Mohan Munasinghe

Mohan Munasinghe is a Sri Lankan physicist, academic and economist with a focus on energy, water resources, sustainable development and climate change.

As Vice-Chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Professor Mohan Munasinghe shared the 2007 Nobel Prize for Peace, for work on global warming and sustainable development. More recently, he received the 2021 Blue Planet Prize, also called the "Environmental Nobel Prize". The Heads of five countries, including Bangladesh, Brazil, Dominican Republic, France, and Sri Lanka, have presented highest national awards to him.

Currently, he is Chairman of the Munasinghe Institue of Development, Colombo; Director-General of the Sustainable Consumption Institute (SCI) and Distinguished Professor at the University of Manchester; and Honorary Senior Advisor to the Sri Lanka Government.

Professor Munasinghe has earned post-graduate degrees in engineering, physics and development economics from Cambridge University (UK), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), and McGill University and Concordia University (Canada). During 35 years of distinguished public service, he has served as Senior Energy Advisor to the President of Sri Lanka, Advisor to the United States Presidents Council on Environmental Quality, and Senior Advisor to the World Bank.

He has taught as Visiting Professor at a number of universities world-wide, and has won many international prizes and medals for his research and its applications.

He has authored over 90 books and several hundred technical papers on the environment.

Professor Munasinghe has made numerous keynote speeches at gatherings ranging from high level international conferences to community meetings. He has organised and conducted international training seminars on climate change, sustainable development, environment, economics, energy, transport, water resources, and information technology, in various parts of the world, for thousands of senior officials and corporations.

He is a Fellow of several international Academies of Science, and serves on the editorial boards of a dozen academic journals.

Alexander Likhotal

Prof. Dr. Alexander Likhotal is the President of Green Cross International. He holds doctorates in Political Science from the Moscow State Institute for International Relations (1975) and in History from the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, USSR Academy of Sciences (1987).

In addition to an academic career as a Professor of Political Science and International Relations, he served as a European Security analyst for the Soviet Union leadership. In 1991, he was appointed Deputy Spokesman and Advisor to the President of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev. After Mr. Gorbachev’s resignation, Professor Likhotal served as his advisor and spokesman and worked at the Gorbachev Foundation as the International and Media Director. Having joined Green Cross International in 1996, he is actively involved in furthering sustainable development agenda.

During the wake of Gorbachev’s perestroika, being already a well-known expert in the field of European security, he received a proposal to become the chief analyst of NATO politics in the International Department of the Central Committee of the CSPU - one of the Soviet foreign policy co-ordination bodies.

He is a member of the International Council for the Earth Charter and Adviser to the Club of Madrid and has launched internationally acclaimed initiative body such as the Earth Dialogues Forum and has spearheaded Green Cross International’s global campaign for the Right to Water.

Mr Likhotal currently holds a lecture appointment at North Eastern University at Boston, where he teaches about the cultural and political implications of business management. His areas of expertise include: Developments in Russia & Eastern Europe, Russia and the New World Order, Russian Foreign Policy Today, NATO and European Security. He was born in Moscow in 1950, married, has one daughter.