The winners of the MIDORI Prize for Biodiversity 2014 have been announced on 8 September 2014 in Tokyo, Japan and Montreal, Canada.

In Tokyo, a Press Conference was held at the Press Club of the Ministry of the Environment, Japan.   Mr. Takuya Okada (center of the photo, Chairman, AEON Environmental Foundation; Chairman, Steering Committee,), Mr. Daizaburo Kuroda (right of the photo, Senior Fellow, Institute for Global Environmental Strategies; Member, Steering Committee), and Ms. Yuriko Yamamoto (left of the photo, Secretary General, AEON Environmental Foundation) announced the prize winners and introduced their outstanding achievements at the press conference.

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 honor individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity at global, regional or local levels. 

The winners of the 2014 Prize are:

Dr. Kamal Bawa

President, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), India

Distinguished Professor, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Dr. Alfred Oteng-Yeboah

Chair, Ghana National Biodiversity Committee , Ghana

Dr. Bibiana Vilá

Principal Researcher, National Research Council (CONICET)

Director, Vicuñas, Camelids and Environment (VICAM), Argentina

Each recipient is awarded a wooden plaque, a commemorative gift and a monetary prize of 100,000 US dollars to support their work in safeguarding biodiversity. They will be honored at a ceremony on Wednesday 15 October 2014 in Pyeongchang, South Korea, held in conjunction with the high-level segment of the twelfth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 12) to the Convention on Biological Diversity.  The recipients will also deliver public lectures at a Winners’ Forum that will 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.”

Nominations were accepted between 1 March and 31 May 2014 from members of the public worldwide and from invited MIDORI Prize Nominators.  Nominations were received from more than 60 countries.  The Prize Winners were selected on the basis of their contributions to the objectives of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets and the United Nations Decade on Biodiversity 2011-2020, and to the mainstreaming, conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.