THE RIGHT LIVELIHOOD AWARDS 2002
Speech by
Jakob von Uexkull
December 9th, 2002.
Mr Speaker,
Your Excellencies,
Members of Parliament,
Dear Friends,
When I enter this beautiful building I am reminded of the suggestion of Australian Senator Bob Brown that above the entrance to every parliament should be the inscription:
"Will those living a hundred years from now thank us for what we are doing here?"
Of course every one of us has the duty to reflect on this question. There are some people’s lives about which the answer is not in doubt, where the light they have brought to the world is so bright that we can feel sure even now that it will be shining a hundred years from now.
This year four such outstanding members of the Right Livelihood family have left us:
- Astrid Lindgren, whose writings will continue to give joy and lift the spirit of children all over the world,
- Alice Stewart, whose tireless and courageous research on the health risks of radiation has saved the lives of millions,
- José Lutzenberger, who has inspired so many to begin the transition to healthy and sustainable modes of production and agriculture,
- and the man who was not a Right Livelihood award recipient only because he was the senior member of our jury, a mentor whose wisdom and inspiration will remain unforgettable - Thor Heyerdahl.
Please join me in a moment of silence in gratitude for the lives and work of Astrid Lindgren, Alice Stewart, José Lutzenberger and Thor Heyerdahl.
…
In the ancient kingdoms of Southern India, the highest authority was the "Council of Seers into the Future". Today we urgently need such a body on the global level, representing our common values and responsibilities as world citizens.
Would we have wanted those who lived on this planet before us to have burned as much coal and oil, to have left behind huge quantities of highly dangerous waste, to have depleted natural resources and biodiversity as we do?
If the answer is no, then what right have we to do it? Can we look into the clear, bright eyes of a child and justify what we have done and are doing daily? If not, what are we waiting for? Where is our political courage? Where are the leaders who dare to ask for a little effort in order to secure the future of our children and our dignity. Every day we delay increases the future dangers and make the transition more difficult.
There is no excuse to wait, for, as David Korten writes, "We’re the ones we’ve been waiting for." We are privileged to live at this most exciting moment in human history. Pessimism, inaction and ‘business as usual’ is an immoral betrayal for which future generations will not forgive us.
A few months ago I came across an article headed "The gloomy state of today’s world". It concluded that our world is doing worse every day and that for the poor, globalisation is a process by which the rich and powerful enjoy the fruits of wealth at their expense.
The author was the speaker of the Davos World Economic Forum. Considering that this is the annual meeting-place of the "global players", the powerful elites who have largely run the world for the past 10 to 20 years, his conclusions were rather surprising.
In Rio, 10 years ago, the large global corporations assured us that they were the best equipped to build a better, sustainable world order. No need for new institutions or strong regulatory powers… Were they now saying that they had got it wrong? Has a process of re-evaluation begun, now that even their spokesman was admitting things are still getting worse? Are they working to undo the damage of the last decades?
The answers to these questions are all in the negative – and the author of the article was fired.
The British historian Arnold Toynbee concluded that civilisations collapse when the elites lose their "charm", when they are no longer believed. Today we seem already to have reached the next stage, when even the ruling elites themselves no longer believe the present system is working.
In these times of doubt and confusion, developing adequate solutions confers power. The Right Livelihood Award is a key part of this new global power structure. It is a global people’s award to which anyone can nominate or be nominated. It covers all areas where reform is urgent and solutions – projects of hope – exist. It does not seek controversy but when other institutions and awards do not fulfil their responsibilities, it tries to fill the gap. The Right Livelihood Award opens eyes and doors. With few (often too few!) resources, it highlights the major challenges we face and the paths ahead. It aims to help us rediscover our place in the story of life before it is too late. For globalisation also means that there is no "out there" to bring us out of another dark age of ignorance, violence and intolerance no "Celtic fringe" where monks kept learning alive for centuries after the fall of Rome.
Some may dismiss such words as apocalyptic, but globalisation has brought what one analyst (Ulrich Beck) calls the "universalisation of conflicts" and Johannesburg again revealed the inability of the present global power structure to understand and respond adequately. Indeed, the best news in Johannesburg came from what was prevented: with a Herculean effort, our Ethiopian Right Livelihood award recipient Tewolde Egziabher managed to prevent the free trade dogmatists from subjecting international environmental agreements to the condition of WTO "conformity".
