The Director-General of UNESCO, Audrey Azoulay, today awarded the 2019 edition of the UNESCO Avicenna Prize for Ethics in Science to Professor Donald A. Brown, Scholar in Residence for Sustainability Ethics and Law at Widener University Commonwealth Law School (USA). This year's Avicenna Prize, its 5th edition, was dedicated to the ethics of the environment.
Professor Brown is a world-renowned expert in environmental science and more specifically in the international climate change ethics movement. His book Climate Change Ethics: Navigating the Perfect Moral Storm (2013) provides an influential analysis of why ethical principles have been neglected and how to include them in the climate change conversation.
He has sought to ensure that applied ethics is central to climate change policy development both nationally and internationally. His compelling argument that limiting carbon emissions and mitigating climate change is the ethical imperative of our time resonates widely in the current discourse on climate change.
An independent international jury, composed of three members of UNESCO's World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST), unanimously recommended the laureate for his sound scientific contribution to the ethics of science and technology, particularly the ethics of climate change and environmental sustainability, his unique qualities as a scientist, environmental lawyer, climate change educator, activist and opinion-leader, and his lifetime commitment to, and outstanding impact on the ethics of climate change science and policy-making.
Held at UNESCO, the Award Ceremony was attended by Ambassador Ahmad Jalali, Permanent Delegate of the Islamic Republic of Iran to UNESCO whose country initiated the establishment of the Prize in 2003.
