The Asahi Glass Foundation created the Blue Planet prize in 1992, the year of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Every year, the award honors two people or organizations that make major scientific contributions to the environmental field. This year the prestigious prize has just been awarded to glaciologist Claude Lorius and to Brazilian Professor José Goldemberg, Secretary of State for the Environment, State of São Paulo, from 2002 to 2006. The award ceremony will be held in Tokyo next November. Claude Lorius, emeritus Senior Researcher at the Laboratory for Glaciology and Environmental Geophysics (LGGE) that he headed from 1983 to 1988 and CNRS 2002 Gold Medallist, is France's first winner of the award. He is being recognized for his contributions to raising awareness about the influence of human activities on the environment.
An ice-core drilling pioneer born in 1932, Claude Lorius gained international recognition for the work that he and his team carried out to establish the link between greenhouse gas concentrations (methane, carbon dioxide) and climate changes, by studying records preserved in Antarctic ice samples. The vital discovery made it possible to reconstruct the Earth's climate and the composition of the atmosphere for the past 150,000 years. He also presided the European EPICA ice coring project at Concordia Station (Dome C). Thanks to this program, scientists now have greenhouse gas data covering the last 800,000 years.
In the early nineties, the groundbreaking scientist anticipated that, "The planet will likely warm noticeably during the twenty-first century, with serious impacts on water resources, agriculture, health, biodiversity and general living conditions for humans," ideas that are now commonly accepted. His research has contributed to increased awareness about the risks that humanity faces from climate change and about environmental impacts of human activities. He believes that, "Protecting the environment has become a major and urgent challenge."
