Mohan Munasinghe was Vice Chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC-AR4), who shared the 2007 Nobel Prize for Peace. The Presidents of five countries, including Bangladesh, Brazil, Dominican Republic, France, and Sri Lanka, have presented highest awards to him.
Prof. Mohan Munasinghe earned the BA (Hons.) and MA degrees in Engineering from Cambridge University, UK; the SM and Professional EE degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
After working over 45 years in the international arena, he is recognized as a leading world authority on sustainable development, economics, energy and environment. His research and applications have contributed to two major international achievements in 2015 – the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and the UNFCCC COP21 Paris Agreement on climate change. He is especially known for trans-disciplinary thinking, having developed the internationally recognized, widely taught and applied discipline of Sustainomics since 1992, which provides a practical framework for making development more sustainable.
In 2010, he proposed the widely acclaimed new idea of Millennium Consumption Goals (MCGs) at the United Nations, to complement the Millennium Development Goals. He has worked on IPCC climate change assessment reports since the inception in 1988. He has had direct field experience in most developing countries, on projects involving climate change, disaster management, economics (macro and micro), environment, energy, telecommunications, transport, urban infrastructure, and water resources.
Presently, he is Founder Chairman, Munasinghe Institute for Development (MIND), Colombo; Chairman, Presidential Expert Commission (PEC) on Sustainable Sri Lanka 2030 Vision and Strategic Path; Distinguished Guest Professor at Peking University, China; and Honorary Senior Advisor to the Government of Sri Lanka.
Previously, he was Senior Advisor/Manager, World Bank, Wash. DC, covering sustainable development, environmental policy, water, energy and transport; Chancellor, International Water Academy, Oslo; and Director-General, Sustainable Consumption Institute, University of Manchester.
Prof. Munasinghe is the author of over 120 scholarly books, and about four hundred technical papers in well known scientific journals — on climate change, disasters, environment, sustainable development, energy, transport, urban infrastructure, water resources, telecommunications, and sustainable consumption and production.
Prof. Munasinghe has won a number of international prizes and honours for public service, research and applications. Most notably, he shared the 2007 Nobel Prize for Peace (as Vice Chair, IPCC-AR4), for his seminal work on integrating global climate change policies into sustainable development strategy. Most recently he received the 2021 Blue Planet Prize, a global apex award considered the equivalent of a Nobel Prize for Environment.
