New Delhi: Indian scientist Ashok Khosla on October 31 bagged the prestigious $ 200,000 UNEP Sasakawa prize for introducing low-cost eco-friendly technologies.

The award will be presented to Khosla on November 19 at the American Folk Art Museum in New York, a UNEP release said.

The UNEP Sasakawa Environment Prize, sponsored by the Nippon Foundation and founded by the late Ryoichi Sasakawa, has been awarded annually since 1984 to individuals who have made outstanding global contributions to the management and protection of the environment.

"Khosla has worked tirelessly to demonstrate both theory and practice of sustainable development through his teaching and fostering of environment-friendly and commercially viable technologies," the release said.

It said these range from village power plants which use agricultural wastes as fuel to mini-factories that re-cycle paper and local enterprises that make low-cost roofing tiles.

UNEP described Khosla as a man who offered "pragmatic, sensible and life changing solutions" to burning issues.

Most of his recent work has been achieved through "Development Alternatives", a group of organisations headquartered in Delhi, which he founded in 1983 to help bring people and nature directly into the design and implementation of India's development strategy, the release said.

Welcoming the award, Khosla said, "This award is really for the work of the many, many partners and collaborators with whom I have been privileged to work over the last 40 years. It is a wonderful, if unexpected, tribute to their efforts at the desk, in the laboratory and out in the field, courageously experimenting with ideas and action that were mostly unfashionable and often directly opposed to conventional development thinking."

PTI