UNESCO

Professor Diego
Andrés Golombek
(Argentina),
winner of
the 2015 UNESCO
Kalinga Prize for
the Popularization
of Science.
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The 2015 UNESCO Sultan Qaboos
Prize for Environmental Preservation
was awarded by Ms Bokova to
Fabio A. Kalesnik, Horacio Sirolli and
Luciano Iribarren of the Wetlands
Ecology Research Group at the
University of Buenos Aires (Argentina),
for their outstanding achievements in
support of environmental preservation.
An international jury chose the winners
for their research on a wide range of
ecological aspects of wetland ecosystems
on different spatial and temporal scales
in the Delta del Paraná, and for their
critically valuable socio-environmental
studies, environmental education and
training initiatives.
‘Science for a Sustainable Future:
Celebrating the UNESCO Science Report’
was the overarching theme of the
worldwide celebrations on the World
Science Day for Peace and Development.
This offers an opportunity to demonstrate
to the wider public why science is relevant
to their daily lives, and to engage them in
debate on related issues. Among the events
was a Science, Technology, Engineering
and Mathematics (STEM) career fair at
Harare Gardens in Zimbabwe, organized by
© Diego Andrés Golombek
the UNESCO Regional Office for Southern
Africa in partnership with the Government
of Zimbabwe and the Transformative
Gender Institute.
Finally, on 14 December, the UNESCO
Carlos J. Finlay Prize for Microbiology 2015
was awarded to Dr Yoshihiro Kawaoka
(Japan) in the auditorium of the Academy
of Sciences of Cuba in December. The
Assistant Director-General of UNESCO,
Mr Getachew Engida, highlighted the
contribution of Dr Kawaoka’s research to
the development of studies on influenza
and Ebola, and vaccines against highly
pathogenic influenza virus with pandemic
potential. This prize was first awarded
in 1980 and created to pay tribute to
renowned microbiologists who have made
internationally important contributions to
the development of their science.
Fostering increased
cooperation: UNESCO
Global Geoparks and
Biosphere Reserves
UNESCO’s work with geoparks began
in 2001, but the UNESCO Global
Geoparks designation was only ratified
by Member States in November 2015.
These are single, unified outstanding
geological sites and landscapes of
international geological significance,
which are managed with a holistic
concept of protection, education and
sustainable development. They take
an increasingly popular bottom-up
approach of combining conservation
with sustainable development
while involving local communities.
Addressing the lack of data on gender and water issues
UNESCO’s World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP) is also addressing gender gaps, and particularly
the lack of data on gender and water issues at the global level. It launched a project to develop and test
‘Sex-Disaggregated Indicators for the Collection
of Global Water Data’. The methodology it has
developed for sex-disaggregated data collection,
using multi-sectoral gender-sensitive water
indicators, is intended as a basis for implementing
gender-sensitive water monitoring in framework
of the post-2015 agenda and the SDGs. It has
produced a toolkit for gender-sensitive water
monitoring which includes a list of high-priority
gender-sensitive water indicators, a methodology
for collecting sex-disaggregated data, guidelines
for data gathering in the field, and a questionnaire
for practitioners to collect sex-disaggregated data.
This toolkit and a book, WWAP Sex-Disaggregated
Indicators for Water Assessment Monitoring and
Reporting, were launched in November.