, Kamal Bawa has won the prestigious USD 100,000 Midori Prize for biodiversity for his pioneering research, including in climate change in the Himalayas.
The AEON Environmental Foundation, Japan, established the Midori Prize for Biodiversity in 2010, which is given to only three individuals, who have made outstanding contributions to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity at global, regional or local levels.
Bawa, 75, would be receiving the award in October, 2014 in Pyeongchang, South Korea, at COP-12, when India, current chair of the Conference of Parties (COP-11) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), will pass the baton to Korea, according to a media release from ATREE.
He is also the president of Bangalore-based environmental research organization ATREE (Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment).
" He has woken up local and global audiences to the perils of the loss of our natural wealth and its associated cultural wealth," Ganesan Balachander, Director of ATREE said.
"The prize underscores the importance of biodiversity to humanity and an inclusive and multidimensional approach to biodiversity conservation that my own research programme have advocated during the past few decades," he said.
Bawa, who has taught at the University of Massachusetts for more than 40 years, had also received international recognition as the recipient of the first Gunnerus Award in Sustainability Science, a major international prize, in 2012.
