News Release
February 20, 2012

Top scientists urge end to policy and governance failures to tackle social and environmental crises
Top scientists will tomorrow (20 February) urge governments to replace GDP as a measure of wealth, end
damaging subsidies, and transform systems of governance to set humanity on a new path to a better future -or risk climate, biodiversity and poverty crises that will spawn greater problems worldwide.
These are among the messages from a new paper by 20 past winners of the Blue Planet Prize – aninternational environmental award.
Bob Watson, the UK’s chief scientific advisor on environmental issues and a winner of the prize in 2010, will
present the paper to government ministers from around the world at the UN Environment Programme’s
governing council meeting in Nairobi, Kenya on 20 February.
"The current system is broken," says Watson. "It is driving humanity to a future that is 3-5°C warmer thanour species has ever known, and is eliminating the ecology that we depend on for our health, wealth andsenses of self.""We cannot assume that technological fixes will come fast enough. Instead we need human solutions. The
good news is that they exist but decision makers must be bold and forward thinking to seize them."
Watson’s co-authors include James Hansen of NASA, Emil Salim, former environment minister ofIndonesia, Susan Solomon of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and José
Goldemberg, who was Brazil’s Secretary of Environment during the Rio Earth Summit in 1992.
Their paper comes ahead of the 20th anniversary of that summit – the Rio+20 conference in June this year –when world leaders have an opportunity to set human development on a new, more sustainable path.
The paper urges governments to:•Replace GDP as a measure of wealth with metrics for natural, built, human and social capital -- andhow they intersect.

•Eliminate subsidies in sectors such as energy, transport and agriculture that create environmental andsocial costs, which currently go unpaid.

•Tackle overconsumption, and address population pressure by empowering women, improving
education and making contraception accessible to all.

•Transform decision making processes to empower marginalised groups, and integrate economic,
social and environmental policies instead of having them compete.

•Conserve and value biodiversity and ecosystem services, and create markets for them that can form
the basis of green economies.

•Invest in knowledge -- both in creating and in sharing it -- through research and training that will
enable governments, business, and society at large to understand and move towards a sustainable
future.

“Sustainable development is not a pipe dream,” says Camilla Toulmin, director of the International Institutefor Environment and Development. “It is the destination the world’s accumulated knowledge points us
towards, the fair future that will enable us to live with security, peace and opportunities for all. To get there
we must transform the ways we manage, share and interact with the environment, and acknowledge thathumanity is part of nature not apart from it.”Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, said: “The paper by the Blue
Planet laureates will challenge governments and society as a whole to act to limit human-induced climatechange, the loss of biodiversity and the degradation of ecosystem services in order to ensure food, waterenergy and human security. I would like to thank Professor Watson and colleagues for eloquently articulating
their vision on how key development challenges can be addressed, emphasizing solutions; the policies,technologies and behaviour changes required to grow green economies, generate jobs and lift people out ofpoverty without pushing the world through planetary boundaries.”
The full paper will be ready for media around 5pm (UK time) on Friday – to request a copy email oneof the following:
Tetsuro Yasuda (The Asahi Glass Foundation, Japan) yasuda@af-info.or.jp
Shereen Zorba (UNEP, Kenya) shereen.zorba@unep.org
Mike Shanahan (IIED, UK)mike.shanahan@iied.org

Patricia Yakabe Malentaqui (Conservation International, USA) p.malentaqui@conservation.org
NOTES TO EDITORSThe Blue Planet prize laureates who contributed to the paper are (in no special order):
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Professor Sir Bob Watson, Chief Scientific Adviser of the UK Department for Environment, Foodand Rural Affairs (Defra)
Lord (Robert) May of Oxford, former Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government andPresident of Royal Society of London
Professor Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University
Professor Harold Mooney, Stanford University
Dr Gordon Hisashi Sato, President, Manzanar Project Corporation
Professor José Goldemberg, secretary for the environment of the State of São Paulo, Brazil andBrazil’s interim Secretary of Environment during the Rio Earth Summit in 1992

2•••••••••••••••Dr Emil Salim, former Environment Minister of the Republic of Indonesia
Dr Camilla Toulmin, Director of the International Institute for Environment and Development
Mr Bunker Roy, Founder of Barefoot College
Dr Syukuro Manabe, Senior Scientist, Princeton University
Dr Julia Marton-Lefevre, Director-General of the International Union for the Conservation ofNature
Dr Simon Stuart, Chair of the Species Survival Commission of the International Union for theConservation of Nature
Dr Will Turner, Vice President of Conservation Priorities and Outreach, Conservation International
Professor Karl-Henrik Robèrt, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Founder of The Natural Step
Dr James Hansen, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Lord (Nicholas) Stern of Brentford, Professor, The London of Economics
Dr Amory Lovins, Chair and Chief Scientist, Rocky Mountain Institute
Dr Gene Likens, Director of the Carey Institute of Ecosystem Studies
Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Prime Minister of Norway and Director-General of the World
Health Organization, now Special Envoy on Climate Change for UN Secretary General BanKi-moon.
Dr. Susan Solomon, Senior Scientist, Aeronomy Laboratory, National Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministration
M. S. Swaminathan Research Institute

ABOUT THE BLUE PLANET PRIZE
In 1992, the year of the Rio Earth Summit, the Asahi Glass Foundation established the Blue Planet Prize, anaward presented to individuals or organizations worldwide in recognition of outstanding achievements inscientific research and its application that have helped provide solutions to global environmental problems.
The Prize is offered in the hopes of encouraging efforts to bring about the healing of the Earth’s fragile
environment. A full list of its past winners is online here.
The award’s name was inspired by the remark "the Earth was blue," uttered by the first human in space,
Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, upon viewing our planet. The Blue Planet Prize was so named in the hopesthat our blue planet will be a shared asset capable of sustaining human life far into the future.
2012 is the 20th anniversary of the Blue Planet Prize. The Asahi Glass Foundation wishes to mark thisanniversary with a fresh start in its efforts to help build an environmentally friendly society.
Contact Information:
The Asahi Glass Foundation: 2nd Floor, Science Plaza, 5-3 Yonban-cho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-0081 Japan
Secretary General Tetsuro Yasuda (Mr.) TEL: 03-5275-0620 FAX:
03-5275-0871e-mail：yasuda@af-info.or.jpURL：http://www.af-info.or.jp

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