Prof. Mohan Munasinghe delivers keynote speech at Hegra Nobel Laureates Summit in Saudi Arabia

Professor Mohan Munasinghe, 2021 Blue Planet Prize Laureate and co-winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize for Peace, recently delivered a keynote speech at the Hegra Nobel Laureates Summit, convened in June 2022 at the UNESCO world heritage site in AlUla, Saudi Arabia.

The three-day Hegra conference, held in the Nabataean civilisation’s historic region of AlUla, hosted 35 Nobel laureates of peace, economics, literature, physics, chemistry, physiology and medicine, social change-makers, and political leaders, alongside Saudi ministers, led by Prince Turki bin Faisal, representing the Saudi Royal family. The Nobel laureates and influential global figures called for “action to save humanity” at the conference, as they discussed solutions to critical global economic and social issues.

During a session on “Uniting the World”, Prof. Mohan Munasinghe, the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize co-laureate from Sri Lanka, 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 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. 

He urged young people to seek ways to break this vicious cycle of unsustainability. He admitted that the older generation had made mistakes which led to the current global crisis. He was confident that the next generation would tackle global problems more successfully and felt a strong sense of personal obligation to identify the lessons of the past and provide fresh tools to young people.

Conference delegates urged the world’s leaders, nations, organisations, and individuals, to work together to solve the planet’s pressing socio-economic and environmental challenges, and provided 10 decisive actions that should be taken within the next 10 years, to achieve positive outcomes. 

Professor Munasinghe is Chairman of the MIND Group in Colombo, which includes the non-profit Munasinghe Institute for Development (MIND), a UN recognised 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 Carbon Consulting Company (CCC) and also serves as Board Director of the Eureka Group. He was Chairman of the President’s Expert Committee on Sustainable Sri Lanka 2030 Vision and Distinguished Guest Professor at Peking University, China.