MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Gore and U.N. climate panel win Nobel Peace Prize

This award is even more meaningful because I have the honour of sharing it said Gore

Former US vice president Al Gore has shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The judges recognised their efforts to compile and spread knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures to fight it. Gore, who won an Academy Award earlier this year, had been widely tipped to win the prize. "His strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books, has strengthened the struggle against climate change," the citation from the panel in Norway said. "He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted." Climate change has been at the top of the world agenda this year. The UN climate panel has been releasing its reports; talks on a replacement for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate are set to resume; and on Europe's northern fringe, where the awards committee works, concern about the melting Arctic has been underscored by this being International Polar Year. In recent years, the Norwegian committee has broadened its interpretation of peacemaking and disarmament efforts outlined by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel in creating the prize with his 1895 will. Speaking in Washington, Mr Gore said he was honoured. "This award is even more meaningful because I have the honour of sharing it" with the IPCC, he said - "whose members have worked tirelessly and selflessly for many years". He said he would donate his half of the $1.5m prize money to the Alliance for Climate Protection The prize now often also recognises human rights, democracy, elimination of poverty, sharing resources and the environment. Mr Gore and the panel are the second laureates to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for environmental action, after Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai was given the award in 2004.