Right Livelihood Award


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." The prize was established in 1980 by German-Swedish philanthropist Jakob von Uexkull, and is presented annually in early December. 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. The prize money is shared among the winners, usually numbering four, and is EUR 200,000. Very often one of the four laureates receives an honorary award, which means that the other three share the prize money.
Although it is promoted as an "Alternative Nobel Prize", it is not a Nobel prize. It does not have any organizational ties at all to the awarding institutions of the Nobel Prize or the Nobel Foundation, unlike the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, which is not technically a Nobel prize but is administered by the Nobel Foundation.
However, the Right Livelihood Award is sometimes popularly associated with the Nobel prizes. 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 also awarded in Stockholm. However, the Right Livelihood Awards are understood as a critique of the traditional Nobel prizes. The establishment of the 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 and Greta Thunberg.

Ceremony

Since 1985, the ceremony has taken place in Stockholm's old Parliament building, in the days before the traditional Nobel prizes are awarded in the same city. A group of Swedish Parliamentarians from different parties host the ceremony; in 2009 European Commissioner Margot Wallström co-hosted the ceremony. However, in 2014 when it became public that one of the recipients of the 2014 prize was whistleblower Edward Snowden, the ceremonial group was disinvited from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs building in Stockholm.
In 2019, marking the 40th anniversary of the foundation of the Award, the ceremony was held at Cirkus before a live audience of more than 1,200 people. World-renowned artists such as José González and Ane Brun were among the night's performers.

Nature of the award

Some media refer to the prize as the Alternative Nobel Prize, and the prize is frequently understood as a critique of the traditional Nobel prizes.
The prize differs significantly from the Nobel Prizes:
, a philanthropist, sold his stamp collection worth one million US dollars, which provided the initial funding for the award. Before establishing the award in 1980, von Uexkull had tried to persuade the Nobel Foundation to establish new prizes to be awarded together with the Nobel Prizes. He suggested new prize categories to be created: one in ecology and one in development. Like the Nobel Economics Prize, this would have been possible with an amendment to the Nobel Foundation statutes and funding of the prize amount completely separate from Nobel's fortune. The Nobel Prize amount was 880,000 Swedish kronor at that time, which corresponded to 195,000 US dollars. However, as a result of the debate that followed the establishment of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, the Nobel Foundation had decided not to associate the Nobel Prize with any additional awards, so von Uexküll's proposal was rejected.
From 1980-2019, the foundation presented awards to 178 Laureates from 70 countries. Its self-described purpose is to bestow prizes and thus publicize the work of recipients' local solutions to worldwide problems.

