Ghanaian wins top Biodiversity award

Dr. Alfred Oteng-Yeboah, Chairman of the Ghana National Biodiversity Committee, has been named as one of the three individuals to be awarded the MIDORI Prize for Biodiversity 2014.

The MIDORI Prize is a biennial international prize, organized by the AEON Environmental Foundation and the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), to honour individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity at the global, regional or local levels.

A statement issued from CBD headquarters in Montréal, Canada, and emailed to the GNA, said the other two winners were Dr. Kamal Bawa, President, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), India, and Dr. Bibiana Vilá, Principal Researcher, National Research Council (CONICET) and Director, Vicuñas, Camelids and Environment (VICAM), Argentina.

Each recipient would be given a wooden plaque, a commemorative gift and a monetary prize of 100,000 US dollars to support their work in safeguarding biodiversity.

They would be honoured at an Award Ceremony on Wednesday 15, October 2014, in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in conjunction with the high-level segment of the twelfth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 12).

The recipients would also deliver public lectures at a Winners’ Forum that would be held on Tuesday 21 October 2014 at the U Thant Hall of the United Nations University in Tokyo, Japan.

Mr Takuya Okada, Chairman of the AEON Environmental Foundation, said, “The conservation of biodiversity and the prevention of Climate Change are two of the greatest challenges of our time.

We hope that the MIDORI Prize will contribute to meeting this global challenge, to the achievement of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, and to the objectives of the United Nations Decade on Biodiversity 2011-2020.”

Mr Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias, Executive Secretary of CBD, said: “The MIDORI Prize is a unique and powerful initiative to help raise awareness and encourage action for the mainstreaming conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.

“I want to congratulate this year’s winners and also thank them for their important contributions to the biodiversity and sustainable development agenda.”

The MIDORI Prize was established by the AEON Environmental Foundation in 2010 to mark the International Year of Biodiversity. The year’s award is the third.