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Two prizes to celebrate
published: Thursday | November 15, 2007
Martin Henry
UWI Physics Professor Anthony Chen is part of a UN group which has been awarded half the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Naturally, we are bursting with pride that a Jamaican is a Nobel laureate. We are catching up with St. Lucia which has two: Derek Walcott in Literature and Sir Arthur Lewis in Economics.
And over in Africa former president of Mozambique Joaquim Chissano has been awarded the first Mo Ibrahim prize for African [COLOR=orange! important][COLOR=orange! important]leadership[/COLOR][/COLOR]. The African leadership prize, at US$5 million, is now the richest prize in the world. Ironically, the prize is on the poorest continent and is funded by one of its richest men, a Sudanese-born billionaire, whose own country of birth is among the poorest and is wracked by civil conflict.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee says it has decided that "the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 is to be shared, in two equal parts, between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."
This is a save-the-planet award, not the usual save a piece of it award like a country, an ethnic group or culture. For as the Nobel Committee concludes, "By awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to the IPCC and Al Gore, the Norwegian Nobel Committee is seeking to contribute to a sharper focus on the processes and decisions that appear to be necessary to protect the world's future climate, and thereby to reduce the threat to the security of mankind. Action is necessary now, before climate change moves beyond man's control."
High science
When I first met Professor Chen's climate change work [which I wrote about in my June 9, 2005 column] I found it elegantly simple like the man himself. It was high science that made sense to the lowly. Chen founded and has led the Climate Studies Group in the Department of Physics at Mona. In addition to the usual physics things like the increase in frequency and intensity of hurricanes and rising sea levels in the Caribbean from global warming, Chen's climate change group has studied the implications of climate change for patterns of infectious diseases in the region.
Dengue is back with us again. The virus is transmitted by the aedes aegypti mosquito. Mosquitoes breed in water. More rain and higher temperatures favour mosquito breeding. One of Professor Chen's co-authored papers is 'The study of climate variability and its impact on dengue in the Caribbean'. That study reported both an increasing trend in dengue cases and in temperatures, with increasing rainfall bridging the two variables. And that was before the resurgence of mosquito-borne malaria here last year.
On the strength of his climate change work here in the Caribbean, Professor Chen was tapped by the IPCC to work on a number of its reports. According to the Nobel Committee, "through the scientific reports it has issued ... the IPCC has created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming."
Africa Leadership Prize
Now back to Africa. Mo Ibrahim, a Sudanese-born British telecoms billionaire has recently established the Africa Leadership Prize for ex-leaders to encourage good governance in his home continent more noted for bad governance. But as cynics are pointing out, a kleptocratic head of state can easily cream off from the public coffers much more than the US$5 million value of the Mo Ibrahim Prize. And they are asking, after Chissano, how many more?
The search committee, led by that illustrious son of Africa, Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the UN, selected Joaquim Chissano for leading Mozambique out of civil war into "peace, reconciliation, stable democracy and economic progress". Chissano, a liberation fighter against Portuguese colonial rule, voluntarily stepped down from the presidency in 2004 after 18 years in power when constitutionally he could have stood for another five-year term. He said he wanted to create political space for democracy to thrive.
A strong measure of Chissano's success in good governance is the admission of the former Portuguese colony into the Commonwealth of Britain and former British colonies, the only state from outside to have been so admitted.
Let's celebrate these two prizes of such sentimental significance to us. Martin Henry is a communication specialist.
published: Thursday | November 15, 2007
Martin Henry
UWI Physics Professor Anthony Chen is part of a UN group which has been awarded half the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Naturally, we are bursting with pride that a Jamaican is a Nobel laureate. We are catching up with St. Lucia which has two: Derek Walcott in Literature and Sir Arthur Lewis in Economics.
And over in Africa former president of Mozambique Joaquim Chissano has been awarded the first Mo Ibrahim prize for African [COLOR=orange! important][COLOR=orange! important]leadership[/COLOR][/COLOR]. The African leadership prize, at US$5 million, is now the richest prize in the world. Ironically, the prize is on the poorest continent and is funded by one of its richest men, a Sudanese-born billionaire, whose own country of birth is among the poorest and is wracked by civil conflict.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee says it has decided that "the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 is to be shared, in two equal parts, between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."
This is a save-the-planet award, not the usual save a piece of it award like a country, an ethnic group or culture. For as the Nobel Committee concludes, "By awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to the IPCC and Al Gore, the Norwegian Nobel Committee is seeking to contribute to a sharper focus on the processes and decisions that appear to be necessary to protect the world's future climate, and thereby to reduce the threat to the security of mankind. Action is necessary now, before climate change moves beyond man's control."
High science
When I first met Professor Chen's climate change work [which I wrote about in my June 9, 2005 column] I found it elegantly simple like the man himself. It was high science that made sense to the lowly. Chen founded and has led the Climate Studies Group in the Department of Physics at Mona. In addition to the usual physics things like the increase in frequency and intensity of hurricanes and rising sea levels in the Caribbean from global warming, Chen's climate change group has studied the implications of climate change for patterns of infectious diseases in the region.
Dengue is back with us again. The virus is transmitted by the aedes aegypti mosquito. Mosquitoes breed in water. More rain and higher temperatures favour mosquito breeding. One of Professor Chen's co-authored papers is 'The study of climate variability and its impact on dengue in the Caribbean'. That study reported both an increasing trend in dengue cases and in temperatures, with increasing rainfall bridging the two variables. And that was before the resurgence of mosquito-borne malaria here last year.
On the strength of his climate change work here in the Caribbean, Professor Chen was tapped by the IPCC to work on a number of its reports. According to the Nobel Committee, "through the scientific reports it has issued ... the IPCC has created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming."
Africa Leadership Prize
Now back to Africa. Mo Ibrahim, a Sudanese-born British telecoms billionaire has recently established the Africa Leadership Prize for ex-leaders to encourage good governance in his home continent more noted for bad governance. But as cynics are pointing out, a kleptocratic head of state can easily cream off from the public coffers much more than the US$5 million value of the Mo Ibrahim Prize. And they are asking, after Chissano, how many more?
The search committee, led by that illustrious son of Africa, Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the UN, selected Joaquim Chissano for leading Mozambique out of civil war into "peace, reconciliation, stable democracy and economic progress". Chissano, a liberation fighter against Portuguese colonial rule, voluntarily stepped down from the presidency in 2004 after 18 years in power when constitutionally he could have stood for another five-year term. He said he wanted to create political space for democracy to thrive.
A strong measure of Chissano's success in good governance is the admission of the former Portuguese colony into the Commonwealth of Britain and former British colonies, the only state from outside to have been so admitted.
Let's celebrate these two prizes of such sentimental significance to us. Martin Henry is a communication specialist.