IIASA Distinguished Visiting Fellow and longtime collaborator, Jeffrey Sachs, has received this year’s prestigious Tang Prize in Sustainable Development for his contributions to the establishment and promotion of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
The Tang Prize is an international academic award set up to create a better world for all of humanity. It is awarded in four categories, namely sustainable development, biopharmaceutical science, sinology, and rule of law. Every other year, four independent and professional selection committees, comprising many internationally renowned experts, scholars, and Nobel Prize winners, choose people who have influenced and made substantive contributions to the world, regardless of ethnicity, nationality or gender, as Tang Prize laureates.
As an eminent economist of international distinction, Sachs has conducted groundbreaking research in many areas, such as debt crises, hyperinflation, transition from central planning to market economies, and the eradication of extreme poverty. Moreover, when addressing complex issues related to global sustainable development, he has combined the fields of global economics, public health, equity, and sustainability to pioneer a multidisciplinary approach to solving these problems, transforming sustainable development into an integrated field of study and practice. He was also one of the speakers at the recent IIASA 50th Anniversary Science Diplomacy Event to discuss the crucial role of the international scientific cooperation in enabling researchers to access additional expertise and gain new perspectives on research, unlocking scientific discoveries, and promoting scientific advancement for the benefit and interest of all humankind.
Apart from his long association with IIASA, Sachs is Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University in the United States and President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He has served as Special Advisor to three UN Secretaries-General. He is a recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Knight of the National Order of the Legion of Honor (by decree of the president of the French Republic), the Sustainable Development Leadership Award from India’s Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), and Japan’s Blue Planet Award. He has also received 40 honorary degrees from universities all over the world.
We proudly congratulate Jeffrey Sachs on this outstanding achievement.
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