The Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters (DKNVS) (in collaboration with SpareBank1 SMN and Technoport) will bestow  the Gunnerus Sustainability Award  – the world’s first major international award for research on sustainability.

Among the research where Kamal Bawa is most noted  is his pioneering work on population biology in rainforest areas His wide span of research includes groundbreaking biological discoveries made in Central America, Western Ghats in India and the Himalayas. He is specially noted for the establishment, and as President, of the ATREE Foundation in Bangalore. He also holds a position as a Ruffolo Giorgio Fellow in Sustainability Science at Harvard University.

The Gunnerus award is the first major international prize for outstanding scientific work that promotes sustainable development globally, and is awarded every two years starting in 2012, with 1 million NOK ( 190 000 US$) in prize money to the winner. The purpose of the award is to encourage research that contributes to the conservation of biological diversity in the context of sustainable development. The award is named after DKNVS’ founder, Bishop Johan Ernst Gunnerus (1718-1773), and is the result of a collaboration between DKNVS, Technoport and Sparebank1 SMN. The Gunnerus Sustainability Award is conferred upon  Dr Bawa  during a ceremony in Olavshallen, Trondheim on April 17, as part of the conference Technoport 2012 Sharing Possibilities, a biennial conference that focuses on topics relevant to smart technology in the transition to a green economy.

The selection of the winner took place after a jury process in which five internationally prominent researchers have considered a number of international nominees from many countries. The choice of the first-prize winner landed on the Indian biologist Professor Kamal Bawa (b. 1939). The jury’s justification states, among other things: ” Kamal Bawa’s early research on the population biology of tropical forest trees, done in Central America, revolutionised our thinking regarding the ecology and evolution of forest trees, and thereby directly enhanced our ability to conserve tropical forests. His discoveries of unusual breeding systems, novel pollination mechanisms, and a diverse array of flowering patterns in tropical forest trees changed the prevailing notions about the population biology, ecology, and evolution of these trees.