Environment

14 Oct 09

Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohan Munasinghe will speak about climate change and poverty.

A Nobel Peace Prize winner will be giving a lecture at the University’s Las Casas Institute next week.

Sri Lankan physicist Mohan Munasinghe will speak about Climate change and poverty – tackling them together at Blackfriars Hall on Tuesday 20 October at 5.30pm.

With a focus on energy, sustainable development and climate change, he is the chairman of the Munasinghe Institute for Development and the director-general of the Sustainable Consumption Institute at the University of Manchester. He is also the vice chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), where he shared in 2007's Nobel Peace Prize with IPCC colleagues and former Vice President of the United States Al Gore.

He was the first Sri Lankan to receive a Nobel Prize and has been an honorary senior advisor to the Sri Lankan government since 1980 as well as holding a number of other eminent roles.

Francis Davis, Fellow of Blackfriars Hall and director of the Las Casas Institute said: 'The Las Casas Institute is one of Oxford’s newest centres for research, education and community engagement at the interface of ethics, policy, and public life. We are delighted that Professor Munasinghe opens our activities for the new academic year bringing his outstanding track record to the Hall and the wider University. His presence puts us at the cutting edge of debates regarding climate change, future ideas of growth, and the eradication of poverty.'

The Institute launched almost a year ago with the aim of combining a commitment to scholarly enquiry and a vision to develop and expand innovative models of community service. It has research fields in migration and asylum, poverty and development, dignity and suffering, and international institutions and governance.

Mohan Munasinghe is the second Nobel Prize winner to visit the Institute following the Dalai Lama’s visit a year ago.

Professor Munasinghe is the opening lecturer in a series entitled Environment, Media, Ethics And Enterprise. Subsequent speakers are BBC Director General Mark Thompson; The Head of DG Competition at the EU, Philip Lowe; and Rt Hon Greg Clark MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change.

Tickets are free by contacting Leah Mansfield via lascasas@bfriars.ox.ac.uk.