Principal Voices gathers together a series of the world's foremost thinkers in their respective areas. For 2006 this is the environment, urbanization, Corporationorate responsibility and economic development.

Among their ranks are university professors, business leaders and charity pioneers, not to mention Nobel Prize winners.

As well as contributing their thoughts on their subject, including written White Papers to be published on this Web site in the coming months, many will take part in Principal Voices round table events around the world over the course of the year.

Geetam Tiwari, Professor of Transport Planning at the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi, is an expert on urban transport. She argues that planners must reflect the real needs of a city - for example not building six-lane highways for cars and ignoring the needs of pedestrians and cyclists.
Read white paper | Watch video | See Tiwari taking part in the Delhi debate on urbanization
Bill Reinert, national manager of advanced technologies for Toyota USA, is behind innovative hybrid vehicles likes the Prius, an increasingly popular model which runs on a combination of petrol and electric power. Other projects planned by Reinert's team include vehicles which will run fully on electricity or on hydrogen.
Read white paper | Watch video | See Reinert taking part in the Delhi debate on urbanization
Ricky Burdett, Centennial Professor in Architecture and Urbanism at the London School of Economics, founded the LSE Cities Program, a research center examining the links between architecture and urban society. A member of the British government's Urban Task Force, Burdett has also advised the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, on architecture.
Read white paper | Watch video
Wangari Maathai, a long-standing Kenyan campaigner on the environment, sustainable development and human rights, won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for her work. In 1977, she founded the Green Belt Movement, which uses the notion of planting trees as the basis for work on the environment and other areas. Formerly a professor of anatomy, Maathai has also campaigned on debt reduction, women's rights and democracy.
Read white paper | Watch video
Amory Lovins, alternative energy expert, co-founded the Rocky Mountain Institute in 1982. It has since grown to become one of the world's leading research and education organizations on energy and resource use. Trained as an experimental physicist, Lovins has written or co-written 29 books and briefed 18 heads of state. Watch video
David Hales is president of the College of the Atlantic, a US college with an ecologically-centered approach. Previously, he was head of sustainability research at the Worldwatch Institute think tank, and in charge of environmental and resource policy at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), He also served under President Jimmy Carter. Read white paper | Watch video
Muhammad Yunus winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, founded the Grameen Bank, an innovative and much-copied project which provides so-called "microcredit" to the rural poor of Bangladesh without any collateral. It began in 1976 when Yunus, then a professor of economics, launched a project to look at providing banking services to poor people in the countryside. Watch video
Rodrigo Baggio heads the Committee for Democracy in Information Technology, a Rio-based non-profit organization which provides computers to poorer communities via special schools. Baggio, then a businessman and teacher of information technology, set up the precursor to the CDI in 1993. It has now expanded to almost 1,000 schools in eight countries.
Read white paper | Watch video
Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of Columbia University's Earth Institute, is one of the world's best-renowned international development experts. He is special adviser to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on the UN's Millennium Development Goals and wrote the influential book 'The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time'.
Read white paper | Watch video
Victoria Hale, a pharmaceutical scientist, in 2000 founded the Institute for OneWorld Health, the first non-profit drugs company in the United States. The Institute aims to develop affordable medicines to treat diseases which disproportionately affect developing nations. Among drugs being developed are treatments for malaria and diarrhea.
Read white paper | Watch video | See Hale take part in London debate on Collaborative Corporation
Malini Mehra, is the founder and director of the Center for Social Markets, based in India and Britain, which promotes issues of social justice, human rights and sustainable development within business. A co-author of the UN Development Program's Human Development Report for 2002, she has also previously worked for charities such as Oxfam and Friends of the Earth. Watch video | See Mehra take part in London debate on Collaborative Corporation
Peter Bakker, is chief executive officer of logistics and mail multinational TNT, a leading exponent of corporate social responsibility, which works closely with the UN World Food Program and has a strong environmental policy. A Dutch national, Bakker took over the post in 2001. Watch video