Activists from Congo and New Zealand and a doctor from Australia on Tuesday won the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the “alternative Nobel,” for work to protect rain forests, improve women’s health and rid the world of nuclear weapons.
Congolese activist Rene Ngongo, Alyn Ware of New Zealand and Australian Catherine Hamlin, who has been based in Ethiopia for five decades, each will receive 50,000 euros (US$74,000), the Right Livelihood Foundation said.
The honorary part of the award — without prize money — went to Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki, 73, for raising awareness of climate change.
Swedish-German philanthropist Jakob von Uexkull founded the awards in 1980 to recognize work he felt was being ignored by the Nobel Prizes.
The foundation said Ngongo, 48, was honored “for his courage in confronting the forces that are destroying Congo’s rain forests.”
He founded the OCEAN environmental group in 1994, exposing the impact of deforestation and monitoring the plunder of minerals by warring factions during Congo’s 1996 to 2002 civil wars. He also has been working for Greenpeace.
Ngongo said by telephone from Kinshasa that the award came at a “great time,” as negotiators prepare to meet in Copenhagen in December to draft a global climate pact.
Ware, a 47-year-old peace activist from New Zealand, was recognized for “initiatives over two decades to further peace education and to rid the world of nuclear weapons.”
Nuclear nonproliferation also was a key theme when the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last Friday to US President Barack Obama, citing in part his vision of a world free of atomic weapons.
Hamlin, 85, moved to Ethiopia from Australia in 1959 to work as an obstetrician and gynecologist.
The awards will be presented in a ceremony at the Swedish parliament on Dec. 4.
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