vinod Prakash Sharma, an expert on malaria, has bagged the Green Scientist Award 2001 for his work on bioenvironmental control of malaria. The Centre for Science and Environment (cse), a New Delhi-based non-governmental organisation, has instituted the award that carries a citation and a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh. The award was presented by Manmohan Singh, former Union finance minister and a member of parliament at a function on March 31, 2001 in New Delhi.

The award is the first of its kind. cse chairperson Anil Agarwal said that the apathy of the scientific establishment towards ecological security and environmental issues is one of the key reasons to institute the award. "The main aim of the award is to bring to the forefront any person who has done commendable work on ecological security,' he explained.

Speaking on the occasion Singh said: "There is an urgent need to invest in science for ecological security. This is, however, not happening in the allocation strategies.'

Agarwal said that Sharma's achievement lies in his successful transformation of a pesticide intensive malaria control method to one that is ecofriendly. Sharma has a long and distinguished career as an epidemiologist and malariologist, and is a pioneer in pushing forward techniques of ecofriendly malaria control. He is the founder-director of New Delhi-based Malaria Research Centre.

His work is oriented towards involving communities to contain the spread of the disease rather than the large-scale usage of pesticides, which is still a standard procedure of the government's malaria control programmes. His work ranges from malariology, epidemiology and malaria control, entomology, genetics, vector biology and control of vector-borne diseases. It isn't that he invented techniques for bioenvironmental vector control