THE RIGHT LIVELIHOOD AWARDS 2006
Speech by
Jakob von Uexkull
December 8th, 2006
Mrs Speaker,
Dear Award Recipients,
Your Excellencies,
Members of Parliament,
Dear Friends,
Earlier this week Africa lost one of its most prominent educators and historians. The Right Livelihood Award 'family' has lost one of its foremost elders. Professor Joseph Ki-Zerbo was a cultural pioneer, rooted in African wisdom, who worked hard to promote education as the driving force for African development and emancipation. Please join me in a minute of silence in gratitude for the life and work of Joseph Ki-Zerbo.
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Over the last year we have entered what Winston Churchill called an "era of consequences", from which we can no longer hide. The fundamental madness of the current global order has been exposed. We need economic growth, its propagandists tell us, to help the poor. But, as the New Economics Foundation in London has calculated, this system needs 166 USD of global growth in order to provide one dollar more for those living on less than one dollar a day!
In Kerala (South India) I saw one of the consequences of this economic order a few weeks ago. Communities of fishermen who have gone out fishing every day for thousands of years no longer did so this year, because there are so few fish left. Unable to stop the large foreign trawlers, the local communities are turning against each other in a desperate attempt to protect their livelihoods. Global fish stocks, we are now told, will run out entirely within 50 years, if we do not change course quickly. But the ruling economic extremism and monetary system block long-term thinking and are blind and deaf to such consequences.
A healthy natural environment, irrespective of its current economic value, is the foundation of our existence. A foundation's importance does not diminish with the growth of the structure that it supports - on the contrary! Low natural resource prices are not evidence of their plentifullness or unimportance, but of their rapid exploitation.
We now face a great historical turning point. Previous such turnings have been gradual, largely unconscious and confined to specific areas. The one we now face will be sudden, global and conscious.
The challenges facing us are both spiritual - reconnecting with our earth and our responsibilities - and practical. Visions need timetables! We need to change our global and national rules. We cannot 'leave it to the market'. "Free markets demand enormous increases in continuous, centrally organized and controlled interventionism." (Karl Polanyi). The real questions are about the nature, purpose and consequences of such interventions. Clearly, we can no longer afford to be ruled by decision makers, who tell us that we are in a struggle to save civilization, but are too timid to raise petrol taxes.
Most of the recipients of this award work for environmental protection and restoration. Without a healthy environment, there is little chance of solving other crises. You cannot build a just and peaceful society or protect human rights, in a ruined environment. You can re-negotiate financial agreements, you can re-schedule debts, you can try to reach agreement with your enemies. But you cannot negotiate with melting glaciers. Nature does not reschedule ecological debts. Our economies are fully owned subsidiaries of our natural environment. There is no alternative to ensuring that all our indicators and prices speak the ecological truth!
We must link our politics, economics, security and development to how we live and consume. Technological progress alone cannot save us. Virtual reality also needs energy. Computer waste needs recycling. Virtual water can not quench our thirst.
Earlier this year, the Financial Times (19.01.06) published an article calling for well-being and happiness to replace economic growth as our main indicator of progress. Recently the Deutsche Bank Research (08.09.06) followed, listing the resulting policy implications, including limits on "materialistic advertising" as "people who watch a lot of TV feel poorer. "
Today the key question is not left or right, markets or governments? It is how best to protect our living earth against the attack on our cultures, values and commons by the ideology of global greed. A few weeks ago I had the unusual experience of being the recipient of an award. Among the proposals made by other recipients of the Liechtenstein-based Binding Award for Nature Protection, is the call for limited liability corporations to be replaced by foundations dedicated to the common good in all areas vital for our future. The future of our children and planet now depends on our limiting the extent of our "limited liability"!
As the economist Kenneth Boulding has said, "He who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist".
Recently many recipients of this award, as well as several Jury and Advisory Council members have joined with others to build the World Future Council (WFC), as a part of the global answer to such madness. The WFC will speak up for the neglected interests of our children and future generations. It will be an ongoing forum, developing policy responses to the key challenges facing us. It will aim to provide the moral leadership needed to overcome the growing policy implementation gaps, which increasingly threaten the legitimacy of and trust in our democratic decision-making institutions. As Hannah Arendt said, "the spirit of renewal needs its own institutions".
This spirit also needs a new shared human story based on expanded empathy and sharing. The "peace of security" we are now offered is a peace of fear, suspicion, silence and regimentation. We need to work for a "security of peace" (Federico Mayor) based on justice, reconciliation and reverence for life.
The World Future Council will be officially launched next May in Hamburg - which has provided the core funding for the start-up phase. But the WFC is already at work, researching best policies worldwide in order to help develop the framework for a fair and sustainable global order.
The issue is not whether this is realistic today. For it is clearly necessary tomorrow if we do not want to go down in history as criminal madmen. As the economist E.F Schumacher reminded us, "the essence of civilisation is not in a multiplication of wants but in the purification of the human character". Or, as the Earth Charter reminds us, "when basic needs have been met, human development is primarily about being more, not having more". We can and must mobilize the moral energy and will to reset our compass for the future before the icecaps melt, the trees die and our children inherit a fantasy stock market presiding over an impoverished world. Climate chaos is the most disastrous market and political failure in history!
It has been calculated that a few US foundations and wealthy individuals have spent a billion dollars over the past decades to promote the current world order via think tanks, the media and the political system. This world order denies natural limits (reversing the US environmental leadership role of the 1970´s) and subordinates democracy to the rule of money, replacing one-person, one-vote with one-dollar, one-vote, especially on the global level. Our globalized world is no earth community but a fragmented non-community of globalized individuals.
