Three scientists from Germany, one from the United States and one from France won the International Cooperation Award in Science and Technology on Friday.

The award winners were Klaus Toepfer, a German environmental-planning specialist; Zhongxue Gan, an American expert in energy systems engineering and intelligent control; Roger M. Bonnet, a French scientist in space science; Albert Hermann Gerhard Boerner, a German astrophysicist; and Folker Helfrid Wittmann, a German expert in building materials.

"It was a very remarkable and outstanding day for me. I am most honored and extremely happy to receive this prestigious award," said 73-year-old Toepfer on Friday after the award ceremony.

"But the award is given for what we did, and there is a challenge to do more in the future."

Toepfer worked together with China's leading environmentalists to establish the country's first environmental policies.

His "long and lasting love affair" with China dates back to the time when he was the federal minister for environment in Germany in the 1980s. In those days, he said, environmental issues were not very high on China's agenda, as the country set its sights on economic development.

"China has achieved an economic miracle that people admire with its double-digit percent annual growth rate. But China, like the rest of the world, faces the same challenge: that economic development is externalizing costs on the environment," he said.

"Nobody can imagine that China will not, cannot, or should not, stop its economic development. The real challenge is: we make the need for development a reality without overburdening the capacity of the environment," he added.

Putting green development, a low-carbon economy and energy efficiency at the heart of its 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015), sent a strong signal of a paradigm shift in China's growth model, he said.

"The concept of a low-carbon economy does not mean no-economy, but another kind of economy, one that will not overload the environment and hinder economic development in the future.

"Sustainable development is a balancing act of three aspects: economic development, social justice and stability," he said.

In 1998, Toepfer became the under-secretary-general of the United Nations and executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and was based in, Nairobi, Kenya, until 2006.

He was appointed honorary professor of Tongji University in 1998 and he contributed to the establishment of the UNEP-Tongji Institute of Environment for Sustainable Development.

Although chief professor at the UNEP-Tongji Institute, he receives no salary, instead, he used 1 million yuan (US$151,722) of his own money to establish the Klaus Toepfer Scholarship, which awards the 10 most gifted environmental major students a scholarship every year.

He has introduced new water treatment technologies, as well as water resources management and environmental management to China.

(China Daily January 15 2011)