Just as Soviet ideologues caused famines in the 1920’s, our ruling ideologues now cause famines in Africa, by forcing poor countries like Malawi to end food and agricultural subsidies – while the EU and the USA keep theirs. What do we answer our children when they ask how – in a world of plenty, where they are daily urged to consume more – we can allow millions of their brothers and sisters to die of hunger and malnutrition every year? Increasingly we do not answer them: we drug them. The number of prescriptions of anti-depressants for children is growing rapidly in Sweden and other industrialized nations – in the USA the largest increase is for children between the ages of 2 and 6!
No wonder that, when they get a bit older our children reject this world order wholesale. The declarations of recent international youth conferences make instructive reading for those who would prefer to hide from reality. The "Earth Summit II Youth Declaration" (New York, 1997) noted that participants had "a feeling of despair" because of the failure of those in power to live up to their promises in Rio. It demanded cuts in the consumption of the rich to help the poor and reduce pressure on the environment. The largest and most representative youth meeting held in preparation for Johannesburg (Borgholm, Sweden, May 2001) speaks in even stronger terms. The final document inter alia demands "global justice through equitable access for all to natural resources… the power to enforce sustainability-oriented action… recognition of the ecological debt of the rich… an end to the neo-liberal economic globalisation… an immediate end to the production, trial and sale of genetically engineered organisms" etc.
There are signs that they increasingly speak for the majority. In the UK the government has complained about the "anti-development mood" in the population. In the US, the proportion feeling the need for "spiritual growth" in their lives increased from 20% in 1994 to 78% in 1999. Established religious institutions have failed to benefit from this trend due to their timidity in responding to such needs and condemning the ruling moneytheism. A “trade” which profits from transporting 250 million animals (cows, sheep, horses etc.) all over Europe every year – with 10% i.e. 25 million dead on arrival! – is a criminal blasphemy, but where is the strong condemnation of the churches? "We can only lead from behind", a prominent British bishop told me recently, while lamenting that only "a major disaster in the rich countries would wake up people there in time". Asked what he had in mind, he replied. "The flooding of London".
I feel there are more constructive ways ahead. To walk these we do not need to discover a "new ethics" as is often claimed. For ethics and morals are cultural values. If we really are nothing but greedy, genetically programmed machines in a meaningless universe, as the so-called "experts" assure us, then our situation is indeed hopeless – for where should the "new global ethics" come from?
Deep down we know that we are much more – and that we can do much better. But we need to ensure that our institutions, rules and information streams prioritize our deeper common values instead of celebrating consumerist greed. We need to listen to our children. In her highly acclaimed words to the Rio conference 10 years ago, Severn Cullis-Suzuki, then 12 years old, told the assembled delegates: "In school you teach us not to fight with others, to work things out, to respect others, to clean up our mess, not to hurt other creatures, to share, not to be greedy. Then why do you go out and do the things you tell us not to do?"
As this year's awards were announced, the hopes and expectations they raise were brought home to me when I was asked about their relevance to the current war threats in the Middle East. We have of course already highlighted the dangers and solutions there several times. Fifteen years ago we honoured the man who has been rightly called our first nuclear weapons inspector, Mordechai Vanunu, who revealed Israel’s secret nuclear weapons programme to the world. For this courageous act of whistle-blowing he was kidnapped from EU territory and remains imprisoned in Israel, sentenced to 18 years of which he served 12 in solitary confinement. The EU silence in view of this gross violation of its territory has been deafening!
Last year’s award recipients Uri and Rachel Avnery sent a clear message that the horrific circle of violence there can only be broken by greater outside pressure, enforcing a solution based on the principles of international law.
This year’s awards too send a strong signal that there are peaceful alternatives. First and foremost they demand that we reduce our drug-like dependency on cheap oil. The transition to a global order based on renewable energies is a key moral priority of our time, not just for future generations but to avoid entering an era of violent resource conflicts right now. CO2 emissions need to be more than halved if we are to achieve even a stabilization of CO2 concentrations…
Many studies over the past 25 years have shown that humanity can fill its energy needs from renewable sources. These studies – e.g. reports of the Club de Bellevue, Barry Commoner etc. in the 1970’s, the 1982 IIASA study, the “Solar Sweden-Study” (1985), the Global Energy Charter (1991), the Wuppertal-Institute Study for the EU (1999) and the Geneva Proclamation and Conclusions of the CLEAN ENERGY 2000 conference – have never been disproven. They have just been dismissed by the technological pessimists ruling us, although they were based on existing technologies and their figures could not be faulted.