Laureates

YearLaureatesCountry
1980--
1980Hassan Fathy
1980Plenty International / Stephen Gaskin
1981--
1981Mike Cooley
1981Bill Mollison
1981Patrick van Rensburg / Education with Production
1982--
1982Erik Dammann / Future in Our Hands
1982Anwar Fazal
1982Petra Kelly
1982Participatory Institute for Development Alternatives
1982Sir George Trevelyan, Bt
1983--
1983Leopold Kohr
1983Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins / Rocky Mountain Institute
1983Manfred Max-Neef / CEPAUR
1983High Chief Ibedul Gibbons and the People of Belau
1984--
1984Imane Khalifeh
1984Self-Employed Women's Association / Ela Bhatt
1984Winefreda Geonzon / Free Legal Assistance Volunteers' Association
1984Wangari Maathai / Green Belt Movement
1985--
1985Theo Van Boven
1985Cary Fowler
1985Pat Mooney
1985Lokayan / Rajni Kothari
1985Duna Kör
1986--
1986Robert Jungk
1986Rosalie Bertell
1986Alice Stewart
1986Ladakh Ecological Development Group / Helena Norberg-Hodge
1986Evaristo Nugkuag / AIDESEP
1987--
1987Johan Galtung
1987Chipko movement
1987Hans-Peter Dürr / Global Challenges Network
1987Institute for Food and Development Policy / Frances Moore Lappé
1987Mordechai Vanunu
1988--
1988International Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims / Dr. Inge Kemp Genefke
1988José Lutzenberger
1988John F. Charlewood Turner
1988Sahabat Alam Malaysia / Mohammed Idris, Harrison Ngau, the Penan people
1989--
1989Seikatsu Club Consumers' Co-operative Union
1989Melaku Worede
1989Aklilu Lemma / Legesse Wolde-Yohannes
1989Survival International
1990--
1990Alice Tepper Marlin / Council on Economic Priorities
1990
1990Felicia Langer
1990Association of Peasant Workers of the Carare
1991--
1991Edward Goldsmith
1991Narmada Bachao Andolan
1991Bengt Danielsson & Marie-Thérèse Danielsson /
1991Senator Jeton Anjain / the People of Rongelap
1991Landless Workers' Movement / CPT
1992--
1992
1992Gonoshasthaya Kendra / Zafrullah Chowdhury
1992Helen Mack
1992John Gofman / Alla Yaroshinskaya /
1993--
1993Arna Mer-Khamis / Care and Learning
1993Organisation of Rural Associations for Progress / Sithembiso Nyoni
1993Vandana Shiva
1993Mary and Carrie Dann of the Western Shoshone Nation
1994--
1994Astrid Lindgren
1994SERVOL
1994Dr. H. Sudarshan / VGKK
1996George Vithoulkas
1997--
1997Joseph Ki-Zerbo
1997Jinzaburo Takagi
1997Mycle Schneider
1997Michael Succow
1997Cindy Duehring
1998--
1998International Baby Food Action Network
1998Samuel Epstein
1998Juan Pablo Orrego
1998Katarina Kruhonja / Vesna Terselic
1999--
1999Hermann Scheer
1999
1999COAMA
1999Grupo de Agricultura Orgánica
2000--
2000Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher
2000Munir
2000Birsel Lemke
2000Wes Jackson
2001--
2001José Antonio Abreu
2001Gush Shalom / Rachel and Uri Avnery
2001Leonardo Boff
2001Trident Ploughshares
2002--
2002Martin Green
2002Kamenge Youth Centre
2002Kvinna Till Kvinna
2002Martín Almada
2003--
2003David Lange
2003Walden Bello / Nicanor Perlas
2003Citizens' Coalition for Economic Justice
2003SEKEM and Ibrahim Abouleish
2004--
2004Swami Agnivesh / Asghar Ali Engineer
2004Memorial Society
2004Bianca Jagger
2004Raúl Montenegro
2005--
2005Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke
2005Irene Fernandez
2005Roy Sesana and First People of the Kalahari
2005Francisco Toledo
2006--
2006Daniel Ellsberg
2006Ruth Manorama
2006Chico Whitaker
2006International Poetry Festival of Medellín
2007--
2007Christopher Weeramantry
2007Dekha Ibrahim Abdi
2007Percy Schmeiser and Louise Schmeiser
2007Grameen Shakti
2008--
2008Krishnammal Jagannathan and Sankaralingam Jagannathan LAFTI
2008Amy Goodman
2008Asha Haji Elmi
2008Monika Hauser
2009--
2009Catherine Hamlin
2009René Ngongo
2009David Suzuki
2009Alyn Ware
2010--
2010Nnimmo Bassey
2010Erwin Kräutler
2010Shrikrishna Upadhyay
2010Physicians for Human Rights
2011--
2011Huang Ming
2011Jacqueline Moudeina
2011GRAIN
2011Ina May Gaskin
2012--
2012Campaign Against Arms Trade
2012Gene Sharp
2012
2012Sima Samar
2013--
2013Paul Walker
2013Hans Rudolf Herren and Biovision Foundation
2013Raji Sourani
2013Denis Mukwege
2014--
2014Bill McKibben and 350.org
2014Basil Fernando and AHRC
2014Asma Jahangir
2014Alan Rusbridger
2014Edward Snowden
2015--
2015Sheila Watt-Cloutier
2015Tony deBrum
2015Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera
2015Gino Strada
2016--
2016Cumhuriyet
2016Syrian Civil Defense
2016Mozn Hassan and Nazra for Feminist Studies
2016Svetlana Gannushkina
2017--
2017Robert Bilott
2017Colin Gonsalves
2017Khadija Ismayilova
2017Yetnebersh Nigussie
2018--
2018Thelma Aldana, Iván Velásquez
2018Yacouba Sawadogo
2018Abdullah al-Hamid, Mohammad Fahad al-Qahtani, Walid Abu al-Chair
2018Tony Rinaudo
2019--
2019Greta Thunberg
2019Aminatou Haidar
2019Davi Kopenawa Yanomami
2019Guo Jianmei