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The much-loved British broadcaster Sir David Attenborough has been officially recognized as “Champion of the Earth” by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). The natural history icon is only the fifth person to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award.
For decades, Attenborough has narrated jaw-dropping, inspiring and surprising nature documentaries using his signature muted tones. Some of his most famous documentaries include Planet Earth, Blue Planet, Life on Earth and Our Planet. He also became one of the leading advocates for protecting the natural world and strongly condemned world leaders for their inaction on of Climate Change.
Attenborough received the Champions of the Earth Lifetime Achievement Award, UNEP’s most prestigious honor, on 21 April during a video interview with UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen, who chose the award recipient. previous winners Award recipients include environmental justice advocate Robert Bullard and indigenous rights advocate Joan Carling.
“Sir David Attenborough has dedicated his life to documenting the love story between humans and nature and transmitting it to the world”, Andersen said in a statement. “If we have a chance to avoid climate and biodiversity collapses and clean up polluted ecosystems, it’s because millions of us fell in love with the planet he showed us on television.”
Related: Humans are destroying our ‘perfect planet’, says Attenborough
Attenborough’s TV career spans nearly 70 years and countless technological and societal changes. He is the only person to receive awards from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) in the categories of black and white, color, high definition, 3D and 4K TV. And despite being almost 96 years old, he kept up an amazing pace of work.
Attenborough is considered a major influence on many scientists and conservationists, and in 2016 the British Antarctic Survey named its new state-of-the-art research vessel in your honor (although the most voted for the name was actually “Boaty McBoatface”).
Over the past few decades, Attenborough has also used his unique and highly recognizable voice to speak out on a range of environmental issues, including climate change, loggingoverfishing and plastic pollution, as well as campaigns to renewable energy and climate action.
In 2018, Attenborough warned of the “collapse of our civilization” and the extinction of most of the natural world if climate change continues unabated, while speaking at a UN climate conference in Poland.
The broadcaster also gave passionate speech at the COP26 summit in Glasgow, Scotland in November 2021, where he asked world leaders: “Is this how our story should end? bigger picture in pursuit of short-term goals?”
Despite the lack of action by many world leaders to address environmental degradation and climate change, Attenborough is still convinced that the UN has a vital role to play in tackling these issues.
“The world needs to come together. These problems cannot be solved by one nation, no matter how big that nation is,” Attenborough said in the video upon accepting his new award. “We know what the problems are and we know how to solve them. All we need is unified action.”
In the latest report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published on 4 April, Scientists have warned it’s “now or never” to tackle climate change.
Originally published on Live Science.