It is high time that we overcome our fears of the structural changes required for an energy transition and recognize the many ecological, cultural and human benefits. Renewables offer a more secure future, better health, fewer conflicts, new interesting jobs, a revitalized countryside, stabilized local and regional economies – and the ability to overcome the "no future" mentality.
While the fossil fuels used today are gone forever (or at least for millions of years), with renewables it is the opposite: the solar energy we did not harness yesterday cannot be harnessed tomorrow. For that reason alone all decision-makers have the duty to end the political and economic privileges of conventional energies now. It is time to wake up! As the composer Gustav Mahler said, "tradition is handing on the fire, not worshipping the ashes!"
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Professor Martin Green has achieved several remarkable break-throughs in harnessing the solar fire. He is the world’s foremost researcher and inventor in the field of solar photovoltaic technology. In 1983 the Photovoltaics Special Research Centre at the University of New South Wales of which he is the Director, set a new world efficiency record for a silicon solar cell. Since then the centre has continued to improve this record. It has also set numerous efficiency records for concentrator cells, polycrystalline cells and solar modules, as well as making significant contributions to the development of low cost solar cell technology.
The jury honours Professor Green "for his dedication and outstanding success in responding to the key technological challenge and moral imperative of our age – the harnessing of solar energy". It is with very great pleasure that I ask Professor Martin Green to accept the 2002 Right Livelihood Honorary Award.
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The Centre Jeunes Kamenge in Burundi is honoured "for their exemplary and indomitable courage and compassion, which have proved that, even after nine years of murderous civil war, young people from different ethnic groups can learn to live and build a future together in peace and harmony".
When others gave up, left or fled, Claudio Marano, Marino Bettinsoli and Victor Ghirardi, whose vision had created the Centre Jeunes Kamenge stayed on with their co-workers, providing a haven of peace, learning, support and normality during a civil war so long that for many youths war was to become the only reality they knew. Tens of thousands of young people from different ethnic groups have been given back their lives through the CJK, participating in meetings, courses, sports, music and plays, receiving personal help to cope with the effects of the war and participating in events focusing on rehabilitation and community-building. The Centre has been attacked and looted, its management and workers threatened and some of its members killed. But it continues to play a central role in Burundi’s peace process.
It is with very great pleasure that I present the 2002 Right Livelihood Award to the Centre Jeunes Kamenge, represented here by Claudio Marano and Guillaume Harushimana.
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The work of Kvinna till Kvinna is celebrated by the Jury "for its remarkable success in healing the wounds of ethnic hatred and war, by helping women, often the prime victims, to be the major agents of reconciliation and peace-building".
Kvinna till Kvinna has initiated projects to promote women’s self-reliance, self-esteem and health and promote their participation in the development of a democratic society. They have raised awareness on war effects and gender issues, promoted dialogues, provided health care and training and legal advice in many areas. Through their offices in the Balkans, Israel, Palestine and Georgia they established innovative joint projects with local women’s organisations across ethnic divides.
For their inspiring and remarkable work, it is with very great pleasure that I present the 2002 Right Livelihood Award to Kvinna till Kvinna, represented here by Kerstin Grebäck and Anna Lidén.
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The jury honours Martín Almada, "for his outstanding courage and persistent efforts to expose and bring to account the torturers and set his country on a new course of democracy, respect for human rights and sustainable development".
Named an "intellectual terrorist" by the Stroessner dictatorship for his pioneering work on education, Martín Almada spent three years in a concentration camp where he was regularly tortured.
Released after a sustained campaign by Amnesty International, he went into exile where he campaigned on human rights issues and revealed the truth about the situation in Paraguay.
Returning there after the overthrow of Stroessner, he played a leading role in the transition to democracy. An early focus of his work was to bring the torturers to justice and get compensation for the victims. His discovery of the 'Archives of Terror' released into the public domain the most important collection of documents of state terror ever recovered, with an impact which reached far beyond the borders of Paraguay.
Together with his wife María Stella Caceres de Almada, Martín Almada has also continued his pioneering educational work against poverty and for the protection of the environment, including the use of solar energy in rural areas. It is with very great pleasure that I present the 2002 Right Livelihood Award to Martín Almada.
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I would like to close with the words of Sen. Ingrid Betancourt, presidential candidate of the Colombian Partido Verde Oxygeno, kidnapped last February and still held by the FARC guerrilla : "We are now facing a new frontier. It is a non-material, universal and more dramatic frontier than the conquest of the new world or than man’s first step on the moon. To reach it we do not depend upon our physical or technological efforts but on our moral stamina. Let us therefore not list our weaknesses but claim our strengths and change the course of history."
