Honorary Chair:- Professor M.S. Swaminathan
Prof. M.S. Swaminathan has been described by the United Nations Environment Programme as 'the father of Economic Ecology and by Javier Perez de Cuellar, Secretary General of the United Nations, as 'a living legend who will go into the annals of history as a world scientist of rare distinction'.
He was Chairman of the UN Science Advisory Committee set up in 1980 to take follow-up action on the Vienna Plan of Action. He has also served as Independent Chairman of the FAO Council and President of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.
A plant geneticist by training, Prof. Swaminathan is widely acknowledged as the scientific leader of the green revolution movement. His advocacy of sustainable agriculture leading to an evergreen revolution makes him an acknowledged world leader in the field of sustainable food security. He was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership in 1971, the Albert Einstein World Science Award in 1986, and the first World Food Prize in 1987. Prof. Swaminathan is a Fellow of many of the leading scientific academies of India and abroad. He currently holds the UNESCO Chair in Ecotechnology at M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (Chennai, India), a non-profit trust which seeks to impart a pro-nature, pro-poor and pro-women orientation to a job-led economic growth strategy in rural areas through harnessing science and technology for environmentally sustainable and socially equitable development.
Commonwealth of Learning at the ceremony to launch preparations for the 6th Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning, Chennai, India on 10th October, 2009
