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 €200,000. Very often one of the four laureates receives an honorary award, which means that the other three share the prize money.
Right Livelihood Award
Image: Hassan Fathy in Cairo (cropped)
Image: Stephen Gaskin at the Nambassa 3 day Music & Alternatives festival, New Zealand 1981. Photographer Michael Bennetts
Image: Bill Mollison, 2008 (cropped)
Wangarĩ Muta Maathai was a Kenyan social, environmental, and political activist who founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on the planting of trees, environmental conservation, and women's rights. In 2004 she became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Maathai in 2005
Wangari Maathai speaks about deforestation.
Maathai in Nairobi with Chancellor of the Exchequer (and later Prime Minister) Gordon Brown in 2005
Maathai and then U.S. Senator Barack Obama in Nairobi in 2006