[by Jane Ford, UVa News Services]

Gro Harlem Brundtland, special envoy on climate change at the United Nations, former prime minister of Norway and a former director-general of the World Health Organization, will be awarded the 2008 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture at the University of Virginia Founder?s Day festivities in April.

Brundtland will give a public talk on Friday, April 11, at 3 p.m., in Old Cabell Hall Auditorium.

?In honoring Dr. Brundtland we celebrate her legendary leadership in global sustainability and the stewardship of our environment, values that we have championed and developed in our work at the School of Architecture. We are so pleased to share our school?s accomplishments with such a distinguished figure and we all look forward to her University address on April 11th,? said Architecture School Dean Karen Van Lengen.

A politician, physician, diplomat and activist, Brundtland gained international recognition in the 1980s for supporting and promoting sustainable development as chair of the United Nations' World Commission of Environment and Development, known as the Brundtland Commission. The commission's report, "Our Common Future," outlined the broad political concept of sustainable development that takes into embraces multi-disciplinary considerations, including energy, industry, population and human resources, food security, species and ecosystems, international cooperation, decision-making systems and international economic relations.

The commission's recommendations led to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, at which representatives of 172 governments and 2,400 representatives of nongovernmental organizations concerned about the environment agreed on a Climate Change Convention that developed into the Kyoto Protocol.