Mostafa Kamal Tolba

Mostafa Kamal Tolba was an Egyptian scientist who dedicated his life to environmental issues. He graduated from Cairo University in 1943 and obtained his PhD from Imperial College London in 1948. He became a professor of microbiology at Cairo University and also taught at the University of Baghdad. He served as Egypt's Under-Secretary of State for Higher Education and Minister of Youth, and as President of the Egyptian Olympic Committee. He led Egypt's delegation to the UN Conference on the Human Environment in 1972, which established the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). He became UNEP's Deputy Executive Director and then its second Executive Director, a position he held for 17 years until his retirement in 1992. Under his leadership, UNEP became the core organization within the UN family to catalyze environmental action. He played a central role in the fight against ozone depletion, which resulted in the Vienna Convention and the Montreal Protocol, the historic 1987 agreement to protect the ozone layer. He also steered negotiations for the Basel Convention on transboundary hazardous waste, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Global Environment Facility, and the Convention on Biological Diversity. He was a visionary and a pioneer in the field of environmentalism, and he received many awards and honors for his achievements. He died in Geneva at the age of 93.