The efforts of the former US Vice President Al Gore to avert and highlight the threat of climate change were widely recognized on Friday as he received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

But this year Peace Prize had two winners. The five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Prize to Al Gore and to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

"for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change,"

According to Nobel Committee the Prize will be shared in two equal parts. The Nobel Committee Chairman Ole Danbolt Mjos said the former US vice president had been "clearest" in communicating the message of climate change and its consequences, referring to Gore's Academy Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

In a press statement, Al Gore said he was "deeply honoured" by the Nobel Peace Prize. "We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity," Gore said in a statement from his spokeswoman, Kalee Kreider.

The UN climate panel and Gore were selected from 181 nominations, including 46 organizations.

India's Rajendra Kumar Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, co-winner with Al Gore of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 announced on Friday, believes that climate change is a serious issue for the planet and only grassroots action can arrest it.

"I am delighted to receive this award on behalf of IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)," Pachauri said in New Delhi.

"This award is in recognition of the work done by IPCC and the state governments of the countries of the panel. It recognizes the effects of climate change and I hope I will live up to the expectations of this award given by the Nobel Committee."

A spokesman for US President George W Bush, who defeated Gore in 2000 presidential elections, offered the White House's congratulations.

"Of course we're happy for vice president Gore and the IPCC for receiving this recognition," deputy press secretary Tony Fratto told CBS television.

The peace prize was the fifth Nobel Pize to be announced this week. British author Doris Lessing won the literature prize Thursday.

The Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo, the other prizes are handed over at a ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of dynamite inventor Nobel's death.