Kamal Bawa, an Indian-born professor of biology at the University of
Massachusetts Boston, is the 2012 winner of the Gunnerus Sustainability
Award, the world's first major international award for work on
sustainability.
Bawa will receive the Gunnerus Gold Medal and the
award of 1 million Norwegian Kronor (about $190,000) at a ceremony in
Trondheim, Norway, the university said citing a Royal Norwegian Society
of Sciences and Letters (DKNVS) announcement.
Bawa, also a
faculty fellow at the Centre for Governance and Sustainability, home of
the Global Environmental Governance Project, is known for his research
on population biology in rainforest areas. His span of work includes
biological discoveries made in Central America, the Western Ghats, and
the Himalayas in India.
He is also noted for founding, and
serving as president, of the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and
the Environment (ATREE), a non-profit conservation and development
research think tank in Bangalore.
"I am very pleased over the
recognition that our work has received," Bawa was quoted as saying in an
interview with a Norwegian newspaper.
"In January, 2011, a
University of Pennsylvania study ranked ATREE #19 among the
environmental think tanks in the world, and implicitly #1 in Asia, and
now the Gunnerus Award--I am naturallyvery happy."
Until recently, Bawa held the Ruffolo Giorgio Fellowship in Sustainability Science and Bullard Fellowship at Harvard University.
The
Gunnerus award is the first major international prize for outstanding
scientific work that promotes sustainable development globally, and will
be awarded every two years.
The award is named after DKNVS'
founder, Bishop Johan Ernst Gunnerus (1718-1773), and is the result of
collaboration between DKNVS, Sparebank1, SMN, and the society
Technoport.
Indian-born Kamal Bawa wins award sustainability award
