The Recipients in the News
Current news regarding Right Livelihood Award Recipients:
Sahabat Alam Malaysia-Sarawak (Malaysia, RLA 1988)
2008-08-16 SAM alarmed over forest plunder in Sarawak. The Star, Malaysia.
SAM is worried by the widespread plundering of Sarawak's forest reserves.
Even protected forests and forest reserves are not spared from land clearing and have to give way to oil palm plantations and pulpwood estates.
SAM says that the Sarawak Forests Department licensed out some 2.8 million hectares of forested land to 40 plantation concessions.
Sugar mills charged with crimes against the environment.
In Pernambuco, a state in northeastern Brazil, all sugar mills are charged with crimes against the environment after having been denounced by the CPT. The sugar mills are responsible for the destruction of the Atlantic Forest and the contamination of water sources.
2008-07-08 Biofuels fuel global food crisis. Toronto Star, Canada.
Last week, a leaked World Bank report declared that biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75 per cent, far higher than previously estimated.
Some have speculated that the World Bank's findings have been kept under wraps to avoid embarrassing U.S. President George W. Bush, whose administration has argued that biofuels are responsible for only 3 per cent of the rise in food process.
Mordechai Vanunu (Israel, RLA 1987)
Vanunu's life continues to be restricted
The restrictions imposed on Vanunu still continue, so does his violations of them.
2008-07-08 Jerusalem court hears Vanunu appeal. Jerusalem Post, Israel.
Meanwhile, in Norway, pressure has been building for the government to grant Vanunu asylum and demand that Israel allows him to go free.
In a recent interview with Democracy Now, Hans Blix of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) called Vanunu's treatment "unfair". In a comment in the Guardian, Mairead Corrigan-Maguire, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976, also called on Israel to let Vanunu go free, so did an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
2008-04-16 - It's time to free Vanunu. Haaretz, Israel.
2008-06-20 Wife of slain Indonesian activist praises arrest of official. Malaysia Star.
Suciwati, Munir's widow, hailed the arrest of a former official from Indonesia's intelligence agency suspected in the killing of her husband, a prominent Indonesian human rights activist.
Suciwati called the arrest an important step in ending the "culture of impunity.''
José Antonio Abreu (Venezuela, RLA 2001)
2008-06-15 Free instruments for poor children. The Observer, UK.
El Sistema, a programme developed by José Antonio Abreu, which provides free music lessons to children coming from Venezuela's streets and poorest quarters, has inspired the English to install a similar program.
Mycle Schneider (France, RLA 1997)
2008-06-03 The reality of France's aggressive nuclear power push. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist.
In an article recently published in the renowned Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist Mycle Schneider takes a closer look at the French government's attempt to initiate a French-led global nuclear renaissance.
2008-06-04 Nigeria to give Shell Ogoni oil wells to another firm. Reuters.
15 years after Shell closed its operations in Ogoniland because of large protests against environmental destruction, the oil fields in this area will be given to another oil company, Nigeria's President announced.
MOSOP has commended the Federal Government’s decision to appoint another operator in place of Shell for the Ogoni area, describing it as a bold step that stands the brightest chance of quickening the resumption of oil activities in Ogoni.
Read more (Reuters article) & MOSOP's press statement
2008-05-30 The world torpedoes ocean fertilization. ETC Group, Canada.
An UN Convention on Biological Diversity ended last week with a ban on the controversial practice of seeding the ocean with nutrients to encourage growth of carbon-fixing algae.
This first-ever global decision on a geo-engineering technology should spell the end of commercial plans to sequester carbon dioxide by dumping nutrients into the open ocean.
Survival International (UK, RLA 1989)
2008-05-30 Isolated tribe spotted in Brazil. BBC, UK.
One of the world's few remaining indigenous communities without contact to the outside world has recently been photographed on a flight over the border region between Brazil and Peru.
Stephen Corry, director of Survival International, warned such tribes would "soon be made extinct" if their land was not protected.
