OUR BLUE PLANET

The Blue Planet Prize is awarded every year to two individuals or organizations to acknowledge their contributions to global environmental issues. The 2020 prizewinners are the ecologist Professor David Tilman and Dr. Stuart Simon, a biologist specializing in conservation initiatives.

Professor David Tilman verified that the productivity and stability of a whole ecosystem rises as diversity increases. He thoroughly investigated the considerable impact that conventional agriculture has had on ecosystems and the global environment. Regarding the increased production of agricultural products demanded by future population increases, he advocated 'sustainable intensive production’. This can increase crop harvests while protecting the environment by changing agricultural methods, such as reconsidering the amounts of nitrogen fertilizer used and the times of spreading. His proposals have had a major global impact.

Tilman has also focused on human dietary habits, which are a major factor in controlling agriculture, and works on the issue of the tightly-linked diet-environment-health trilemma. There are foodstuffs that are good and bad for our health and the environment. He studies this relationship and stresses the importance of choosing food that is good for both our health and the environment.

Professor Tilman continues making proposals on the way that global society should be in order to maintain ecosystem diversity.

Dr. Simon Stuart was a central figure in the development of the 1994 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. As a member of the team that was creating new categories and criteria for the Red List, he conducted thorough hearings with experts in many fields, including botany, zoology, earth science, marine science, insects and fungi, and worked towards the creation of criteria to deal with the various factors that can lead a species to extinction. He refined the quantitative criteria by dividing categories into three levels: Critically Endangered (CR), Endangered (EN) and Vulnerable (VU). This ensured that species could be assigned to the correct categories. As a result, the most objective and reliable source of data on the extinction risk of species was completed. More than 110,000 species have been registered to date and the number continues to increase.

Dr. Stuart also launched the Global Amphibian Assessment to study the decrease in the population of amphibians. He discovered that about one third of all amphibians are at risk of extinction and he sounded the alarm that much of the natural environment is vanishing.

With the aim of helping to create a society in which humans and nature can live together, Dr. Stuart is now playing an active role at a UK-based conservation charity and donor organization which provides wildlife conservation activities with funds and information.