Dr. Sandra Brown Receives Nobel Diploma
Winrock International senior scientist Dr. Sandra Brown recently received her diploma for her significant contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with former vice president Al Gore in December 2007. The Nobel Peace Prize was bestowed upon the IPCC and Gore equally for "their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about manmade climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change." 

Brown has been a leading scientist in the field of the role of forests and land-use change in the global carbon cycle and climate mitigation for more than 25 years. She served as a co-convening lead author on chapters in five IPCC reports, and has successfully led more than 40 projects for numerous United States governmental, multilateral and nonprofit donors, including the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, USAID, the World Bank, The Nature Conservancy and Conservation International. "I found the work for the IPCC reports to be highly rewarding because I knew that I was contributing to an increase in the state of knowledge of the science of climate change, working on an issue that has high policy relevance, and, just as importantly, working with a group of wonderful and dedicated colleagues from around the world," says Brown.

Winrock International Awarded for Women's Empowerment Efforts
Winrock International recently received the 14th annual Mildred Robbins Leet Award for the Advancement of Women in recognition of its women's scholarship and leadership programs, particularly the African Women Leaders in Agriculture and Environment ( AWLAE ^SM ) initiative. The award was presented to Winrock president and CEO Frank Tugwell at InterAction's Annual Forum Plenary Luncheon on May 9 in Arlington, VA. During the award ceremony, presenter Sarah Newhall, president and CEO of PACT, noted that, "Winrock's investment is particularly significant in the face of the current global food crisis." Additionally, the award coincided with the release of Women Leaders: Shaping the Future of Africa, a stunning publication about the AWLAE ^SM initiative funded by Winrock board member Bill Lucas. 

The Leet Award was established in 1995 by InterAction, the largest coalition of U.S.-based, international nongovernmental organizations that focus on the world's poor and most-vulnerable people, to recognize member agencies that have worked toward greater gender equity in programs and management. 

Supporting Vietnamese Policy for Paying for Environmental Services
Under a cooperative agreement with USAID under its Asia Regional Biodiversity Conservation Program (ARBCP), Winrock International 
successfully supported the government of Vietnam to develop Southeast Asia's first national pilot Payment for Environmental Services (PES) policy for Forest Environmental Services. Drafted by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development's (MARD) legal and policy department, the policy garnered strong support Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, and was signed by Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai on April 10, 2008. 

The new PES policy not only mobilizes buyers in the utilities and tourism sectors to invest in the province of Lam Dong's forest environmental services, it also ensures such buyer objectives can be reached under local conditions. At least 70 percent of the funds generated are to be invested in poor, local-level households who provide the services, targeting specifically those headed by women and ethnic minorities.