The prestigious Blue Planet Prize has just been awarded to IPBES for its collaborative efforts to protect Earth’s fragile environment for posterity. The award puts IPBES in the company of Gro Harlem Brundtland, Jared Diamond and other notable individuals who have previously received the award.
The global IPBES collaboration has been awarded the prestigious Blue Planet Prize by the Asahi Glass Foundation in Japan. Introduced in 1992, the prize is awarded to individuals or organizations that excel in outstanding science that contributes to finding solutions to global environmental problems.
The award is given to help protect Earth’s fragile environment for the future and is inspired by the first cosmonaut in space, Russian Yuri Gagarin. Gagarin said when he saw Earth from space: “The planet is blue”.
The Asahi Glass Foundation considers Earth’s environmental problems to be some of the world’s most pressing challenges including climate change, destruction of tropical rainforests and pollution of fresh waters and the ocean.
IPBES is recognized as the leading authority on the status and trends of biodiversity and ecosystem services. IPBES global reports that bridge science and policy across geographic scales, sectors and knowledge systems are highlighted. One example cited is how companies use information from IPBES reports in their ESG activities and reporting.
The IPBES Award therefore goes to the thousands of leading scientists, from all corners of the world, who offer and dedicate much of their time to synthesize and produce the reports; to the 146 member countries that support IPBES and the many stakeholders who engage with IPBES and are vital to IPBES’ mission to bridge science and policy. The award comes with 500,000 USD.
The entire IPBES community is deeply honored by this tremendous accolade. It recognizes the invaluable work of thousands of IPBES scientists and knowledge-holders, including Indigenous and local communities, and the contributions they continue to make towards achieving our most important global development goals, especially through implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework
– Dr. David Obura, IPBES Chair
In the company of renowned award winners
The second prize winner in 2024 is Professor Robert Costanza, who in 1997 published a landmark and provocative article on the economic values of all Earth’s ecosystem services, which far exceeded Earth’s GDP.
The work of Costanza drew attention to ecosystem services, including the many values of biodiversity that do not have an immediate market value. In this context, Costanza co-founded a new research discipline in ecological economics.
Past recipients include former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, who authored the Brundtland Report in 1987; Jared Diamond, who has written a number of seminal books on people and nature; Norman Myers, who introduced the concept of biodiversity hot spots; and Simon Stuart, who has worked on conservation and globally threatened species for a lifetime.
The award ceremony will take place in Tokyo, Japan, on October 23, 2024. Read more about the award in the official IPBES press release here.
