United Nations under Secretary General Anna Tibaijuka is this year's recipient of a prestigious prize for environment.

Dr. Tibaijuka along with other three personalities will receive the Göteborg award, widely considered equivalent to the Nobel Prize for the environment, on 24 November 2009, in Göteborg, Sweden.

The three other people, who share the award, have found new solutions to the enormous challenges affecting the environment.

Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of UN-HABITAT, the Kenya-based UN agency for the built environment; Enrique Peñalosa, the former Bogotá, Colombia; and Sören Hermansen, Samsö, Denmark. 

On 24 November they will join an illustrious list of previous winners who include former US Vice President Al Gore and Gro Harlem Brundtland.

The accent of this year's awards is on the urban aspect of our planet's environment.

This is because more than half of humanity lives in towns and cities, a figure projected to rise to two-thirds in the next three decades.

Cities are not only the biggest polluters of our planet, but they are also the most vulnerable to climate change when disasters strike.