Professor Mohan Munasinghe, 2021 Blue Planet Prize Laureate and co-winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize for Peace, was recently invited to deliver a keynote speech at the Presidential Palace in Hanoi, Vietnam.

He gave advice on sustainable development to His Excellency Nguyen Xuan Phuc, President of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. President Phuc thanked Munasinghe for his valuable guidance and for the signed copy of his most recent book: “Sustainability in the 21st Century”, published by Cambridge University Press, UK. A special tree was planted in Vietnam, bearing Prof. Munasinghe’s name, as part of their carbon mitigation programme, a news release issued in connection with the event said.

“Prof. Munasinghe was a distinguished participant at the high level scientific conference on “Science, ethics and sustainability” during September 2022, which was the Flagship Event for Asia celebrating the United Nation International Year of Basic Science for Sustainable Development 2022. The audience included top scientific experts, parliamentarians and business leaders from many countries. In their final declaration, conference delegates urged the world’s leaders, nations, organizations, and individuals, to work together to solve the planet’s pressing problems,” the release said.

“During his well-received keynote speech, Prof Munasinghe referred to the well-known sustainable development triangle and the balanced inclusive green growth (BIGG) path he had originally proposed at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. He congratulated Vietnam on its spectacular post-conflict recovery, achieving a 7% average economic growth rate for the past 35 years. He was confident that Vietnam would achieve sustainability soon using the BIGG approach, despite the poor global situation.

“He said that the world is on an unsustainable path, because we had started out with an unethical set of social values — like selfishness, greed and violence, which has led to a model of economic mal-development that has given us rising debt, overconsumption by the rich, extreme inequality and poverty. In turn, this has caused a huge environmental debt, including climate change and resource degradation, leading to further erosion of social values as people fight over scarce resources.”

Professor Munasinghe is Chairman of the MIND Group in Colombo, which includes the non-profit Munasinghe Institute for Development (MIND), a UN recognized centre of excellence working globally on all aspects of sustainable development, and MIND AM focusing on data analytics and management. He is Chairman of the Board of Climate & Conservation Consortium (CCC), Board Director of the Eureka Group and Distinguished Guest Professor at Peking University, China. He was Chairman of the President’s Expert Committee on Sustainable Sri Lanka 2030 Vision.