11 to Watch in 2011

Shai Agassi is the founder and CEO of Better Place, a cutting-edge service provider for electric vehicles which creates and operates the infrastructure for country-wide fleets of cars. A former Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, the company is his answer to making the world a better place by reducing fossil fuel dependency.

Download our profile of Shai Agassi.

Professor Herbie Girardet is an environmental consultant, academic, writer and filmmaker. He specialises in urban sustainability, and is Chairman of the Schumacher Society UK.

Download our profile of Herbie Girardet.

Dr Han Seung-Soo is former Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Korea, a panel member of the UN Secretary-General's High-Level Panel on Global Sustainabiltiy, and founder of the Global Green Growth Institute. His political leadership was instrumental in positioning his country as a leader in clean technology.

Download our profile of Han Seung-Soo.

Harish Hande's vision of providing clean, renewable energy at a household level through his social enterprise SELCO Solar Light has reached hundreds of thousands of India's poor. It is a classic tale of inspiration, creativity and trust in people's desire to improve their lives.

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Lisa Jackson is the Administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). She champions environmental justice and involving the whole of society in environmental protection and climate change.

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Van Jones is a human rights activitist and champion of clean technologies and green-collar jobs. Jones' focus is on inequalities of health, wealth and environmental justice, and in 2008 he set up Green for All, a charity promoting green pathways out of poverty.

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Ma Jun is an environmentalist who founded the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, an NGO which maintains and publishes the China Water Map – the first online public database of its kind in the country.

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Elizabeth May is the Leader of the Green Party of Canada and is an environmentalist, a lawyer and an author. She has played a crucial role in the creation of national parks, negotiations with the US to reduce emissions, efforts to clean up the Great Lakes, and the drawing-up of the Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer.

Download our profile of Elizabeth May.

As CEO of Unilever, Paul Polman is renowned for setting up the Sustainable Living Plan, which sets ambitious targets for growing the company while reducing its environmental impact. Polman points out that today's consumers have limited trust in large corporations, yet he predicts they will increasingly expect big companies to address some of the world's complex problems.

Download our profile of Paul Polman.

Pavan Sukhdev is Special Advisor to the United Nations Enivornment Programme's GreenEconomy Initiative. He specialises in applying economics to questions of public versus private good, and under his leadership UNEP has published a seminal report on The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB).

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Adam Werbach exemplifies a new generation of environmental activism. Formerly the youngest-ever president of US NGO The Sierra Club, he has since challenged environmentalists to frame their goals in braoder social and economic terms, and is now CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi S.

Download our profile of Adam Werbach.