The result is alienation, violence and terrorism against people and planet. For as the murdered Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri said, "Desperate people do desperate things!"
In a recent publication by the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, Swedish futurists Göran Bäckstrand and Lars Ingelstam note that "if private morals and citizens' sense of decency and convictions about what ought to be done do not relate in some reasonable way to political decisions and the macro development of society, those two worlds will slide apart. Society runs the risk of cracking up".
We can change the rules, including which freedoms to prioritize - e.g. the freedom to trade and consume without or within the limits set by the needs of a healthy planet. Countering the critics and prophets of doom, these awards show what is possible.
One whistleblower can give the public the truth they need to stop a war. Poets can pacify one of the most violent cities on earth. One woman can provide the leadership to change the life perspectives of one of the most oppressed communities anywhere. One man can help give a voice to the voiceless, setting his own country and the world on the road to democracy and earth community.
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The award jury honours Francisco Whitaker Ferreira "for a lifetime's dedicated work for social justice that has strengthened democracy in Brazil and helped give birth to the World Social Forum, showing that 'another world is possible'". Francisco Whitaker has worked for democracy and against corruption throughout his life, both at home and in exile during the dictatorship. While in exile he co-ordinated the "International Study Day for a Society overcoming Domination", which facilitated the exchange of experiences among people fighting oppression all over the world. Back in Brazil he was one of the key organizers of the popular participation process during the drafting of the constitution, which presented 122 amendments with 12 million signatures. Later he conceived the idea and was instrumental in the implementation of a bill against electoral corruption, which has, since it was implemented in 2000, forced the resignation of more than 400 corrupt mayors, deputies and councillors.
He has played a key role in conceiving and realizing the World Social Forum, as a platform for civil society to exchange views, form coalitions, work on concrete strategies, co-ordinate campaigns and help citizens rid themselves of their feelings of powerlessness.
It is with great pleasure that I present the Right Livelihood Honorary Award to Francisco Whitaker Ferreira.
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The jury honours Daniel Ellsberg "for putting peace and truth first, at considerable personal risk, and dedicating his life to inspiring others to follow his example". Daniel Ellsberg is a former US Government Official, who followed his conscience and leaked the secret so-called Pentagon Papers, showing that the government had over many years misled the US public about the war in Vietnam. He has ever since campaigned for peace and disarmament and encouraged others to speak truth to power.
In 1975-76 he helped organize the Continental Walk for Peace and Justice. He has taken part in many campaigns and actions and been arrested 70 times. In 2004 he founded the Truth-Telling Project to encourage insiders to expose official lying, which gave rise to the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, now containing over 60 former officials from national security agencies. Since 2004 he has given more than 60 speeches on this subject and on the parallels between Iraq, Vietnam and most recently, the developing crisis in relation to Iran.
It is with great pleasure that I present the Right Livelihood Award to Daniel Ellsberg.
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The jury honours Ruth Manorama "for her commitment over decades to achieving equality for Dalit women, building effective women's organizations and working for their rights at national and international levels". Ruth Manorama has worked consistently for the empowerment and rights of slum dwellers, domestic workers, unorganized labour, Dalits and marginalized women.
Her main work has been organisation building, mobilisation and advocacy on behalf of Dalit women through the large number of organisations in which she is active, often in a leadership position, including the National Federation of Dalit Women and the National Alliance of Women and Women's Voice. She was in the forefront of mass struggles against eviction and the "Operation Demolition" by the State Government of Karnataka and has been assisting the urban poor to protect and voice their rights. She has helped women workers organize and unionize, and supported them in their struggle for minimum wages.
Ruth Manorama has exposed the violence and discrimination faced by Dalits and especially Dalit women at public hearings nationally and at international UN conferences and committees, demanding government accountability and action.
It is with great pleasure that I present the Right Livelihood Award to Ruth Manorama.
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The jury honours the International Poetry Festival of Medellín "for showing how creativity, beauty, free expression and community can flourish amongst and overcome even deeply entrenched fear and violence." The Festival began in 1991 as a protest against the political violence and hatred prevailing in Colombia and especially in Medellín, a city then ruled by fear, political terror and fighting between criminal groups.
By organizing poetry readings in the streets, the Festival initiators helped the people of Medellín to re-establish cultural life and reclaim their city. Up to 200 000 people come to listen to the readings. Until 2006, 747 poets from 131 countries, have read their poems in more than 60 languages and dialects during 906 public readings in Medellín and 32 other Colombian cities following Medellín's example. This example has also inspired a Network of Latin American Poetry Festivals, active in several Central and South American countries.
In 2003, the Festival brought together the first Global Conference on Poetry for Peace in Colombia. The Festival is organized by the Corporation of Art and Poetry Prometeo, which also offers a poetry school with free courses, symposia, children's workshops on poetry appreciation and several poetry prizes. The corporation also publishes the magazine "Prometeo", whose editor, poets Fernando Rendon and Angela Garcia were the main inspiration for creating the Festival.
It is with great pleasure that I present the Right Livelihood Award to the Festival Internacional de Poesía de Medellín represented by Fernando Rendon, Gloria Chvatal and Gabriel Jaime Franco.
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I will close with these words of a wise 15-year old girl, hiding from her murderers in wartime Amsterdam. "How wonderful it is", wrote Anne Frank in her diary, "that nobody needs to wait a single moment before starting to improve the world"!
