Former Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, winner of the 2014 Tang Prize in sustainable development, is next month to give two talks in Taiwan on sustainable development, public health and the environment.
Brundtland, who has been called the “godmother of sustainable development,” is to attend a forum titled “Public Health and the Environment in a Sustainable Society” at the Academia Sinica on April 2, the Tang Prize Foundation said.
The following day, she is to give a speech titled “Sustainable Development Goals, a Thirty-Year Story of International Collaboration” at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) in Tainan.
Brundtland is to visit Taiwan to attend NCKU’s Gro Brundtland Week of Women in Sustainable Development, which honors female researchers from Taiwan and developing nations.
Five female researchers from South Africa, Kenya, India, the Philippines and Malaysia are to receive this year’s Gro Brundtland Award at a ceremony on April 3.
They are to present their work and give a series of talks around the country between Wednesday and April 3, addressing issues such as women and children’s health, disease and environmental sustainability, the foundation said.
Brundtland is a former chairperson of the World Commission on Environment and Development, which coined the term “sustainable development” in a 1987 landmark report titled Our Common Future.
The 1987 Brundtland Report by the commission laid the groundwork for the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, which produced a global action plan for sustainable development known as Agenda 21 and initiated the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the lead-up to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
She has also served as Norway’s minister of climate and environment, director-general of the WHO and a UN special envoy on climate change.
She is currently deputy chairperson of The Elders, a group of world leaders brought together in 2007 by late South African president Nelson Mandela to work for peace and human rights.
Brundtland in 2014 received a cash prize of NT$40 million (US$1.37 million) and a research grant of NT$10 million for winning the Tang Prize.
She donated half the research grant to Milgis Trust, a Kenyan non-profit that protects wildlife and natural resources, and the other half to NCKU to train female scientists and researchers from Taiwan and developing countries.
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