The InterDependent

One “champion” led a fleet of electric vehicles around the world in 80 days; another is a national president committed to mitigating climate change; while a third produces nonelectric air-conditioning systems, another sings professionally about environmental causes and a fifth is an activist striving to ban toxic chemicals and pesticides in the former Soviet Union.

All winners of the United Nations Environment Program’s 2011 Champions of the Earth awards, held May 10 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, were picked for their dedication to improving the world physically if not symbolically – trying to balance the bad news with the need for change. As a demonstration of the event’s purpose, the air quality in the room of the press conference was measured.

Using a hand-held sensor, Zhang Yue, the air-conditioning magnate from China, told the audience that the room had 8,000 particulate matters for every liter of air. Everyone fell silent, unsure if this was a good measurement or worrisome. Zhang told his son, Daniel, his translator, that in northern China, the figure could go up to 200,000, so everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

Every year since 2005, the Environment Program has been singling out individuals or groups who they say are making a difference; the awards this year were given during the UN Commission on Sustainable Development at New York headquarters. The awards' sponsor is LG Electronics of Korea. Each recipient receives $40,000.

The categories were policy leadership (President Felipe Calderón of Mexico); science and innovation (Dr. Olga Speranskaya of Russia); entrepreneurial vision (Zhang); inspiration and action (Louis Palmer of Switzerland and Angélique Kidjo of Benin). As the individuals were praised by Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN agency, each person spoke about his or her work, which is when the program got more interesting.

From left: Louis Palmer, Achim Steiner of UNEP, Zhang Yue, Angélique Kidjo, President Felipe Calderón, Dr. Olga Speranskaya, UN Goodwill Ambassador Gisele Bundchen and Young Yee Kim of LG Electronics at the American Museum of Natural History.

“Mr. Climate Change,” as Calderón, who arrived with a heavy entourage and fashionably late, was introduced, sat in the center of the panel’s table. He received an award for Mexico’s hosting the 2010 climate change conference in Cancún – for rescuing the conference “from the brink of failure,” Steiner said.

In Mexico itself, the country is working on climate change action as well, planning to replace nearly two million refrigerators and air-conditioners with more efficient energy users and more than 47 million incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent lamps or other efficient lighting by 2012.

But that was not what Calderón talked about. Instead, he said that was what needed more than ever was “public policies to stop climate change” to benefit both the economy and the people and ultimately close the gap between the rich and the poor and “men and nature.”

Dr. Speranskaya, a stern looking scientist from Moscow, explained the work that she and a network of civil-society organizations that she helped found, called International POPs Elimination Network (Ipen), have done to create a “toxic free future” in the former Soviet Union. The region, which encompasses Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, is home to vast stockpiles of highly toxic obsolete pesticides, known as persistent organic pollutants, or POPs. Dr. Speranskaya and Ipen, she said, have identified hot spots that have reduced chemical pollution through hundreds of projects, as well as led campaigns to ban the burial and transport of hazardous chemicals and pushed governments to ratify the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants.

Zhang spoke through his son, an architecture student at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Zhang’s company, Broad Group, in Hunan Province, specializes in refrigerant-free air-conditioners that are sold in 60 countries. The group’s other products, like air purifiers and boilers, also “minimize” pollution, the UN agency says. Broad also developed a concept for modular, earthquake-resistance buildings after the 2008 quake in Sichuan Province in China, working with the UN and others. His company also put up a multistory earthquake-proof building in 14 hours at the Shanghai Expo in 2010.

Zhang said that the four best methods of conserving energy are thick insulation, triple-glazed windows, exterior solar shading and proper heat exchange. “We make air-conditioners, but we wish to use less.”

Palmer, who is from Switzerland, has been tooting the solar- and electric-vehicle horn at expos and climate change conferences for years, including staging a solar-taxi tour in 2004 in which he circumnavigated the world through 38 countries. A schoolteacher, he more recently organized a zero-emissions vehicle race in 2010 that started and ended in Geneva in 80 days.

It was back in 1986, when he was 14 years old, when dreamed of driving the globe in a solar-powered car. He built one himself eventually and got his race-car expeditions going with the help of others (“I have a Swiss bank account, but it doesn’t mean anything,” he said). His next plan is for a Paris to Prague race involving all 192 member countries of the UN (he hopes).

Angélique Kidjo, “Africa’s premier diva,” according to Time magazine, is a singer-songwriter from Benin who founded the Batonga Foundation in 2009, providing education benefits to girls primarily in Benin, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Mali and Sierra Leone. Kidjo’s music videos and songs have been used to support other humanitarian causes. She has been a goodwill ambassador for Unicef and a “champion” of the Millennium Development Goals. She was appointed a patron for the UN Music and Environment initiative, using music to address environmental problems, and recorded a video for the UN’s Seal the Deal climate change promotion.

Though she is a “modern-day citizen,” as Steiner called her, Kidjo regaled the audience with a story about her childhood, when her grandmother admonished her for dropping a plastic bag on the ground long ago in Benin. But Kidjo ended her story with her own admonishment to the audience, saying, “We need leaders in Africa.”