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Nobel prize alternative focuses on the environment and social justice
www.rightlivelihood.org
The Right Livelihood Award is a prize to honor, fund and promote those working against environmental damage, human rights violations and underdevelopment throughout the world. It is not a prize you would expect a head of state from a large country, which is currently at war, to win.
The award began 30 years ago after founder, German-Swedish publicist Jacob von Uexkull, attempted to get another category for environmental protection added to the Nobel Prize. After being turned down by the Nobel Committee, von Uexkull founded the Right Livelihood Award Foundation, which gives out three prizes per year of €50,000 each.
Winners of the prize are proportionally more likely to come from developing countries, are more often younger or female when compared to Nobel laureates. There has already been one overlap between the two prizes: Kenyan environmental activist Wangari Maathei, who won the Right Livelihood Award in 1984 and the Nobel Prize 20 years later.
This is perhaps the most meaningful prize one citizen of the earth can receive from another. It is specifically not the Nobel Prize, which furthers scientific progress and contributes to nature being overtaken and overwhelmed. Instead, it is a prize for thinking about what we can do differently.
–German biologist and conservationist Michael Succow, Right Livelihood Award winner (Deutsche Welle)
The Right Livelihood Award’s 30th Anniversary Conference is currently taking place in Bonn, Germany, and includes a parallel youth conference. The award ceremony takes place in December, usually in the old Swedish Parliament building in Stockholm. 2009’s winners included David Suzuki of Canada and René Ngongo of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Australia’s Catherine Hamlin.
Read more about the award in the following article from Deutsche Welle:
‘Alternative Nobel Prize’ gains moral traction
Tags: alternative, environmental, German, Nobel, prize, Right Livelihood Award, Swedish, von Uexkull
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