Right Livelihood Award

Right Livelihood Award
Awarded for"Practical and exemplary solutions to the most urgent challenges facing the world today"
CountrySweden
Presented byRight Livelihood
First awarded1980
Websiterightlivelihood.org

The Right Livelihood Award is an international award to "honour and support those offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today."[1] The prize was established in 1980 by German-Swedish philanthropist Jakob von Uexküll, and is presented annually in early December.[2] An international jury, invited by the five regular Right Livelihood Award board members, decides the awards in such fields as environmental protection, human rights, sustainable development, health, education, and peace.[3] The prize money is shared among the winners, usually numbering four, and is €200,000.[4] Very often one of the four laureates receives an honorary award, which means that the other three share the prize money.[3]

Although it has been promoted as an "Alternative Nobel Prize",[5][6][7][8][9] it does not have any organizational ties at all to the awarding institutions of the Nobel Prize or the Nobel Foundation.

The Right Livelihood Award committee arranged for awards to be made in the Riksdag of Sweden the day before the Nobel prizes and the economics prize are awarded in Stockholm. The Right Livelihood Awards are generally understood as a critique of the traditional Nobel prizes.[9]

The establishment of this award followed a failed attempt to have the Nobel Foundation create new prizes in the areas of environmental protection, sustainable development and human rights. The prize has been awarded to a diverse group of people and organisations, including Wangari Maathai, Astrid Lindgren, Bianca Jagger, Mordechai Vanunu, Leopold Kohr, Arna Mer-Khamis, Felicia Langer, Petra Kelly, Survival International, Amy Goodman, Catherine Hamlin, Memorial, Edward Snowden, Daniel Ellsberg, and Greta Thunberg.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference MFA was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Jawetz, Pincas (13 October 2009). "30th Right Livelihood Awards: Wake-up calls to secure our common future". SustainabiliTank. Archived from the original on 27 March 2010. Retrieved 11 December 2009.
  3. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Thorpe was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ "About the Right Livelihood Award". Archived from the original on 2011-08-11. Retrieved October 26, 2010.
  5. ^ "Indians win 'alternative Nobel'". BBC. 2 October 2008. Retrieved 22 March 2011.
  6. ^ "Peace and Social Justice Workers Receive Alternative Nobel Prize". Deutsche Welle. 1 October 2008. Retrieved 12 June 2017.
  7. ^ "Global activists honoured with 'Alternative Nobel' prize". The Local. 30 September 2010. Archived from the original on 2 October 2010. Retrieved 12 June 2017.
  8. ^ "Israeli doctors' group wins 'alternative' Nobel prize". BBC. 30 September 2010. Retrieved 22 March 2011.
  9. ^ a b "Alternativer Nobelpreis: Kampf gegen Klimawandel, Armut, Kriege ausgezeichnet". Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 13 October 2009. Retrieved 22 March 2011.