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GEF Announces Special Global Environment Leadership Award to Dr. Mostafa Tolba of Egypt
Wednesday 23 April 2003
Washington, D.C., April 22, 2003: Mohamed T. El- Ashry, Chief Executive Officer and
Chairman of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), today announced a special Global
Environment Leadership Award to Dr. Mostafa Tolba of Egypt. The Global Environment
Leadership Award recognizes an individual, group, or organization in government, the private
sector, or the non-government arena, for leadership of significant national or international actions
over a sustained period to protect the global environment.
In announcing the award, Dr. El- Ashry said: "I can think of few personalities more
deserving of a global environment leadership award than Dr. Tolba. He has been known
internationally as a champion of the global environment since 1972 when as the head of Egypt’s
delegation to the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, he was among the first to
promote the view that there are no irreconcilable conflicts between the environment and
development."
At the time of the Stockholm Conference, Dr. Tolba had already served as a university
professor and Undersecretary of State for Higher Education and Minister of Youth in Egypt, and
an alternative member of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s
Executive Board. After Stockholm, he became Deputy Executive Director of the newly
established United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), moving on to become its
Executive Director less than two years later. Under his leadership, UNEP became the core
organization within the United Nations family acting as a catalyst, spurring governments,
business, academia, intergovernmental organizations and non- government organizations to
meaningful action to protect the environment. Consistent with his position at Stockholm, he
diligently promoted his philosophy of development without destruction.
Dr. Tolba is known for his formidable negotiating skills and his mastery of the science of
environment. He also has an uncanny vision of emerging environmental problems. These
attributes led him, as early as the 1970s, to concentrate on the issue of stratospheric ozone layer
depletion as meriting careful scientific monitoring. Because of his success in ne gotiating the
Vienna Convention and the Montreal Protocol for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, he is
credited with formulating the prototype model for dealing with global environmental issues and
the effective transfer of technology and funds to developing countries. Having retired from
UNEP in 1992, Dr. Tolba returned to Egypt and set up the International Center for Environment
and Development, a non-profit funding organization financing environment projects in
developing countries.ഊ"Dr. Tolba’s promotion of the science of the environment and his commitment to helping
developing countries play their part in the battle to protect our global commons in the context of
national sustainable development have done much to support the work of the GEF," Dr. El-Ashry
said.
See
online : Global Environment Facility News
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